five o'clock in the morning
Can you call a bottle of ink intensely black , spilled over a sheet of paper intensely white , a landscape ? '' At the eightieth degree , when the Projectile was hardly 100 miles distant from the Moon , the aspect of things underwent no improvement . On the contrary , the nearer the travellers approached the lunar surface , the drearier , the more inhospitable , and the more _ unearthly _ , everything seem to look . Still when five o'clock in the morning brought our travellers to within 50 miles of _ Mount Gioja _ -- which their spy-glasses rendered as visible as if it was only about half a mile off , Ardan could not control himself . `` Why , we 're there '' he exclaimed ; `` we can touch her with our hands ! Open the windows and let me out ! Do n't mind letting me go by myself .