From the Earth to the Moon; and, Round the Moon

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FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON

Ta­ble of Con­tents

I. The Gun Club II. Pres­ident Bar­bi­cane’s Com­mu­ni­ca­tion III. Ef­fect of the Pres­ident’s Com­mu­ni­ca­tion IV. Re­ply From the Ob­ser­va­to­ry of Cam­bridge V. The Ro­mance of the Moon VI. The Per­mis­sive Lim­its of Ig­no­rance and Be­lief in the Unit­ed States VII. The Hymn of the Can­non-​Ball VI­II. His­to­ry of the Can­non IX. The Ques­tion of the Pow­ders X. One En­emy _V._ Twen­ty-​Five Mil­lions of Friends XI. Flori­da and Texas XII. Ur­bi et Or­bi XI­II. Stones Hill XIV. Pick­axe and Trow­el XV. The Fete of the Cast­ing XVI. The Columbi­ad XVII. A Tele­graph­ic Dis­patch XVI­II. The Pas­sen­ger of the At­lanta XIX. A Mon­ster Meet­ing XX. At­tack and Ri­poste XXI. How A French­man Man­ages An Af­fair XXII. The New Cit­izen of the Unit­ed States XXI­II. The Pro­jec­tile-​Ve­hi­cle XXIV. The Tele­scope of the Rocky Moun­tains XXV. Fi­nal De­tails XXVI. Fire! XXVII. Foul Weath­er XXVI­II. A New Star

A TRIP AROUND IT

Pre­lim­inary Chap­ter– Re­ca­pit­ulat­ing the First Part of This Work, and Serv­ing as a Pref­ace to the Sec­ond

I. From Twen­ty Min­utes Past Ten to Forty-​Sev­en Min­utes Past Ten P. M. II. The First Half Hour III. Their Place of Shel­ter IV. A Lit­tle Al­ge­bra V. The Cold of Space VI. Ques­tion and An­swer VII. A Mo­ment of In­tox­ica­tion VI­II. At Sev­en­ty-​Eight Thou­sand Five Hun­dred and Four­teen Leagues IX. The Con­se­quences of A De­vi­ation X. The Ob­servers of the Moon XI. Fan­cy and Re­al­ity XII. Oro­graph­ic De­tails XI­II. Lu­nar Land­scapes XIV. The Night of Three Hun­dred and Fifty-​Four Hours and A Half XV. Hy­per­bo­la or Parabo­la XVI. The South­ern Hemi­sphere XVII. Ty­cho XVI­II. Grave Ques­tions XIX. A Strug­gle Against the Im­pos­si­ble XX. The Sound­ings of the Susque­han­na XXI. J. T. Mas­ton Re­called XXII. Re­cov­ered From the Sea XXI­II. The End

FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON

CHAP­TER I

THE GUN CLUB

Dur­ing the War of the Re­bel­lion, a new and in­flu­en­tial club was es­tab­lished in the city of Bal­ti­more in the State of Mary­land. It is well known with what en­er­gy the taste for mil­itary mat­ters be­came de­vel­oped among that na­tion of ship-​own­ers, shop­keep­ers, and me­chan­ics. Sim­ple trades­men jumped their coun­ters to be­come ex­tem­po­rized cap­tains, colonels, and gen­er­als, with­out hav­ing ev­er passed the School of In­struc­tion at West Point; nev­er­the­less; they quick­ly ri­valed their com­peers of the old con­ti­nent, and, like them, car­ried off vic­to­ries by dint of lav­ish ex­pen­di­ture in am­mu­ni­tion, mon­ey, and men.

But the point in which the Amer­icans sin­gu­lar­ly dis­tanced the Eu­ro­peans was in the sci­ence of gun­nery. Not, in­deed, that their weapons re­tained a high­er de­gree of per­fec­tion than theirs, but that they ex­hib­it­ed un­heard-​of di­men­sions, and con­se­quent­ly at­tained hith­er­to un­heard-​of ranges. In point of graz­ing, plung­ing, oblique, or en­fi­lad­ing, or point-​blank fir­ing, the En­glish, French, and Prus­sians have noth­ing to learn; but their can­non, how­itzers, and mor­tars are mere pock­et-​pis­tols com­pared with the formidable en­gines of the Amer­ican ar­tillery.

This fact need sur­prise no one. The Yan­kees, the first me­chani­cians in the world, are en­gi­neers– just as the Ital­ians are mu­si­cians and the Ger­mans meta­physi­cians– by right of birth. Noth­ing is more nat­ural, there­fore, than to per­ceive them ap­ply­ing their au­da­cious in­ge­nu­ity to the sci­ence of gun­nery. Wit­ness the mar­vels of Par­rott, Dahlgren, and Rod­man. The Arm­strong, Pal­lis­er, and Beaulieu guns were com­pelled to bow be­fore their transat­lantic ri­vals.

Now when an Amer­ican has an idea, he di­rect­ly seeks a sec­ond Amer­ican to share it. If there be three, they elect a pres­ident and two sec­re­taries. Giv­en four, they name a keep­er of records, and the of­fice is ready for work; five, they con­vene a gen­er­al meet­ing, and the club is ful­ly con­sti­tut­ed. So things were man­aged in Bal­ti­more. The in­ven­tor of a new can­non as­so­ci­at­ed him­self with the cast­er and the bor­er. Thus was formed the nu­cle­us of the “Gun Club.” In a sin­gle month af­ter its for­ma­tion it num­bered 1,833 ef­fec­tive mem­bers and 30,565 cor­re­spond­ing mem­bers.

One con­di­tion was im­posed as a _sine qua non_ up­on ev­ery can­di­date for ad­mis­sion in­to the as­so­ci­ation, and that was the con­di­tion of hav­ing de­signed, or (more or less) per­fect­ed a can­non; or, in de­fault of a can­non, at least a firearm of some de­scrip­tion. It may, how­ev­er, be men­tioned that mere in­ven­tors of re­volvers, fire-​shoot­ing car­bines, and sim­ilar small arms, met with lit­tle con­sid­er­ation. Ar­tillerists al­ways com­mand­ed the chief place of fa­vor.

The es­ti­ma­tion in which these gen­tle­men were held, ac­cord­ing to one of the most sci­en­tif­ic ex­po­nents of the Gun Club, was “pro­por­tion­al to the mass­es of their guns, and in the di­rect ra­tio of the square of the dis­tances at­tained by their pro­jec­tiles.”

The Gun Club once found­ed, it is easy to con­ceive the re­sult of the in­ven­tive ge­nius of the Amer­icans. Their mil­itary weapons at­tained colos­sal pro­por­tions, and their pro­jec­tiles, ex­ceed­ing the pre­scribed lim­its, un­for­tu­nate­ly oc­ca­sion­al­ly cut in two some un­of­fend­ing pedes­tri­ans. These in­ven­tions, in fact, left far in the rear the timid in­stru­ments of Eu­ro­pean ar­tillery.

It is but fair to add that these Yan­kees, brave as they have ev­er proved them­selves to be, did not con­fine them­selves to the­ories and for­mu­lae, but that they paid heav­ily, _in pro­pria per­sona_, for their in­ven­tions. Among them were to be count­ed of­fi­cers of all ranks, from lieu­tenants to gen­er­als; mil­itary men of ev­ery age, from those who were just mak­ing their _de­but_ in the pro­fes­sion of arms up to those who had grown old in the gun-​car­riage. Many had found their rest on the field of bat­tle whose names fig­ured in the “Book of Hon­or” of the Gun Club; and of those who made good their re­turn the greater pro­por­tion bore the marks of their in­dis­putable val­or. Crutch­es, wood­en legs, ar­ti­fi­cial arms, steel hooks, caoutchouc jaws, sil­ver cra­ni­ums, plat­inum noses, were all to be found in the col­lec­tion; and it was cal­cu­lat­ed by the great statis­ti­cian Pit­cairn that through­out the Gun Club there was not quite one arm be­tween four per­sons and two legs be­tween six.

Nev­er­the­less, these valiant ar­tillerists took no par­tic­ular ac­count of these lit­tle facts, and felt just­ly proud when the despatch­es of a bat­tle re­turned the num­ber of vic­tims at ten-​fold the quan­ti­ty of pro­jec­tiles ex­pend­ed.

One day, how­ev­er– sad and melan­choly day!– peace was signed be­tween the sur­vivors of the war; the thun­der of the guns grad­ual­ly ceased, the mor­tars were silent, the how­itzers were muz­zled for an in­def­inite pe­ri­od, the can­non, with muz­zles de­pressed, were re­turned in­to the ar­se­nal, the shot were repiled, all bloody rem­inis­cences were ef­faced; the cot­ton-​plants grew lux­uri­ant­ly in the well-​ma­nured fields, all mourn­ing gar­ments were laid aside, to­geth­er with grief; and the Gun Club was rel­egat­ed to pro­found in­ac­tiv­ity.

Some few of the more ad­vanced and in­vet­er­ate the­orists set them­selves again to work up­on cal­cu­la­tions re­gard­ing the laws of pro­jec­tiles. They re­vert­ed in­vari­ably to gi­gan­tic shells and how­itzers of un­par­al­leled cal­iber. Still in de­fault of prac­ti­cal ex­pe­ri­ence what was the val­ue of mere the­ories? Con­se­quent­ly, the clu­brooms be­came de­sert­ed, the ser­vants dozed in the an­techam­bers, the news­pa­pers grew mouldy on the ta­bles, sounds of snor­ing came from dark cor­ners, and the mem­bers of the Gun Club, erst­while so noisy in their seances, were re­duced to si­lence by this dis­as­trous peace and gave them­selves up whol­ly to dreams of a Pla­ton­ic kind of ar­tillery.

“This is hor­ri­ble!” said Tom Hunter one evening, while rapid­ly car­boniz­ing his wood­en legs in the fire­place of the smok­ing-​room; “noth­ing to do! noth­ing to look for­ward to! what a loath­some ex­is­tence! When again shall the guns arouse us in the morn­ing with their de­light­ful re­ports?”

“Those days are gone by,” said jol­ly Bils­by, try­ing to ex­tend his miss­ing arms. “It was de­light­ful once up­on a time! One in­vent­ed a gun, and hard­ly was it cast, when one has­tened to try it in the face of the en­emy! Then one re­turned to camp with a word of en­cour­age­ment from Sher­man or a friend­ly shake of the hand from Mc­Clel­lan. But now the gen­er­als are gone back to their coun­ters; and in place of pro­jec­tiles, they despatch bales of cot­ton. By Jove, the fu­ture of gun­nery in Amer­ica is lost!”

