ghting up the summit
of the mountains situated on the southern border of the moon. We are
evidently approaching the South Pole!"

"After having passed the North Pole," answered Michel. "Then we have
been all round our satellite."

"Yes, friend Michel."

"Then we have no more hyperbolas, no more parabolas, no more open curves
to fear!"

"No, but a closed curve."

"Which is called--"

"An ellipsis. Instead of being lost in the interplanetary spaces it is
possible that the projectile will describe an elliptical orbit round the
moon."

"Really!"

"And that it will become its satellite."

"Moon of the moon," exclaimed Michel Ardan.

"Only I must tell you, my worthy friend, that we are none the less lost
men on that account!"

"No, but in another and much pleasanter way!" answered the careless
Frenchman, with his most amiable smile.

President Barbicane was right. By describing this elliptical orbit the
projectile was going to gravitate eternally round the moon like a
sub-satellite. It was a new star added to the solar world, a microcosm
peopled by three inhabitants, whom want of air would kill before long.
Barbicane, therefore, could not rejoice at the position imposed on the
bullet by the double influence of the centripetal and centrifugal
forces. His companions and he were again going to see the visible face
of the disc. Perhaps their existence would last long enough for them to
perceive for the last time the full earth superbly lighted up by the
rays of the sun! Perhaps they might throw a last adieu to the globe they
were never more to see again! Then their projectile would be nothing but
an extinct mass, dead like those inert asteroids which circulate in the
ether. A single consolation remained to them: it was that of seeing the
darkness and returning to light, it was that of again entering the zones
bathed by solar irradiation!

In the meantime the mountains recognised by Barbicane stood out more and
more from the dark mass. They were Mounts Doerfel and Leibnitz, which
stand on the southern circumpolar region of the moon.

All the mountains of the visible hemisphere have been measured with
perfect exactitude. This perfection will, no doubt, seem astonishing,
and yet the hypsometric methods are rigorous. The altitude of the lunar
mountains may be no less exactly determined than that of the mountains
of the earth.

The method generally employed is that of measuring the shadow thrown by
the mountains,