able or unreasonable, unless it is asked in a proper
manner!"

"None of your French airs here!" exclaimed M'Nicholl, by this time
almost completely out of himself between anger and excitement. "I don't
know where I am; I don't know where I'm going; I don't know why I'm
going; _you_ know all about it, Ardan, or at least you think you do!
Well then, give me a plain answer to a plain question, or by the
Thirty-eight States of our glorious Union, I shall know what for!"

"Listen, Ardan!" cried Barbican, grappling with the Frenchman, and with
some difficulty restraining him from flying at M'Nicholl's throat; "You
ought to tell him! It is only your duty! One day you found us both in
St. Helena woods, where we had no more idea of going to the Moon than of
sailing to the South Pole! There you twisted us both around your finger,
and induced us to follow you blindly on the most formidable journey ever
undertaken by man! And now you refuse to tell us what it was all for!"

"I don't refuse, dear old Barbican! To you, at least, I can't refuse
anything!" cried Ardan, seizing his friend's hands and wringing them
violently. Then letting them go and suddenly starting back, "you wish to
know," he continued in resounding tones, "why we have followed out the
grandest idea that ever set a human brain on fire! Why we have
undertaken a journey that for length, danger, and novelty, for
fascinating, soul-stirring and delirious sensations, for all that can
attract man's burning heart, and satisfy the intensest cravings of his
intellect, far surpasses the vividest realities of Dante's passionate
dream! Well, I will tell you! It is to annex another World to the New
One! It is to take possession of the Moon in the name of the United
States of America! It is to add a thirty-ninth State to the glorious
Union! It is to colonize the lunar regions, to cultivate them, to people
them, to transport to them some of our wonders of art, science, and
industry! It is to civilize the Selenites, unless they are more
civilized already than we are ourselves! It is to make them all good
Republicans, if they are not so already!"

"Provided, of course, that there are Selenites in existence!" sneered
the Captain, now sourer than ever, and in his unaccountable excitement
doubly irritating.

"Who says there are no Selenites?" cried Ardan fiercely, with fists
clenched and brows contracted.

"I do!" cried M'Nicholl stoutly; "I deny the existence of anything of
the k