As they gradually neared the moon they found that they were also revolving around it. This was very unfortunate. If this motion continued, the result of their journey would be that their projectile would become a lunar satellite—a moon’s moon. They would go around and around forever, and never reach the moon or be able to get back to the earth. After a while they got around to the shadow side of the moon, so that she was between them and the earth. Then they were in total darkness excepting when they lighted their gas-burner, and they could not keep the gas burning all the time, as their supply was getting rather low. But the darkness was not their chief trouble. It began to be very cold. And then it got colder and still colder, until they thought they should freeze into solid lumps. Their breath congealed so that it fell in the form of snow about them, and the poor dog, shivering under a cloak, lay upon the floor as cold as if he had been dropped into a deep hole in an ice-berg. They thought it must be still colder outside, and so they lowered a thermometer through a small trap-door in the floor, and when they drew it in the mercury stood at 218 degrees below zero! That was a very fine thermometer, and it is a Frenchman who tells this story. [Illustration: THE TRAVELERS ARE COLD.] At last they passed around the moon, and again found themselves upon its sunny side. Then they were happy. Light and heat, after the dreadful darkness and cold through which they had passed were enough to make men happy, especially men so far away from home and all the comforts and conveniences of civilized society. As they passed around the moon they had a fine opportunity of observing the lunar landscapes. They were not so far away but that with their glasses they could see the mountains and plains, and all sorts of curious caves, and wonderful formations like forts and castles, but which they knew to be nothing but great masses of the moon’s surface, thrown up in these strange shapes by volcanic action. It is probable that what is described in this story is very like what the real surface of the moon must be. After they had revolved some time they found that they were getting farther and farther away from the moon, and this made them suppose that they were moving in an elliptical orbit. They were much discouraged by this idea, for they thought, and very justly too, that there was now no chance of the moon’s drawing them towards itself, so that they would fall upon its surface. This they had hoped to do, and they did not expect to suffer from the fall, for the attraction of the moon is so much less than that of the earth that they thought they would descend rather gently on the moon’s surface. But now there seemed to be no chance of their getting there at all. At last, however, they found that they were passing entirely out of the line of the moon’s attraction, and after that they perceived plainly that they were falling.