“Ay! and no war in prospect!” con­tin­ued the fa­mous James T. Mas­ton, scratch­ing with his steel hook his gut­ta-​per­cha cra­ni­um. “Not a cloud on the hori­zon! and that too at such a crit­ical pe­ri­od in the progress of the sci­ence of ar­tillery! Yes, gen­tle­men! I who ad­dress you have my­self this very morn­ing per­fect­ed a mod­el (plan, sec­tion, el­eva­tion, etc.) of a mor­tar des­tined to change all the con­di­tions of war­fare!”

“No! is it pos­si­ble?” replied Tom Hunter, his thoughts re­vert­ing in­vol­un­tar­ily to a for­mer in­ven­tion of the Hon. J. T. Mas­ton, by which, at its first tri­al, he had suc­ceed­ed in killing three hun­dred and thir­ty-​sev­en peo­ple.

“Fact!” replied he. “Still, what is the use of so many stud­ies worked out, so many dif­fi­cul­ties van­quished? It’s mere waste of time! The New World seems to have made up its mind to live in peace; and our bel­li­cose _Tri­bune_ pre­dicts some ap­proach­ing catas­tro­phes aris­ing out of this scan­dalous in­crease of pop­ula­tion.”

“Nev­er­the­less,” replied Colonel Bloms­ber­ry, “they are al­ways strug­gling in Eu­rope to main­tain the prin­ci­ple of na­tion­al­ities.”

“Well?”

“Well, there might be some field for en­ter­prise down there; and if they would ac­cept our ser­vices—-“

“What are you dream­ing of?” screamed Bils­by; “work at gun­nery for the ben­efit of for­eign­ers?”

“That would be bet­ter than do­ing noth­ing here,” re­turned the colonel.

“Quite so,” said J. T. Mat­son; “but still we need not dream of that ex­pe­di­ent.”

“And why not?” de­mand­ed the colonel.

“Be­cause their ideas of progress in the Old World are con­trary to our Amer­ican habits of thought. Those fel­lows be­lieve that one can’t be­come a gen­er­al with­out hav­ing served first as an en­sign; which is as much as to say that one can’t point a gun with­out hav­ing first cast it one­self!”

“Ridicu­lous!” replied Tom Hunter, whit­tling with his bowie-​knife the arms of his easy chair; “but if that be the case there, all that is left for us is to plant to­bac­co and dis­till whale-​oil.”

“What!” roared J. T. Mas­ton, “shall we not em­ploy these re­main­ing years of our life in per­fect­ing firearms? Shall there nev­er be a fresh op­por­tu­ni­ty of try­ing the ranges of pro­jec­tiles? Shall the air nev­er again be light­ed with the glare of our guns? No in­ter­na­tion­al dif­fi­cul­ty ev­er arise to en­able us to de­clare war against some transat­lantic pow­er? Shall not the French sink one of our steam­ers, or the En­glish, in de­fi­ance of the rights of na­tions, hang a few of our coun­try­men?”

“No such luck,” replied Colonel Bloms­ber­ry; “noth­ing of the kind is like­ly to hap­pen; and even if it did, we should not prof­it by it. Amer­ican sus­cep­ti­bil­ity is fast de­clin­ing, and we are all go­ing to the dogs.”

“It is too true,” replied J. T. Mas­ton, with fresh vi­olence; “there are a thou­sand grounds for fight­ing, and yet we don’t fight. We save up our arms and legs for the ben­efit of na­tions who don’t know what to do with them! But stop– with­out go­ing out of one’s way to find a cause for war– did not North Amer­ica once be­long to the En­glish?”

“Un­doubt­ed­ly,” replied Tom Hunter, stamp­ing his crutch with fury.

“Well, then,” replied J. T. Mas­ton, “why should not Eng­land in her turn be­long to the Amer­icans?”

“It would be but just and fair,” re­turned Colonel Bloms­ber­ry.

“Go and pro­pose it to the Pres­ident of the Unit­ed States,” cried J. T. Mas­ton, “and see how he will re­ceive you.”

“Bah!” growled Bils­by be­tween the four teeth which the war had left him; “that will nev­er do!”

“By Jove!” cried J. T. Mas­ton, “he mustn’t count on my vote at the next elec­tion!”

“Nor on ours,” replied unan­imous­ly all the bel­li­cose in­valids.

“Mean­while,” replied J. T. Mas­ton, “al­low me to say that, if I can­not get an op­por­tu­ni­ty to try my new mor­tars on a re­al field of bat­tle, I shall say good-​by to the mem­bers of the Gun Club, and go and bury my­self in the prairies of Arkansas!”

“In that case we will ac­com­pa­ny you,” cried the oth­ers.

Mat­ters were in this un­for­tu­nate con­di­tion, and the club was threat­ened with ap­proach­ing dis­so­lu­tion, when an un­ex­pect­ed cir­cum­stance oc­curred to pre­vent so de­plorable a catas­tro­phe.

On the mor­row af­ter this con­ver­sa­tion ev­ery mem­ber of the as­so­ci­ation re­ceived a sealed cir­cu­lar couched in the fol­low­ing terms:

BAL­TI­MORE, Oc­to­ber 3. The pres­ident of the Gun Club has the hon­or to in­form his col­leagues that, at the meet­ing of the 5th in­stant, he will bring be­fore them a com­mu­ni­ca­tion of an ex­treme­ly in­ter­est­ing na­ture. He re­quests, there­fore, that they will make it con­ve­nient to at­tend in ac­cor­dance with the present in­vi­ta­tion. Very cor­dial­ly, IM­PEY BAR­BI­CANE, P.G.C.

CHAP­TER II

PRES­IDENT BAR­BI­CANE’S COM­MU­NI­CA­TION

On the 5th of Oc­to­ber, at eight p.m., a dense crowd pressed to­ward the sa­loons of the Gun Club at No. 21 Union Square. All the mem­bers of the as­so­ci­ation res­ident in Bal­ti­more at­tend­ed the in­vi­ta­tion of their pres­ident. As re­gards the cor­re­spond­ing mem­bers, no­tices were de­liv­ered by hun­dreds through­out the streets of the city, and, large as was the great hall, it was quite in­ad­equate to ac­com­mo­date the crowd of _sa­vants_. They over­flowed in­to the ad­join­ing rooms, down the nar­row pas­sages, in­to the out­er court­yards. There they ran against the vul­gar herd who pressed up to the doors, each strug­gling to reach the front ranks, all ea­ger to learn the na­ture of the im­por­tant com­mu­ni­ca­tion of Pres­ident Bar­bi­cane; all push­ing, squeez­ing, crush­ing with that per­fect free­dom of ac­tion which is so pe­cu­liar to the mass­es when ed­ucat­ed in ideas of “self-​gov­ern­ment.”

On that evening a stranger who might have chanced to be in Bal­ti­more could not have gained ad­mis­sion for love or mon­ey in­to the great hall. That was re­served ex­clu­sive­ly for res­ident or cor­re­spond­ing mem­bers; no one else could pos­si­bly have ob­tained a place; and the city mag­nates, mu­nic­ipal coun­cilors, and “se­lect men” were com­pelled to min­gle with the mere towns­peo­ple in or­der to catch stray bits of news from the in­te­ri­or.

Nev­er­the­less the vast hall pre­sent­ed a cu­ri­ous spec­ta­cle. Its im­mense area was sin­gu­lar­ly adapt­ed to the pur­pose. Lofty pil­lars formed of can­non, su­per­posed up­on huge mor­tars as a base, sup­port­ed the fine iron­work of the arch­es, a per­fect piece of cast-​iron lace­work. Tro­phies of blun­der­bus­es, matchlocks, ar­que­bus­es, car­bines, all kinds of firearms, an­cient and mod­ern, were pic­turesque­ly in­ter­laced against the walls. The gas lit up in full glare myr­iads of re­volvers grouped in the form of lus­tres, while groups of pis­tols, and can­de­labra formed of mus­kets bound to­geth­er, com­plet­ed this mag­nif­icent dis­play of bril­liance. Mod­els of can­non, bronze cast­ings, sights cov­ered with dents, plates bat­tered by the shots of the Gun Club, as­sort­ments of ram­mers and sponges, chap­lets of shells, wreaths of pro­jec­tiles, gar­lands of how­itzers– in short, all the ap­pa­ra­tus of the ar­tillerist, en­chant­ed the eye by this won­der­ful ar­range­ment and in­duced a kind of be­lief that their re­al pur­pose was or­na­men­tal rather than dead­ly.

At the fur­ther end of the sa­loon the pres­ident, as­sist­ed by four sec­re­taries, oc­cu­pied a large plat­form. His chair, sup­port­ed by a carved gun-​car­riage, was mod­eled up­on the pon­der­ous pro­por­tions of a 32-inch mor­tar. It was point­ed at an an­gle of nine­ty de­grees, and sus­pend­ed up­on trun­cheons, so that the pres­ident could bal­ance him­self up­on it as up­on a rock­ing-​chair, a very agree­able fact in the very hot weath­er. Up­on the ta­ble (a huge iron plate sup­port­ed up­on six car­ronades) stood an ink­stand of exquisite el­egance, made of a beau­ti­ful­ly chased Span­ish piece, and a son­nette, which, when re­quired, could give forth a re­port equal to that of a re­volver. Dur­ing vi­olent de­bates this nov­el kind of bell scarce­ly suf­ficed to drown the clam­or of these ex­citable ar­tillerists.

In front of the ta­ble bench­es ar­ranged in zigzag form, like the cir­cum­val­la­tions of a re­trench­ment, formed a suc­ces­sion of bas­tions and cur­tains set apart for the use of the mem­bers of the club; and on this es­pe­cial evening one might say, “All the world was on the ram­parts.” The pres­ident was suf­fi­cient­ly well known, how­ev­er, for all to be as­sured that he would not put his col­leagues to dis­com­fort with­out some very strong mo­tive.

Im­pey Bar­bi­cane was a man of forty years of age, calm, cold, aus­tere; of a sin­gu­lar­ly se­ri­ous and self-​con­tained de­meanor, punc­tu­al as a chronome­ter, of im­per­turbable tem­per and im­mov­able char­ac­ter; by no means chival­rous, yet ad­ven­tur­ous with­al, and al­ways bring­ing prac­ti­cal ideas to bear up­on the very rash­est en­ter­pris­es; an es­sen­tial­ly New Eng­lan­der, a North­ern colonist, a de­scen­dant of the old an­ti-​Stu­art Round­heads, and the im­pla­ca­ble en­emy of the gen­tle­men of the South, those an­cient cav­aliers of the moth­er coun­try. In a word, he was a Yan­kee to the back­bone.

