"And Barbican our first President!" shrieked the Frenchman. "Our first and last!" roared M'Nicholl. "No objections to a third term!" yelled Ardan. "He's welcome to any number of terms he pleases!" vociferated M'Nicholl. "Hurrah for President Barbican of the Lunatic--I mean of the Lunar Republic!" screamed Ardan. "Long may he wave, and may his shadow never grow less!" shouted Captain M'Nicholl, his eyes almost out of their sockets. Then with voices reminding you of sand fiercely blown against the window panes, the _President_ and the _Senate_ chanted the immortal _Yankee Doodle_, whilst the _House_ delivered itself of the _Marseillaise_, in a style which even the wildest Jacobins in Robespierre's day could hardly have surpassed. But long before either song was ended, all three broke out into a dance, wild, insensate, furious, delirious, paroxysmatical. No Orphic festivals on Mount Cithaeron ever raged more wildly. No Bacchic revels on Mount Parnassus were ever more corybantic. Diana, demented by the maddening example, joined in the orgie, howling and barking frantically in her turn, and wildly jumping as high as the ceiling of the Projectile. Then came new accessions to the infernal din. Wings suddenly began to flutter, cocks to crow, hens to cluck; and five or six chickens, managing to escape out of their coop, flew backwards and forwards blindly, with frightened screams, dashing against each other and against the walls of the Projectile, and altogether getting up as demoniacal a hullabaloo as could be made by ten thousand bats that you suddenly disturbed in a cavern where they had slept through the winter. Then the three companions, no longer able to withstand the overpowering influence of the mysterious force that mastered them, intoxicated, more than drunk, burned by the air that scorched their organs of respiration, dropped at last, and lay flat, motionless, senseless as dabs of clay, on the floor of the Projectile. [Illustration: A DEMONIACAL HULLABALOO.] CHAPTER VIII. THE NEUTRAL POINT. What had taken place? Whence proceeded this strange intoxication whose consequences might have proved so disastrous? A little forgetfulness on Ardan's part had done the whole mischief, but fortunately M'Nicholl was able to remedy it in time.