le for your
existence. I would rather lose an arm than a paw of my poor Satellite."

So saying he offered some water to the wounded animal, who drank it
greedily.

These attentions bestowed, the travellers attentively watched the earth
and the moon. The earth only appeared like a pale disc terminated by a
crescent smaller than that of the previous evening, but its volume
compared with that of the moon, which was gradually forming a perfect
circle, remained enormous.

"_Parbleu_!" then said Michel Ardan; "I am really sorry we did not start
when the earth was at her full--that is to say, when our globe was in
opposition to the sun!"

"Why?" asked Nicholl.

"Because we should have seen our continents and seas under a new
aspect--the continents shining under the solar rays, the seas darker,
like they figure upon certain maps of the world! I should like to have
seen those poles of the earth upon which the eye of man has never yet
rested!"

"I daresay," answered Barbicane, "but if the earth had been full the
moon would have been new--that is to say, invisible amidst the
irradiation of the sun. It is better for us to see the goal we want to
reach than the place we started from."

"You are right, Barbicane," answered Captain Nicholl; "and besides, when
we have reached the moon we shall have plenty of time during the long
lunar nights to consider at leisure the globe that harbours men like
us."

"Men like us!" cried Michel Ardan. "But now they are not more like us
than the Selenites. We are inhabitants of a new world peopled by us
alone--the projectile! I am a man like Barbicane, and Barbicane is a man
like Nicholl. Beyond us and outside of us humanity ends, and we are the
only population of this microcosm until the moment we become simple
Selenites."

"In about eighty-eight hours," replied the captain.

"Which means?" asked Michel Ardan.

"That it is half-past eight," answered Nicholl.

"Very well," answered Michel, "I fail to find the shadow of a reason why
we should not breakfast _illico_."

In fact, the inhabitants of the new star could not live in it without
eating, and their stomachs then submitted to the imperious laws of
hunger. Michel Ardan, in his quality of Frenchman, declared himself
chief cook, an important function that no one disputed with him. The gas
gave the necessary degrees of heat for cooking purposes, and the
provision-locker furnished the elements of this first banquet.

The breakfast b