Bar­bi­cane had made a large for­tune as a tim­ber mer­chant. Be­ing nom­inat­ed di­rec­tor of ar­tillery dur­ing the war, he proved him­self fer­tile in in­ven­tion. Bold in his con­cep­tions, he con­tribut­ed pow­er­ful­ly to the progress of that arm and gave an im­mense im­pe­tus to ex­per­imen­tal re­search­es.

He was per­son­age of the mid­dle height, hav­ing, by a rare ex­cep­tion in the Gun Club, all his limbs com­plete. His strong­ly marked fea­tures seemed drawn by square and rule; and if it be true that, in or­der to judge a man’s char­ac­ter one must look at his pro­file, Bar­bi­cane, so ex­am­ined, ex­hib­it­ed the most cer­tain in­di­ca­tions of en­er­gy, au­dac­ity, and _sang-​froid_.

At this mo­ment he was sit­ting in his arm­chair, silent, ab­sorbed, lost in re­flec­tion, shel­tered un­der his high-​crowned hat– a kind of black cylin­der which al­ways seems firm­ly screwed up­on the head of an Amer­ican.

Just when the deep-​toned clock in the great hall struck eight, Bar­bi­cane, as if he had been set in mo­tion by a spring, raised him­self up. A pro­found si­lence en­sued, and the speak­er, in a some­what em­phat­ic tone of voice, com­menced as fol­lows:

“My brave, col­leagues, too long al­ready a par­alyz­ing peace has plunged the mem­bers of the Gun Club in de­plorable in­ac­tiv­ity. Af­ter a pe­ri­od of years full of in­ci­dents we have been com­pelled to aban­don our labors, and to stop short on the road of progress. I do not hes­itate to state, bald­ly, that any war which would re­call us to arms would be wel­come!” (Tremen­dous ap­plause!) “But war, gen­tle­men, is im­pos­si­ble un­der ex­ist­ing cir­cum­stances; and, how­ev­er we may de­sire it, many years may elapse be­fore our can­non shall again thun­der in the field of bat­tle. We must make up our minds, then, to seek in an­oth­er train of ideas some field for the ac­tiv­ity which we all pine for.”

The meet­ing felt that the pres­ident was now ap­proach­ing the crit­ical point, and re­dou­bled their at­ten­tion ac­cord­ing­ly.

“For some months past, my brave col­leagues,” con­tin­ued Bar­bi­cane, “I have been ask­ing my­self whether, while con­fin­ing our­selves to our own par­tic­ular ob­jects, we could not en­ter up­on some grand ex­per­iment wor­thy of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry; and whether the progress of ar­tillery sci­ence would not en­able us to car­ry it out to a suc­cess­ful is­sue. I have been con­sid­er­ing, work­ing, cal­cu­lat­ing; and the re­sult of my stud­ies is the con­vic­tion that we are safe to suc­ceed in an en­ter­prise which to any oth­er coun­try would ap­pear whol­ly im­prac­ti­ca­ble. This project, the re­sult of long elab­ora­tion, is the ob­ject of my present com­mu­ni­ca­tion. It is wor­thy of your­selves, wor­thy of the an­tecedents of the Gun Club; and it can­not fail to make some noise in the world.”

A thrill of ex­cite­ment ran through the meet­ing.

Bar­bi­cane, hav­ing by a rapid move­ment firm­ly fixed his hat up­on his head, calm­ly con­tin­ued his ha­rangue:

“There is no one among you, my brave col­leagues, who has not seen the Moon, or, at least, heard speak of it. Don’t be sur­prised if I am about to dis­course to you re­gard­ing the Queen of the Night. It is per­haps re­served for us to be­come the Colum­bus­es of this un­known world. On­ly en­ter in­to my plans, and sec­ond me with all your pow­er, and I will lead you to its con­quest, and its name shall be added to those of the thir­ty-​six states which com­pose this Great Union.”

“Three cheers for the Moon!” roared the Gun Club, with one voice.

“The moon, gen­tle­men, has been care­ful­ly stud­ied,” con­tin­ued Bar­bi­cane; “her mass, den­si­ty, and weight; her con­sti­tu­tion, mo­tions, dis­tance, as well as her place in the so­lar sys­tem, have all been ex­act­ly de­ter­mined. Se­leno­graph­ic charts have been con­struct­ed with a per­fec­tion which equals, if it does not even sur­pass, that of our ter­res­tri­al maps. Pho­tog­ra­phy has giv­en us proofs of the in­com­pa­ra­ble beau­ty of our satel­lite; all is known re­gard­ing the moon which math­emat­ical sci­ence, as­tron­omy, ge­ol­ogy, and op­tics can learn about her. But up to the present mo­ment no di­rect com­mu­ni­ca­tion has been es­tab­lished with her.”

A vi­olent move­ment of in­ter­est and sur­prise here greet­ed this re­mark of the speak­er.

“Per­mit me,” he con­tin­ued, “to re­count to you briefly how cer­tain ar­dent spir­its, start­ing on imag­inary jour­neys, have pen­etrat­ed the se­crets of our satel­lite. In the sev­en­teenth cen­tu­ry a cer­tain David Fabri­cius boast­ed of hav­ing seen with his own eyes the in­hab­itants of the moon. In 1649 a French­man, one Jean Bau­doin, pub­lished a `Jour­ney per­formed from the Earth to the Moon by Domin­go Gon­za­lez,’ a Span­ish ad­ven­tur­er. At the same pe­ri­od Cyra­no de Berg­er­ac pub­lished that cel­ebrat­ed `Jour­neys in the Moon’ which met with such suc­cess in France. Some­what lat­er an­oth­er French­man, named Fontenelle, wrote `The Plu­ral­ity of Worlds,’ a _chef-​d’oeu­vre_ of its time. About 1835 a small trea­tise, trans­lat­ed from the New York _Amer­ican_, re­lat­ed how Sir John Her­schel, hav­ing been despatched to the Cape of Good Hope for the pur­pose of mak­ing there some as­tro­nom­ical cal­cu­la­tions, had, by means of a tele­scope brought to per­fec­tion by means of in­ter­nal light­ing, re­duced the ap­par­ent dis­tance of the moon to eighty yards! He then dis­tinct­ly per­ceived cav­erns fre­quent­ed by hip­popota­mi, green moun­tains bor­dered by gold­en lace-​work, sheep with horns of ivory, a white species of deer and in­hab­itants with mem­bra­nous wings, like bats. This _brochure_, the work of an Amer­ican named Locke, had a great sale. But, to bring this rapid sketch to a close, I will on­ly add that a cer­tain Hans Pfaal, of Rot­ter­dam, launch­ing him­self in a bal­loon filled with a gas ex­tract­ed from ni­tro­gen, thir­ty-​sev­en times lighter than hy­dro­gen, reached the moon af­ter a pas­sage of nine­teen hours. This jour­ney, like all pre­vi­ous ones, was pure­ly imag­inary; still, it was the work of a pop­ular Amer­ican au­thor– I mean Edgar Poe!”

“Cheers for Edgar Poe!” roared the as­sem­blage, elec­tri­fied by their pres­ident’s words.

“I have now enu­mer­at­ed,” said Bar­bi­cane, “the ex­per­iments which I call pure­ly pa­per ones, and whol­ly in­suf­fi­cient to es­tab­lish se­ri­ous re­la­tions with the Queen of the Night. Nev­er­the­less, I am bound to add that some prac­ti­cal ge­nius­es have at­tempt­ed to es­tab­lish ac­tu­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion with her. Thus, a few days ago, a Ger­man ge­ome­tri­cian pro­posed to send a sci­en­tif­ic ex­pe­di­tion to the steppes of Siberia. There, on those vast plains, they were to de­scribe enor­mous ge­omet­ric fig­ures, drawn in char­ac­ters of re­flect­ing lu­mi­nos­ity, among which was the propo­si­tion re­gard­ing the `square of the hy­pothenuse,’ com­mon­ly called the `Ass’s Bridge’ by the French. `Ev­ery in­tel­li­gent be­ing,’ said the ge­ome­tri­cian, `must un­der­stand the sci­en­tif­ic mean­ing of that fig­ure. The Se­len­ites, do they ex­ist, will re­spond by a sim­ilar fig­ure; and, a com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­ing thus once es­tab­lished, it will be easy to form an al­pha­bet which shall en­able us to con­verse with the in­hab­itants of the moon.’ So spoke the Ger­man ge­ome­tri­cian; but his project was nev­er put in­to prac­tice, and up to the present day there is no bond in ex­is­tence be­tween the Earth and her satel­lite. It is re­served for the prac­ti­cal ge­nius of Amer­icans to es­tab­lish a com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the side­re­al world. The means of ar­riv­ing thith­er are sim­ple, easy, cer­tain, in­fal­li­ble– and that is the pur­pose of my present pro­pos­al.”

A storm of ac­cla­ma­tions greet­ed these words. There was not a sin­gle per­son in the whole au­di­ence who was not over­come, car­ried away, lift­ed out of him­self by the speak­er’s words!

Long-​con­tin­ued ap­plause re­sound­ed from all sides.

As soon as the ex­cite­ment had par­tial­ly sub­sid­ed, Bar­bi­cane re­sumed his speech in a some­what graver voice.

“You know,” said he, “what progress ar­tillery sci­ence has made dur­ing the last few years, and what a de­gree of per­fec­tion firearms of ev­ery kind have reached. More­over, you are well aware that, in gen­er­al terms, the re­sist­ing pow­er of can­non and the ex­pan­sive force of gun­pow­der are prac­ti­cal­ly un­lim­it­ed. Well! start­ing from this prin­ci­ple, I ask my­self whether, sup­pos­ing suf­fi­cient ap­pa­ra­tus could be ob­tained con­struct­ed up­on the con­di­tions of as­cer­tained re­sis­tance, it might not be pos­si­ble to project a shot up to the moon?”

At these words a mur­mur of amaze­ment es­caped from a thou­sand pant­ing chests; then suc­ceed­ed a mo­ment of per­fect si­lence, re­sem­bling that pro­found still­ness which pre­cedes the burst­ing of a thun­der­storm. In point of fact, a thun­der­storm did peal forth, but it was the thun­der of ap­plause, or cries, and of up­roar which made the very hall trem­ble. The pres­ident at­tempt­ed to speak, but could not. It was ful­ly ten min­utes be­fore he could make him­self heard.

