four in the morning
`` No , '' answered Nicholl ; `` up to this time , not a man , not an animal , not a tree ! After all , whether the atmosphere has taken refuge at the bottom of cavities , in the midst of the circles , or even on the opposite face of the moon , we can not decide . '' `` Besides , '' added Barbicane , `` even to the most piercing eye a man can not be distinguished farther than three and a half miles off ; so that , if there are any Selenites , they can see our projectile , but we can not see them . '' Toward four in the morning , at the height of the fiftieth parallel , the distance was reduced to 300 miles . To the left ran a line of mountains capriciously shaped , lying in the full light . To the right , on the contrary , lay a black hollow resembling a vast well , unfathomable and gloomy , drilled into the lunar soil . This hole was the `` Black Lake '' ; it was Pluto , a deep circle which can be conveniently studied from the earth , between the last quarter and the new moon , when the shadows fall from west to east .