four o'clock in the morning
It was rather an early hour for breakfast , two o'clock in the morning , yet the meal was keenly relished . Ardan served it up in charming style and crowned the dessert with a few bottles of a wine especially selected for the occasion from his own private stock . It was a _ Tokay Imperial _ of 1863 , the genuine _ Essenz _ , from Prince Esterhazy 's own wine cellar , and the best brain stimulant and brain clearer in the world , as every connoisseur knows . It was near four o'clock in the morning when our travellers , now well fortified physically and morally , once more resumed their observations with renewed courage and determination , and with a system of recording really perfect in its arrangements . Around the Projectile , they could still see floating most of the objects that had been dropped out of the window . This convinced them that , during their revolution around the Moon , they had not passed through any atmosphere ; had anything of the kind been encountered , it would have revealed its presence by its retarding effect on the different objects that now followed close in the wake of the Projectile . One or two that were missing had been probably struck and carried off by a fragment of the exploded bolide .