“Suf­fer me to fin­ish,” he calm­ly con­tin­ued. “I have looked at the ques­tion in all its bear­ings, I have res­olute­ly at­tacked it, and by in­con­tro­vert­ible cal­cu­la­tions I find that a pro­jec­tile en­dowed with an ini­tial ve­loc­ity of 12,000 yards per sec­ond, and aimed at the moon, must nec­es­sar­ily reach it. I have the hon­or, my brave col­leagues, to pro­pose a tri­al of this lit­tle ex­per­iment.”

CHAP­TER III

EF­FECT OF THE PRES­IDENT’S COM­MU­NI­CA­TION

It is im­pos­si­ble to de­scribe the ef­fect pro­duced by the last words of the hon­or­able pres­ident– the cries, the shouts, the suc­ces­sion of roars, hur­rahs, and all the var­ied vo­cif­er­ations which the Amer­ican lan­guage is ca­pa­ble of sup­ply­ing. It was a scene of in­de­scrib­able con­fu­sion and up­roar. They shout­ed, they clapped, they stamped on the floor of the hall. All the weapons in the mu­se­um dis­charged at once could not have more vi­olent­ly set in mo­tion the waves of sound. One need not be sur­prised at this. There are some can­noneers near­ly as noisy as their own guns.

Bar­bi­cane re­mained calm in the midst of this en­thu­si­as­tic clam­or; per­haps he was de­sirous of ad­dress­ing a few more words to his col­leagues, for by his ges­tures he de­mand­ed si­lence, and his pow­er­ful alarum was worn out by its vi­olent re­ports. No at­ten­tion, how­ev­er, was paid to his re­quest. He was present­ly torn from his seat and passed from the hands of his faith­ful col­leagues in­to the arms of a no less ex­cit­ed crowd.

Noth­ing can as­tound an Amer­ican. It has of­ten been as­sert­ed that the word “im­pos­si­ble” in not a French one. Peo­ple have ev­ident­ly been de­ceived by the dic­tio­nary. In Amer­ica, all is easy, all is sim­ple; and as for me­chan­ical dif­fi­cul­ties, they are over­come be­fore they arise. Be­tween Bar­bi­cane’s propo­si­tion and its re­al­iza­tion no true Yan­kee would have al­lowed even the sem­blance of a dif­fi­cul­ty to be pos­si­ble. A thing with them is no soon­er said than done.

The tri­umphal progress of the pres­ident con­tin­ued through­out the evening. It was a reg­ular torch­light pro­ces­sion. Irish, Ger­mans, French, Scotch, all the het­ero­ge­neous units which make up the pop­ula­tion of Mary­land shout­ed in their re­spec­tive ver­nac­ulars; and the “vi­vas,” “hur­rahs,” and “bravos” were in­ter­min­gled in in­ex­press­ible en­thu­si­asm.

Just at this cri­sis, as though she com­pre­hend­ed all this ag­ita­tion re­gard­ing her­self, the moon shone forth with serene splen­dor, eclips­ing by her in­tense il­lu­mi­na­tion all the sur­round­ing lights. The Yan­kees all turned their gaze to­ward her re­splen­dent orb, kissed their hands, called her by all kinds of en­dear­ing names. Be­tween eight o’clock and mid­night one op­ti­cian in Jones’-Fall Street made his for­tune by the sale of opera-​glass­es.

Mid­night ar­rived, and the en­thu­si­asm showed no signs of diminu­tion. It spread equal­ly among all class­es of cit­izens– men of sci­ence, shop­keep­ers, mer­chants, porters, chair-​men, as well as “green­horns,” were stirred in their in­ner­most fi­bres. A na­tion­al en­ter­prise was at stake. The whole city, high and low, the quays bor­der­ing the Pat­ap­sco, the ships ly­ing in the basins, dis­gorged a crowd drunk with joy, gin, and whisky. Ev­ery one chat­tered, ar­gued, dis­cussed, dis­put­ed, ap­plaud­ed, from the gen­tle­man loung­ing up­on the bar­room set­tee with his tum­bler of sher­ry-​cob­bler be­fore him down to the wa­ter­man who got drunk up­on his “knock-​me-​down” in the dingy tav­erns of Fell Point.

About two A.M., how­ev­er, the ex­cite­ment be­gan to sub­side. Pres­ident Bar­bi­cane reached his house, bruised, crushed, and squeezed al­most to a mum­my. Her­cules could not have re­sist­ed a sim­ilar out­break of en­thu­si­asm. The crowd grad­ual­ly de­sert­ed the squares and streets. The four rail­ways from Philadel­phia and Wash­ing­ton, Har­ris­burg and Wheel­ing, which con­verge at Bal­ti­more, whirled away the het­ero­ge­neous pop­ula­tion to the four cor­ners of the Unit­ed States, and the city sub­sid­ed in­to com­par­ative tran­quil­ity.

On the fol­low­ing day, thanks to the tele­graph­ic wires, five hun­dred news­pa­pers and jour­nals, dai­ly, week­ly, month­ly, or bi-​month­ly, all took up the ques­tion. They ex­am­ined it un­der all its dif­fer­ent as­pects, phys­ical, me­te­oro­log­ical, eco­nom­ical, or moral, up to its bear­ings on pol­itics or civ­iliza­tion. They de­bat­ed whether the moon was a fin­ished world, or whether it was des­tined to un­der­go any fur­ther trans­for­ma­tion. Did it re­sem­ble the earth at the pe­ri­od when the lat­ter was des­ti­tute as yet of an at­mo­sphere? What kind of spec­ta­cle would its hid­den hemi­sphere present to our ter­res­tri­al spheroid? Grant­ing that the ques­tion at present was sim­ply that of send­ing a pro­jec­tile up to the moon, ev­ery one must see that that in­volved the com­mence­ment of a se­ries of ex­per­iments. All must hope that some day Amer­ica would pen­etrate the deep­est se­crets of that mys­te­ri­ous orb; and some even seemed to fear lest its con­quest should not sen­si­bly de­range the equi­lib­ri­um of Eu­rope.

The project once un­der dis­cus­sion, not a sin­gle para­graph sug­gest­ed a doubt of its re­al­iza­tion. All the pa­pers, pam­phlets, re­ports– all the jour­nals pub­lished by the sci­en­tif­ic, lit­er­ary, and re­li­gious so­ci­eties en­larged up­on its ad­van­tages; and the So­ci­ety of Nat­ural His­to­ry of Boston, the So­ci­ety of Sci­ence and Art of Al­bany, the Ge­ograph­ical and Sta­tis­ti­cal So­ci­ety of New York, the Philo­soph­ical So­ci­ety of Philadel­phia, and the Smith­so­ni­an of Wash­ing­ton sent in­nu­mer­able let­ters of con­grat­ula­tion to the Gun Club, to­geth­er with of­fers of im­me­di­ate as­sis­tance and mon­ey.

From that day for­ward Im­pey Bar­bi­cane be­came one of the great­est cit­izens of the Unit­ed States, a kind of Wash­ing­ton of sci­ence. A sin­gle trait of feel­ing, tak­en from many oth­ers, will serve to show the point which this homage of a whole peo­ple to a sin­gle in­di­vid­ual at­tained.

Some few days af­ter this mem­orable meet­ing of the Gun Club, the man­ag­er of an En­glish com­pa­ny an­nounced, at the Bal­ti­more the­atre, the pro­duc­tion of “Much ado about Noth­ing.” But the pop­ulace, see­ing in that ti­tle an al­lu­sion dam­ag­ing to Bar­bi­cane’s project, broke in­to the au­di­to­ri­um, smashed the bench­es, and com­pelled the un­lucky di­rec­tor to al­ter his play­bill. Be­ing a sen­si­ble man, he bowed to the pub­lic will and re­placed the of­fend­ing com­edy by “As you like it”; and for many weeks he re­al­ized fab­ulous prof­its.

CHAP­TER IV

RE­PLY FROM THE OB­SER­VA­TO­RY OF CAM­BRIDGE

Bar­bi­cane, how­ev­er, lost not one mo­ment amid all the en­thu­si­asm of which he had be­come the ob­ject. His first care was to re­assem­ble his col­leagues in the board-​room of the Gun Club. There, af­ter some dis­cus­sion, it was agreed to con­sult the as­tronomers re­gard­ing the as­tro­nom­ical part of the en­ter­prise. Their re­ply once as­cer­tained, they could then dis­cuss the me­chan­ical means, and noth­ing should be want­ing to en­sure the suc­cess of this great ex­per­iment.

A note couched in pre­cise terms, con­tain­ing spe­cial in­ter­roga­to­ries, was then drawn up and ad­dressed to the Ob­ser­va­to­ry of Cam­bridge in Mas­sachusetts. This city, where the first uni­ver­si­ty of the Unit­ed States was found­ed, is just­ly cel­ebrat­ed for its as­tro­nom­ical staff. There are to be found as­sem­bled all the most em­inent men of sci­ence. Here is to be seen at work that pow­er­ful tele­scope which en­abled Bond to re­solve the neb­ula of An­drome­da, and Clarke to dis­cov­er the satel­lite of Sir­ius. This cel­ebrat­ed in­sti­tu­tion ful­ly jus­ti­fied on all points the con­fi­dence re­posed in it by the Gun Club. So, af­ter two days, the re­ply so im­pa­tient­ly await­ed was placed in the hands of Pres­ident Bar­bi­cane.

It was couched in the fol­low­ing terms:

_The Di­rec­tor of the Cam­bridge Ob­ser­va­to­ry to the Pres­ident of the Gun Club at Bal­ti­more._

CAM­BRIDGE, Oc­to­ber 7. On the re­ceipt of your fa­vor of the 6th in­stant, ad­dressed to the Ob­ser­va­to­ry of Cam­bridge in the name of the mem­bers of the Bal­ti­more Gun Club, our staff was im­me­di­ate­ly called to­geth­er, and it was judged ex­pe­di­ent to re­ply as fol­lows:

The ques­tions which have been pro­posed to it are these–

“1. Is it pos­si­ble to trans­mit a pro­jec­tile up to the moon?

“2. What is the ex­act dis­tance which sep­arates the earth from its satel­lite?

“3. What will be the pe­ri­od of tran­sit of the pro­jec­tile when en­dowed with suf­fi­cient ini­tial ve­loc­ity? and, con­se­quent­ly, at what mo­ment ought it to be dis­charged in or­der that it may touch the moon at a par­tic­ular point?

