Imagination loses itself in this sublime Infinity, amid which
the projectile was gravitating, like a new star created by the
hand of man. From a natural cause, these constellations shone
with a soft luster; they did not twinkle, for there was no
atmosphere which, by the intervention of its layers unequally
dense and of different degrees of humidity, produces
this scintillation. These stars were soft eyes, looking out
into the dark night, amid the silence of absolute space.

Long did the travelers stand mute, watching the constellated
firmament, upon which the moon, like a vast screen, made an
enormous black hole. But at length a painful sensation drew
them from their watchings. This was an intense cold, which soon
covered the inside of the glass of the scuttles with a thick
coating of ice. The sun was no longer warming the projectile
with its direct rays, and thus it was losing the heat stored up
in its walls by degrees. This heat was rapidly evaporating into
space by radiation, and a considerably lower temperature was
the result. The humidity of the interior was changed into ice
upon contact with the glass, preventing all observation.

Nicholl consulted the thermometer, and saw that it had fallen to
seventeen degrees (Centigrade) below zero. [3] So that, in spite
of the many reasons for economizing, Barbicane, after having
begged light from the gas, was also obliged to beg for heat.
The projectile's low temperature was no longer endurable.
Its tenants would have been frozen to death.

[3] 1@ Fahrenheit.