The distance from the earth to the moon was to be accomplished in about four days, and after the first shock of the starting, which was quite heavy, notwithstanding the springs and the cushions, our travelers began to make themselves at home. They talked, they ate and drank and smoked. They took observations out of their windows, and watched the earth recede until it looked like a great moon, and saw the moon approach until it seemed like a little earth. One of them, the Frenchman, was in such high spirits that if his companions would have allowed him he would have got outside of their little house and stood in triumph on the very top, as it went whizzing through the air. The artist has given us a picture of how he would have looked if he had stood out there where he wanted to perch himself. His idea was that as there was as much _momentum_ in him as there was in the projectile, there was no danger of his falling off and being left behind. But if any of you ever _do_ go to the moon in a hollow cannon-ball, I would strongly recommend you not to get outside. After a while they passed beyond the limit of the earth’s attraction, and began to enter that of the moon. But when they were about on the line between these two attractions, a very singular thing took place. Everything in the projectile, the men, the dog, (one of the dogs died the first day and was thrown out) the telescope, the chickens and every article that was not fastened down, seemed to lose all its gravity or weight. As there is no reason why anything without weight should stay in any particular place, unless it is fastened there by some mechanical means, these people and things began to float about in the air. [Illustration: THE FRENCHMAN OUTSIDE.] The men rose up and were wafted here and there by a touch. Hats floated away and chickens and telescopes hung suspended between the floor and the roof, as thistledown, on a still summer’s day floats in the air. Even the dog, who thought that he was sitting on the floor, was sitting in the air, several feet from the floor. [Illustration: EVERY THING WAS FLOATING IN THE AIR.] This was a most remarkable state of things, and it is no wonder that the travelers could not very soon get used to it. To feel oneself soaring like a balloon must certainly be a curious sensation. But these men expected all sorts of strange experiences, and so this did not frighten them, and the nearer they came to the moon, the more effect her gravity had upon them, and as the projectile gradually turned its heaviest end towards the moon its inmates gradually recovered their weight, and sat and stood like common people. After journeying still further they had another very strange experience.