“4. At what pre­cise mo­ment will the moon present her­self in the most fa­vor­able po­si­tion to be reached by the pro­jec­tile?

“5. What point in the heav­ens ought the can­non to be aimed at which is in­tend­ed to dis­charge the pro­jec­tile?

“6. What place will the moon oc­cu­py in the heav­ens at the mo­ment of the pro­jec­tile’s de­par­ture?”

Re­gard­ing the _first_ ques­tion, “Is it pos­si­ble to trans­mit a pro­jec­tile up to the moon?”

_An­swer._– Yes; pro­vid­ed it pos­sess an ini­tial ve­loc­ity of 1,200 yards per sec­ond; cal­cu­la­tions prove that to be suf­fi­cient. In pro­por­tion as we re­cede from the earth the ac­tion of grav­ita­tion di­min­ish­es in the in­verse ra­tio of the square of the dis­tance; that is to say, _at three times a giv­en dis­tance the ac­tion is nine times less._ Con­se­quent­ly, the weight of a shot will de­crease, and will be­come re­duced to _ze­ro_ at the in­stant that the at­trac­tion of the moon ex­act­ly coun­ter­pois­es that of the earth; that is to say at 47/52 of its pas­sage. At that in­stant the pro­jec­tile will have no weight what­ev­er; and, if it pass­es that point, it will fall in­to the moon by the sole ef­fect of the lu­nar at­trac­tion. The _the­oret­ical pos­si­bil­ity_ of the ex­per­iment is there­fore ab­so­lute­ly demon­strat­ed; its _suc­cess_ must de­pend up­on the pow­er of the en­gine em­ployed.

As to the _sec­ond_ ques­tion, “What is the ex­act dis­tance which sep­arates the earth from its satel­lite?”

_An­swer._– The moon does not de­scribe a _cir­cle_ round the earth, but rather an _el­lipse_, of which our earth oc­cu­pies one of the _fo­ci_; the con­se­quence, there­fore, is, that at cer­tain times it ap­proach­es near­er to, and at oth­ers it re­cedes far­ther from, the earth; in as­tro­nom­ical lan­guage, it is at one time in _apogee_, at an­oth­er in _perigee_. Now the dif­fer­ence be­tween its great­est and its least dis­tance is too con­sid­er­able to be left out of con­sid­er­ation. In point of fact, in its apogee the moon is 247,552 miles, and in its perigee, 218,657 miles on­ly dis­tant; a fact which makes a dif­fer­ence of 28,895 miles, or more than one-​ninth of the en­tire dis­tance. The perigee dis­tance, there­fore, is that which ought to serve as the ba­sis of all cal­cu­la­tions.

To the _third_ ques­tion.

_An­swer._– If the shot should pre­serve con­tin­uous­ly its ini­tial ve­loc­ity of 12,000 yards per sec­ond, it would re­quire lit­tle more than nine hours to reach its des­ti­na­tion; but, inas­much as that ini­tial ve­loc­ity will be con­tin­ual­ly de­creas­ing, it will oc­cu­py 300,000 sec­onds, that is 83hrs. 20m. in reach­ing the point where the at­trac­tion of the earth and moon will be _in equi­lib­rio_. From this point it will fall in­to the moon in 50,000 sec­onds, or 13hrs. 53m. 20sec. It will be de­sir­able, there­fore, to dis­charge it 97hrs. 13m. 20sec. be­fore the ar­rival of the moon at the point aimed at.

Re­gard­ing ques­tion _four_, “At what pre­cise mo­ment will the moon present her­self in the most fa­vor­able po­si­tion, etc.?”

_An­swer._– Af­ter what has been said above, it will be nec­es­sary, first of all, to choose the pe­ri­od when the moon will be in perigee, and _al­so_ the mo­ment when she will be cross­ing the zenith, which lat­ter event will fur­ther di­min­ish the en­tire dis­tance by a length equal to the ra­dius of the earth, _i. e._ 3,919 miles; the re­sult of which will be that the fi­nal pas­sage re­main­ing to be ac­com­plished will be 214,976 miles. But al­though the moon pass­es her perigee ev­ery month, she does not reach the zenith al­ways _at ex­act­ly the same mo­ment_. She does not ap­pear un­der these two con­di­tions si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, ex­cept at long in­ter­vals of time. It will be nec­es­sary, there­fore, to wait for the mo­ment when her pas­sage in perigee shall co­in­cide with that in the zenith. Now, by a for­tu­nate cir­cum­stance, on the 4th of De­cem­ber in the en­su­ing year the moon _will_ present these two con­di­tions. At mid­night she will be in perigee, that is, at her short­est dis­tance from the earth, and at the same mo­ment she will be cross­ing the zenith.

On the _fifth_ ques­tion, “At what point in the heav­ens ought the can­non to be aimed?”

_An­swer._– The pre­ced­ing re­marks be­ing ad­mit­ted, the can­non ought to be point­ed to the zenith of the place. Its fire, there­fore, will be per­pen­dic­ular to the plane of the hori­zon; and the pro­jec­tile will soon­est pass be­yond the range of the ter­res­tri­al at­trac­tion. But, in or­der that the moon should reach the zenith of a giv­en place, it is nec­es­sary that the place should not ex­ceed in lat­itude the dec­li­na­tion of the lu­mi­nary; in oth­er words, it must be com­prised with­in the de­grees 0@ and 28@ of lat. N. or S. In ev­ery oth­er spot the fire must nec­es­sar­ily be oblique, which would se­ri­ous­ly mil­itate against the suc­cess of the ex­per­iment.

As to the _sixth_ ques­tion, “What place will the moon oc­cu­py in the heav­ens at the mo­ment of the pro­jec­tile’s de­par­ture?”

_An­swer._– At the mo­ment when the pro­jec­tile shall be dis­charged in­to space, the moon, which trav­els dai­ly for­ward 13@ 10′ 35”, will be dis­tant from the zenith point by four times that quan­ti­ty, _i. e._ by 52@ 41′ 20”, a space which cor­re­sponds to the path which she will de­scribe dur­ing the en­tire jour­ney of the pro­jec­tile. But, inas­much as it is equal­ly nec­es­sary to take in­to ac­count the de­vi­ation which the ro­tary mo­tion of the earth will im­part to the shot, and as the shot can­not reach the moon un­til af­ter a de­vi­ation equal to 16 radii of the earth, which, cal­cu­lat­ed up­on the moon’s or­bit, are equal to about eleven de­grees, it be­comes nec­es­sary to add these eleven de­grees to those which ex­press the re­tar­da­tion of the moon just men­tioned: that is to say, in round num­bers, about six­ty-​four de­grees. Con­se­quent­ly, at the mo­ment of fir­ing the vi­su­al ra­dius ap­plied to the moon will de­scribe, with the ver­ti­cal line of the place, an an­gle of six­ty-​four de­grees.

These are our an­swers to the ques­tions pro­posed to the Ob­ser­va­to­ry of Cam­bridge by the mem­bers of the Gun Club:

To sum up–

1st. The can­non ought to be plant­ed in a coun­try sit­uat­ed be­tween 0@ and 28@ of N. or S. lat.

2nd. It ought to be point­ed di­rect­ly to­ward the zenith of the place.

3rd. The pro­jec­tile ought to be pro­pelled with an ini­tial ve­loc­ity of 12,000 yards per sec­ond.

4th. It ought to be dis­charged at 10hrs. 46m. 40sec. of the 1st of De­cem­ber of the en­su­ing year.

5th. It will meet the moon four days af­ter its dis­charge, pre­cise­ly at mid­night on the 4th of De­cem­ber, at the mo­ment of its tran­sit across the zenith.

The mem­bers of the Gun Club ought, there­fore, with­out de­lay, to com­mence the works nec­es­sary for such an ex­per­iment, and to be pre­pared to set to work at the mo­ment de­ter­mined up­on; for, if they should suf­fer this 4th of De­cem­ber to go by, they will not find the moon again un­der the same con­di­tions of perigee and of zenith un­til eigh­teen years and eleven days af­ter­ward.

The staff of the Cam­bridge Ob­ser­va­to­ry place them­selves en­tire­ly at their dis­pos­al in re­spect of all ques­tions of the­oret­ical as­tron­omy; and here­with add their con­grat­ula­tions to those of all the rest of Amer­ica. For the As­tro­nom­ical Staff, J. M. BELFAST, _Di­rec­tor of the Ob­ser­va­to­ry of Cam­bridge._

CHAP­TER V

THE RO­MANCE OF THE MOON

An ob­serv­er en­dued with an in­fi­nite range of vi­sion, and placed in that un­known cen­ter around which the en­tire world re­volves, might have be­held myr­iads of atoms fill­ing all space dur­ing the chaot­ic epoch of the uni­verse. Lit­tle by lit­tle, as ages went on, a change took place; a gen­er­al law of at­trac­tion man­ifest­ed it­self, to which the hith­er­to er­rant atoms be­came obe­di­ent: these atoms com­bined to­geth­er chem­ical­ly ac­cord­ing to their affini­ties, formed them­selves in­to molecules, and com­posed those neb­ulous mass­es with which the depths of the heav­ens are strewed. These mass­es be­came im­me­di­ate­ly en­dued with a ro­tary mo­tion around their own cen­tral point. This cen­ter, formed of in­def­inite molecules, be­gan to re­volve around its own ax­is dur­ing its grad­ual con­den­sa­tion; then, fol­low­ing the im­mutable laws of me­chan­ics, in pro­por­tion as its bulk di­min­ished by con­den­sa­tion, its ro­tary mo­tion be­came ac­cel­er­at­ed, and these two ef­fects con­tin­uing, the re­sult was the for­ma­tion of one prin­ci­pal star, the cen­ter of the neb­ulous mass.

By at­ten­tive­ly watch­ing, the ob­serv­er would then have per­ceived the oth­er molecules of the mass, fol­low­ing the ex­am­ple of this cen­tral star, be­come like­wise con­densed by grad­ual­ly ac­cel­er­at­ed ro­ta­tion, and grav­itat­ing round it in the shape of in­nu­mer­able stars. Thus was formed the _Neb­ulae_, of which as­tronomers have reck­oned up near­ly 5,000.

Among these 5,000 neb­ulae there is one which has re­ceived the name of the Milky Way, and which con­tains eigh­teen mil­lions of stars, each of which has be­come the cen­ter of a so­lar world.

