by Jules Verne
Illustration: ARDAN PLUNGED HIS HAND RAPIDLY INTO CERTAIN MYSTERIOUS BOXES.
During this time Nicholl, the calculator, looked over the minutes oftheir passage, and worked out figures with unparalleled dexterity. MichelArdan chatted first with Barbicane, who did not answer him, and thenwith Nicholl, who did not hear him, with Diana, who understood none ofhis theories, and lastly with himself, questioning and answering, goingand coming, busy with a thousand details; at one time bent over thelower glass, at another roosting in the heights of the projectile, andalways singing. In this microcosm he represented French loquacity andexcitability, and we beg you to believe that they were well represented.The day, or rather (for the expression is not correct) the lapse oftwelve hours, which forms a day upon earth, closed with a plentifulsupper carefully prepared. No accident of any nature had yet happenedto shake the travellers' confidence; so, full of hope, already sure ofsuccess, they slept peacefully, whilst the projectile under an uniformlydecreasing speed was crossing the sky.