If the ob­serv­er had then spe­cial­ly di­rect­ed his at­ten­tion to one of the more hum­ble and less bril­liant of these stel­lar bod­ies, a star of the fourth class, that which is ar­ro­gant­ly called the Sun, all the phe­nom­ena to which the for­ma­tion of the Uni­verse is to be as­cribed would have been suc­ces­sive­ly ful­filled be­fore his eyes. In fact, he would have per­ceived this sun, as yet in the gaseous state, and com­posed of mov­ing molecules, re­volv­ing round its ax­is in or­der to ac­com­plish its work of con­cen­tra­tion. This mo­tion, faith­ful to the laws of me­chan­ics, would have been ac­cel­er­at­ed with the diminu­tion of its vol­ume; and a mo­ment would have ar­rived when the cen­trifu­gal force would have over­pow­ered the cen­tripetal, which caus­es the molecules all to tend to­ward the cen­ter.

An­oth­er phe­nomenon would now have passed be­fore the ob­serv­er’s eye, and the molecules sit­uat­ed on the plane of the equa­tor, es­cap­ing like a stone from a sling of which the cord had sud­den­ly snapped, would have formed around the sun sundry con­cen­tric rings re­sem­bling that of Sat­urn. In their turn, again, these rings of cos­mi­cal mat­ter, ex­cit­ed by a ro­tary mo­tion about the cen­tral mass, would have been bro­ken up and de­com­posed in­to sec­ondary neb­ulosi­ties, that is to say, in­to plan­ets. Sim­ilar­ly he would have ob­served these plan­ets throw off one or more rings each, which be­came the ori­gin of the sec­ondary bod­ies which we call satel­lites.

Thus, then, ad­vanc­ing from atom to molecule, from molecule to neb­ulous mass, from that to prin­ci­pal star, from star to sun, from sun to plan­et, and hence to satel­lite, we have the whole se­ries of trans­for­ma­tions un­der­gone by the heav­en­ly bod­ies dur­ing the first days of the world.

Now, of those at­ten­dant bod­ies which the sun main­tains in their el­lip­ti­cal or­bits by the great law of grav­ita­tion, some few in turn pos­sess satel­lites. Uranus has eight, Sat­urn eight, Jupiter four, Nep­tune pos­si­bly three, and the Earth one. This last, one of the least im­por­tant of the en­tire so­lar sys­tem, we call the Moon; and it is she whom the dar­ing ge­nius of the Amer­icans pro­fessed their in­ten­tion of con­quer­ing.

The moon, by her com­par­ative prox­im­ity, and the con­stant­ly vary­ing ap­pear­ances pro­duced by her sev­er­al phas­es, has al­ways oc­cu­pied a con­sid­er­able share of the at­ten­tion of the in­hab­itants of the earth.

From the time of Thales of Mile­tus, in the fifth cen­tu­ry B.C., down to that of Coper­ni­cus in the fif­teenth and Ty­cho Bra­he in the six­teenth cen­tu­ry A.D., ob­ser­va­tions have been from time to time car­ried on with more or less cor­rect­ness, un­til in the present day the al­ti­tudes of the lu­nar moun­tains have been de­ter­mined with ex­ac­ti­tude. Galileo ex­plained the phe­nom­ena of the lu­nar light pro­duced dur­ing cer­tain of her phas­es by the ex­is­tence of moun­tains, to which he as­signed a mean al­ti­tude of 27,000 feet. Af­ter him Hevelius, an as­tronomer of Dantz­ic, re­duced the high­est el­eva­tions to 15,000 feet; but the cal­cu­la­tions of Ric­ci­oli brought them up again to 21,000 feet.

At the close of the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry Her­schel, armed with a pow­er­ful tele­scope, con­sid­er­ably re­duced the pre­ced­ing mea­sure­ments. He as­signed a height of 11,400 feet to the max­imum el­eva­tions, and re­duced the mean of the dif­fer­ent al­ti­tudes to lit­tle more than 2,400 feet. But Her­schel’s cal­cu­la­tions were in their turn cor­rect­ed by the ob­ser­va­tions of Hal­ley, Nas­myth, Bian­chi­ni, Gruithuy­sen, and oth­ers; but it was re­served for the labors of Boeer and Maedler fi­nal­ly to solve the ques­tion. They suc­ceed­ed in mea­sur­ing 1,905 dif­fer­ent el­eva­tions, of which six ex­ceed 15,000 feet, and twen­ty-​two ex­ceed 14,400 feet. The high­est sum­mit of all tow­ers to a height of 22,606 feet above the sur­face of the lu­nar disc. At the same pe­ri­od the ex­am­ina­tion of the moon was com­plet­ed. She ap­peared com­plete­ly rid­dled with craters, and her es­sen­tial­ly vol­canic char­ac­ter was ap­par­ent at each ob­ser­va­tion. By the ab­sence of re­frac­tion in the rays of the plan­ets oc­cult­ed by her we con­clude that she is ab­so­lute­ly de­void of an at­mo­sphere. The ab­sence of air en­tails the ab­sence of wa­ter. It be­came, there­fore, man­ifest that the Se­len­ites, to sup­port life un­der such con­di­tions, must pos­sess a spe­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion of their own, must dif­fer re­mark­ably from the in­hab­itants of the earth.

At length, thanks to mod­ern art, in­stru­ments of still high­er per­fec­tion searched the moon with­out in­ter­mis­sion, not leav­ing a sin­gle point of her sur­face un­ex­plored; and notwith­stand­ing that her di­am­eter mea­sures 2,150 miles, her sur­face equals the one-​fif­teenth part of that of our globe, and her bulk the one-​forty-​ninth part of that of the ter­res­tri­al spheroid– not one of her se­crets was able to es­cape the eyes of the as­tronomers; and these skill­ful men of sci­ence car­ried to an even greater de­gree their prodi­gious ob­ser­va­tions.

Thus they re­marked that, dur­ing full moon, the disc ap­peared scored in cer­tain parts with white lines; and, dur­ing the phas­es, with black. On pros­ecut­ing the study of these with still greater pre­ci­sion, they suc­ceed­ed in ob­tain­ing an ex­act ac­count of the na­ture of these lines. They were long and nar­row fur­rows sunk be­tween par­al­lel ridges, bor­der­ing gen­er­al­ly up­on the edges of the craters. Their length var­ied be­tween ten and 100 miles, and their width was about 1,600 yards. As­tronomers called them chasms, but they could not get any fur­ther. Whether these chasms were the dried-​up beds of an­cient rivers or not they were un­able thor­ough­ly to as­cer­tain.

The Amer­icans, among oth­ers, hoped one day or oth­er to de­ter­mine this ge­olog­ical ques­tion. They al­so un­der­took to ex­am­ine the true na­ture of that sys­tem of par­al­lel ram­parts dis­cov­ered on the moon’s sur­face by Gruithuy­sen, a learned pro­fes­sor of Mu­nich, who con­sid­ered them to be “a sys­tem of for­ti­fi­ca­tions thrown up by the Se­lenitic en­gi­neers.” These two points, yet ob­scure, as well as oth­ers, no doubt, could not be def­inite­ly set­tled ex­cept by di­rect com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the moon.

Re­gard­ing the de­gree of in­ten­si­ty of its light, there was noth­ing more to learn on this point. It was known that it is 300,000 times weak­er than that of the sun, and that its heat has no ap­pre­cia­ble ef­fect up­on the ther­mome­ter. As to the phe­nomenon known as the “ashy light,” it is ex­plained nat­ural­ly by the ef­fect of the trans­mis­sion of the so­lar rays from the earth to the moon, which give the ap­pear­ance of com­plete­ness to the lu­nar disc, while it presents it­self un­der the cres­cent form dur­ing its first and last phas­es.

Such was the state of knowl­edge ac­quired re­gard­ing the earth’s satel­lite, which the Gun Club un­der­took to per­fect in all its as­pects, cos­mo­graph­ic, ge­olog­ical, po­lit­ical, and moral.

CHAP­TER VI

PER­MIS­SIVE LIM­ITS OF IG­NO­RANCE AND BE­LIEF IN THE UNIT­ED STATES

The im­me­di­ate re­sult of Bar­bi­cane’s propo­si­tion was to place up­on the or­ders of the day all the as­tro­nom­ical facts rel­ative to the Queen of the Night. Ev­ery­body set to work to study as­sid­uous­ly. One would have thought that the moon had just ap­peared for the first time, and that no one had ev­er be­fore caught a glimpse of her in the heav­ens. The pa­pers re­vived all the old anec­dotes in which the “sun of the wolves” played a part; they re­called the in­flu­ences which the ig­no­rance of past ages as­cribed to her; in short, all Amer­ica was seized with se­leno­ma­nia, or had be­come moon-​mad.

The sci­en­tif­ic jour­nals, for their part, dealt more es­pe­cial­ly with the ques­tions which touched up­on the en­ter­prise of the Gun Club. The let­ter of the Ob­ser­va­to­ry of Cam­bridge was pub­lished by them, and com­ment­ed up­on with un­re­served ap­proval.

Un­til that time most peo­ple had been ig­no­rant of the mode in which the dis­tance which sep­arates the moon from the earth is cal­cu­lat­ed. They took ad­van­tage of this fact to ex­plain to them that this dis­tance was ob­tained by mea­sur­ing the par­al­lax of the moon. The term par­al­lax prov­ing “caviare to the gen­er­al,” they fur­ther ex­plained that it meant the an­gle formed by the in­cli­na­tion of two straight lines drawn from ei­ther ex­trem­ity of the earth’s ra­dius to the moon. On doubts be­ing ex­pressed as to the cor­rect­ness of this method, they im­me­di­ate­ly proved that not on­ly was the mean dis­tance 234,347 miles, but that as­tronomers could not pos­si­bly be in er­ror in their es­ti­mate by more than sev­en­ty miles ei­ther way.

To those who were not fa­mil­iar with the mo­tions of the moon, they demon­strat­ed that she pos­sess­es two dis­tinct mo­tions, the first be­ing that of ro­ta­tion up­on her ax­is, the sec­ond be­ing that of rev­olu­tion round the earth, ac­com­plish­ing both to­geth­er in an equal pe­ri­od of time, that is to say, in twen­ty-​sev­en and one-​third days.

The mo­tion of ro­ta­tion is that which pro­duces day and night on the sur­face of the moon; save that there is on­ly one day and one night in the lu­nar month, each last­ing three hun­dred and fifty-​four and one-​third hours. But, hap­pi­ly for her, the face turned to­ward the ter­res­tri­al globe is il­lu­mi­nat­ed by it with an in­ten­si­ty equal to that of four­teen moons. As to the oth­er face, al­ways in­vis­ible to us, it has of ne­ces­si­ty three hun­dred and fifty-​four hours of ab­so­lute night, tem­pered on­ly by that “pale glim­mer which falls up­on it from the stars.”

Some well-​in­ten­tioned, but rather ob­sti­nate per­sons, could not at first com­pre­hend how, if the moon dis­plays in­vari­ably the same face to the earth dur­ing her rev­olu­tion, she can de­scribe one turn round her­self. To such they an­swered, “Go in­to your din­ing-​room, and walk round the ta­ble in such a way as to al­ways keep your face turned to­ward the cen­ter; by the time you will have achieved one com­plete round you will have com­plet­ed one turn around your­self, since your eye will have tra­versed suc­ces­sive­ly ev­ery point of the room. Well, then, the room is the heav­ens, the ta­ble is the earth, and the moon is your­self.” And they would go away de­light­ed.

So, then the moon dis­plays in­vari­ably the same face to the earth; nev­er­the­less, to be quite ex­act, it is nec­es­sary to add that, in con­se­quence of cer­tain fluc­tu­ations of north and south, and of west and east, termed her li­bra­tion, she per­mits rather more than half, that is to say, five-​sev­enths, to be seen.

As soon as the ig­no­ra­mus­es came to un­der­stand as much as the di­rec­tor of the ob­ser­va­to­ry him­self knew, they be­gan to wor­ry them­selves re­gard­ing her rev­olu­tion round the earth, where­upon twen­ty sci­en­tif­ic re­views im­me­di­ate­ly came to the res­cue. They point­ed out to them that the fir­ma­ment, with its in­fini­tude of stars, may be con­sid­ered as one vast di­al-​plate, up­on which the moon trav­els, in­di­cat­ing the true time to all the in­hab­itants of the earth; that it is dur­ing this move­ment that the Queen of Night ex­hibits her dif­fer­ent phas­es; that the moon is _full_ when she is in _op­po­si­tion_ with the sun, that is when the three bod­ies are on the same straight line, the earth oc­cu­py­ing the cen­ter; that she is _new_ when she is in _con­junc­tion_ with the sun, that is, when she is be­tween it and the earth; and, last­ly that she is in her _first_ or _last_ quar­ter, when she makes with the sun and the earth an an­gle of which she her­self oc­cu­pies the apex.

Re­gard­ing the al­ti­tude which the moon at­tains above the hori­zon, the let­ter of the Cam­bridge Ob­ser­va­to­ry had said all that was to be said in this re­spect. Ev­ery one knew that this al­ti­tude varies ac­cord­ing to the lat­itude of the ob­serv­er. But the on­ly zones of the globe in which the moon pass­es the zenith, that is, the point di­rect­ly over the head of the spec­ta­tor, are of ne­ces­si­ty com­prised be­tween the twen­ty-​eighth par­al­lels and the equa­tor. Hence the im­por­tance of the ad­vice to try the ex­per­iment up­on some point of that part of the globe, in or­der that the pro­jec­tile might be dis­charged per­pen­dic­ular­ly, and so the soon­est es­cape the ac­tion of grav­ita­tion. This was an es­sen­tial con­di­tion to the suc­cess of the en­ter­prise, and con­tin­ued ac­tive­ly to en­gage the pub­lic at­ten­tion.

Re­gard­ing the path de­scribed by the moon in her rev­olu­tion round the earth, the Cam­bridge Ob­ser­va­to­ry had demon­strat­ed that this path is a re-​en­ter­ing curve, not a per­fect cir­cle, but an el­lipse, of which the earth oc­cu­pies one of the _fo­ci_. It was al­so well un­der­stood that it is far­thest re­moved from the earth dur­ing its _apogee_, and ap­proach­es most near­ly to it at its _perigee_.

Such was then the ex­tent of knowl­edge pos­sessed by ev­ery Amer­ican on the sub­ject, and of which no one could de­cent­ly pro­fess ig­no­rance. Still, while these prin­ci­ples were be­ing rapid­ly dis­sem­inat­ed many er­rors and il­lu­so­ry fears proved less easy to erad­icate.

For in­stance, some wor­thy per­sons main­tained that the moon was an an­cient comet which, in de­scrib­ing its elon­gat­ed or­bit round the sun, hap­pened to pass near the earth, and be­came con­fined with­in her cir­cle of at­trac­tion. These draw­ing-​room as­tronomers pro­fessed to ex­plain the charred as­pect of the moon– a dis­as­ter which they at­tribut­ed to the in­ten­si­ty of the so­lar heat; on­ly, on be­ing re­mind­ed that comets have an at­mo­sphere, and that the moon has lit­tle or none, they were fair­ly at a loss for a re­ply.

Oth­ers again, be­long­ing to the doubt­ing class, ex­pressed cer­tain fears as to the po­si­tion of the moon. They had heard it said that, ac­cord­ing to ob­ser­va­tions made in the time of the Caliphs, her rev­olu­tion had be­come ac­cel­er­at­ed in a cer­tain de­gree. Hence they con­clud­ed, log­ical­ly enough, that an ac­cel­er­ation of mo­tion ought to be ac­com­pa­nied by a cor­re­spond­ing diminu­tion in the dis­tance sep­arat­ing the two bod­ies; and that, sup­pos­ing the dou­ble ef­fect to be con­tin­ued to in­fin­ity, the moon would end by one day falling in­to the earth. How­ev­er, they be­came re­as­sured as to the fate of fu­ture gen­er­ations on be­ing ap­prised that, ac­cord­ing to the cal­cu­la­tions of Laplace, this ac­cel­er­ation of mo­tion is con­fined with­in very re­strict­ed lim­its, and that a pro­por­tion­al diminu­tion of speed will be cer­tain to suc­ceed it. So, then, the sta­bil­ity of the so­lar sys­tem would not be de­ranged in ages to come.

There re­mains but the third class, the su­per­sti­tious. These wor­thies were not con­tent mere­ly to rest in ig­no­rance; they must know all about things which had no ex­is­tence what­ev­er, and as to the moon, they had long known all about her. One set re­gard­ed her disc as a pol­ished mir­ror, by means of which peo­ple could see each oth­er from dif­fer­ent points of the earth and in­ter­change their thoughts. An­oth­er set pre­tend­ed that out of one thou­sand new moons that had been ob­served, nine hun­dred and fifty had been at­tend­ed with re­mark­able dis­tur­bances, such as cat­aclysms, rev­olu­tions, earth­quakes, the del­uge, etc. Then they be­lieved in some mys­te­ri­ous in­flu­ence ex­er­cised by her over hu­man des­tinies– that ev­ery Se­len­ite was at­tached to some in­hab­itant of the earth by a tie of sym­pa­thy; they main­tained that the en­tire vi­tal sys­tem is sub­ject to her con­trol, etc. But in time the ma­jor­ity re­nounced these vul­gar er­rors, and es­poused the true side of the ques­tion. As for the Yan­kees, they had no oth­er am­bi­tion than to take pos­ses­sion of this new con­ti­nent of the sky, and to plant up­on the sum­mit of its high­est el­eva­tion the star- span­gled ban­ner of the Unit­ed States of Amer­ica.

CHAP­TER VII

THE HYMN OF THE CAN­NON-​BALL

The Ob­ser­va­to­ry of Cam­bridge in its mem­orable let­ter had treat­ed the ques­tion from a pure­ly as­tro­nom­ical point of view. The me­chan­ical part still re­mained.

Pres­ident Bar­bi­cane had, with­out loss of time, nom­inat­ed a work­ing com­mit­tee of the Gun Club. The du­ty of this com­mit­tee was to re­solve the three grand ques­tions of the can­non, the pro­jec­tile, and the pow­der. It was com­posed of four mem­bers of great tech­ni­cal knowl­edge, Bar­bi­cane (with a cast­ing vote in case of equal­ity), Gen­er­al Mor­gan, Ma­jor El­phin­stone, and J. T. Mas­ton, to whom were con­fid­ed the func­tions of sec­re­tary. On the 8th of Oc­to­ber the com­mit­tee met at the house of Pres­ident Bar­bi­cane, 3 Re­pub­li­can Street. The meet­ing was opened by the pres­ident him­self.

“Gen­tle­men,” said he, “we have to re­solve one of the most im­por­tant prob­lems in the whole of the no­ble sci­ence of gun­nery. It might ap­pear, per­haps, the most log­ical course to de­vote our first meet­ing to the dis­cus­sion of the en­gine to be em­ployed. Nev­er­the­less, af­ter ma­ture con­sid­er­ation, it has ap­peared to me that the ques­tion of the pro­jec­tile must take prece­dence of that of the can­non, and that the di­men­sions of the lat­ter must nec­es­sar­ily de­pend on those of the for­mer.”

“Suf­fer me to say a word,” here broke in J. T. Mas­ton. Per­mis­sion hav­ing been grant­ed, “Gen­tle­men,” said he with an in­spired ac­cent, “our pres­ident is right in plac­ing the ques­tion of the pro­jec­tile above all oth­ers. The ball we are about to dis­charge at the moon is our am­bas­sador to her, and I wish to con­sid­er it from a moral point of view. The can­non-​ball, gen­tle­men, to my mind, is the most mag­nif­icent man­ifes­ta­tion of hu­man pow­er. If Prov­idence has cre­at­ed the stars and the plan­ets, man has called the can­non-​ball in­to ex­is­tence. Let Prov­idence claim the swift­ness of elec­tric­ity and of light, of the stars, the comets, and the plan­ets, of wind and sound– we claim to have in­vent­ed the swift­ness of the can­non-​ball, a hun­dred times su­pe­ri­or to that of the swiftest hors­es or rail­way train. How glo­ri­ous will be the mo­ment when, in­finite­ly ex­ceed­ing all hith­er­to at­tained ve­loc­ities, we shall launch our new pro­jec­tile with the ra­pid­ity of sev­en miles a sec­ond! Shall it not, gen­tle­men– shall it not be re­ceived up there with the hon­ors due to a ter­res­tri­al am­bas­sador?”

Over­come with emo­tion the or­ator sat down and ap­plied him­self to a huge plate of sand­wich­es be­fore him.

“And now,” said Bar­bi­cane, “let us quit the do­main of po­et­ry and come di­rect to the ques­tion.”

“By all means,” replied the mem­bers, each with his mouth full of sand­wich.

“The prob­lem be­fore us,” con­tin­ued the pres­ident, “is how to com­mu­ni­cate to a pro­jec­tile a ve­loc­ity of 12,000 yards per sec­ond. Let us at present ex­am­ine the ve­loc­ities hith­er­to at­tained. Gen­er­al Mor­gan will be able to en­light­en us on this point.”

“And the more eas­ily,” replied the gen­er­al, “that dur­ing the war I was a mem­ber of the com­mit­tee of ex­per­iments. I may say, then, that the 100-pounder Dahlgrens, which car­ried a dis­tance of 5,000 yards, im­pressed up­on their pro­jec­tile an ini­tial ve­loc­ity of 500 yards a sec­ond. The Rod­man Columbi­ad threw a shot weigh­ing half a ton a dis­tance of six miles, with a ve­loc­ity of 800 yards per sec­ond– a re­sult which Arm­strong and Paliss­er have nev­er ob­tained in Eng­land.”

“This,” replied Bar­bi­cane, “is, I be­lieve, the max­imum ve­loc­ity ev­er at­tained?”

“It is so,” replied the gen­er­al.

“Ah!” groaned J. T. Mas­ton, “if my mor­tar had not burst—-“

“Yes,” qui­et­ly replied Bar­bi­cane, “but it did burst. We must take, then, for our start­ing point, this ve­loc­ity of 800 yards. We must in­crease it twen­ty-​fold. Now, re­serv­ing for an­oth­er dis­cus­sion the means of pro­duc­ing this ve­loc­ity, I will call your at­ten­tion to the di­men­sions which it will be prop­er to as­sign to the shot. You un­der­stand that we have noth­ing to do here with pro­jec­tiles weigh­ing at most but half a ton.”

“Why not?” de­mand­ed the ma­jor.

“Be­cause the shot,” quick­ly replied J. T. Mas­ton, “must be big enough to at­tract the at­ten­tion of the in­hab­itants of the moon, if there are any?”

“Yes,” replied Bar­bi­cane, “and for an­oth­er rea­son more im­por­tant still.”

“What mean you?” asked the ma­jor.

“I mean that it is not enough to dis­charge a pro­jec­tile, and then take no fur­ther no­tice of it; we must fol­low it through­out its course, up to the mo­ment when it shall reach its goal.”

“What?” shout­ed the gen­er­al and the ma­jor in great sur­prise.

“Un­doubt­ed­ly,” replied Bar­bi­cane com­pos­ed­ly, “or our ex­per­iment would pro­duce no re­sult.”

“But then,” replied the ma­jor, “you will have to give this pro­jec­tile enor­mous di­men­sions.”

“No! Be so good as to lis­ten. You know that op­ti­cal in­stru­ments have ac­quired great per­fec­tion; with cer­tain in­stru­ments we have suc­ceed­ed in ob­tain­ing en­large­ments of 6,000 times and re­duc­ing the moon to with­in forty miles’ dis­tance. Now, at this dis­tance, any ob­jects six­ty feet square would be per­fect­ly vis­ible.

“If, then, the pen­etra­tive pow­er of tele­scopes has not been fur­ther in­creased, it is be­cause that pow­er de­tracts from their light; and the moon, which is but a re­flect­ing mir­ror, does not give back suf­fi­cient light to en­able us to per­ceive ob­jects of less­er mag­ni­tude.”

“Well, then, what do you pro­pose to do?” asked the gen­er­al. “Would you give your pro­jec­tile a di­am­eter of six­ty feet?”

“Not so.”

“Do you in­tend, then, to in­crease the lu­mi­nous pow­er of the moon?”

“Ex­act­ly so. If I can suc­ceed in di­min­ish­ing the den­si­ty of the at­mo­sphere through which the moon’s light has to trav­el I shall have ren­dered her light more in­tense. To ef­fect that ob­ject it will be enough to es­tab­lish a tele­scope on some el­evat­ed moun­tain. That is what we will do.”

“I give it up,” an­swered the ma­jor. “You have such a way of sim­pli­fy­ing things. And what en­large­ment do you ex­pect to ob­tain in this way?”

“One of 48,000 times, which should bring the moon with­in an ap­par­ent dis­tance of five miles; and, in or­der to be vis­ible, ob­jects need not have a di­am­eter of more than nine feet.”

“So, then,” cried J. T. Mas­ton, “our pro­jec­tile need not be more than nine feet in di­am­eter.”

“Let me ob­serve, how­ev­er,” in­ter­rupt­ed Ma­jor El­phin­stone, “this will in­volve a weight such as—-“

“My dear ma­jor,” replied Bar­bi­cane, “be­fore dis­cussing its weight per­mit me to enu­mer­ate some of the mar­vels which our an­ces­tors have achieved in this re­spect. I don’t mean to pre­tend that the sci­ence of gun­nery has not ad­vanced, but it is as well to bear in mind that dur­ing the mid­dle ages they ob­tained re­sults more sur­pris­ing, I will ven­ture to say, than ours. For in­stance, dur­ing the siege of Con­stantino­ple by Ma­homet II., in 1453, stone shot of 1,900 pounds weight were em­ployed. At Mal­ta, in the time of the knights, there was a gun of the fortress of St. El­mo which threw a pro­jec­tile weigh­ing 2,500 pounds. And, now, what is the ex­tent of what we have seen our­selves? Arm­strong guns dis­charg­ing shot of 500 pounds, and the Rod­man guns pro­jec­tiles of half a ton! It seems, then, that if pro­jec­tiles have gained in range, they have lost far more in weight. Now, if we turn our ef­forts in that di­rec­tion, we ought to ar­rive, with the progress on sci­ence, at ten times the weight of the shot of Ma­homet II. and the Knights of Mal­ta.”

“Clear­ly,” replied the ma­jor; “but what met­al do you cal­cu­late up­on em­ploy­ing?”

“Sim­ply cast iron,” said Gen­er­al Mor­gan.

“But,” in­ter­rupt­ed the ma­jor, “since the weight of a shot is pro­por­tion­ate to its vol­ume, an iron ball of nine feet in di­am­eter would be of tremen­dous weight.”

“Yes, if it were sol­id, not if it were hol­low.”

“Hol­low? then it would be a shell?”

“Yes, a shell,” replied Bar­bi­cane; “de­cide­ly it must be. A sol­id shot of 108 inch­es would weigh more than 200,000 pounds, a weight ev­ident­ly far too great. Still, as we must re­serve a cer­tain sta­bil­ity for our pro­jec­tile, I pro­pose to give it a weight of 20,000 pounds.”

“What, then, will be the thick­ness of the sides?” asked the ma­jor.

“If we fol­low the usu­al pro­por­tion,” replied Mor­gan, “a di­am­eter of 108 inch­es would re­quire sides of two feet thick­ness, or less.”

“That would be too much,” replied Bar­bi­cane; “for you will ob­serve that the ques­tion is not that of a shot in­tend­ed to pierce an iron plate; it will suf­fice to give it sides strong enough to re­sist the pres­sure of the gas. The prob­lem, there­fore, is this– What thick­ness ought a cast-​iron shell to have in or­der not to weight more than 20,000 pounds? Our clever sec­re­tary will soon en­light­en us up­on this point.”

“Noth­ing eas­ier.” replied the wor­thy sec­re­tary of the com­mit­tee; and, rapid­ly trac­ing a few al­ge­braical for­mu­lae up­on pa­per, among which _n_^2 and _x_^2 fre­quent­ly ap­peared, he present­ly said:

“The sides will re­quire a thick­ness of less than two inch­es.”

“Will that be enough?” asked the ma­jor doubt­ful­ly.

“Clear­ly not!” replied the pres­ident.

“What is to be done, then?” said El­phin­stone, with a puz­zled air.

“Em­ploy an­oth­er met­al in­stead of iron.”

“Cop­per?” said Mor­gan.

“No! that would be too heavy. I have bet­ter than that to of­fer.”

“What then?” asked the ma­jor.

“Alu­minum!” replied Bar­bi­cane.

“Alu­minum?” cried his three col­leagues in cho­rus.

“Un­ques­tion­ably, my friends. This valu­able met­al pos­sess­es the white­ness of sil­ver, the in­de­struc­tibil­ity of gold, the tenac­ity of iron, the fusibil­ity of cop­per, the light­ness of glass. It is eas­ily wrought, is very wide­ly dis­tribut­ed, form­ing the base of most of the rocks, is three times lighter than iron, and seems to have been cre­at­ed for the ex­press pur­pose of fur­nish­ing us with the ma­te­ri­al for our pro­jec­tile.”

“But, my dear pres­ident,” said the ma­jor, “is not the cost price of alu­minum ex­treme­ly high?”

“It was so at its first dis­cov­ery, but it has fall­en now to nine dol­lars a pound.”

“But still, nine dol­lars a pound!” replied the ma­jor, who was not will­ing read­ily to give in; “even that is an enor­mous price.”

“Un­doubt­ed­ly, my dear ma­jor; but not be­yond our reach.”

“What will the pro­jec­tile weigh then?” asked Mor­gan.

“Here is the re­sult of my cal­cu­la­tions,” replied Bar­bi­cane. “A shot of 108 inch­es in di­am­eter, and twelve inch­es in thick­ness, would weigh, in cast-​iron, 67,440 pounds; cast in alu­minum, its weight will be re­duced to 19,250 pounds.”

“Cap­ital!” cried the ma­jor; “but do you know that, at nine dol­lars a pound, this pro­jec­tile will cost—-“

“One hun­dred and sev­en­ty-​three thou­sand and fifty dol­lars ($173,050). I know it quite well. But fear not, my friends; the mon­ey will not be want­ing for our en­ter­prise. I will an­swer for it. Now what say you to alu­minum, gen­tle­men?”

“Adopt­ed!” replied the three mem­bers of the com­mit­tee. So end­ed the first meet­ing. The ques­tion of the pro­jec­tile was def­inite­ly set­tled.

CHAP­TER VII

HIS­TO­RY OF THE CAN­NON

The res­olu­tions passed at the last meet­ing pro­duced a great ef­fect out of doors. Timid peo­ple took fright at the idea of a shot weigh­ing 20,000 pounds be­ing launched in­to space; they asked what can­non could ev­er trans­mit a suf­fi­cient ve­loc­ity to such a mighty mass. The min­utes of the sec­ond meet­ing were des­tined tri­umphant­ly to an­swer such ques­tions. The fol­low­ing evening the dis­cus­sion was re­newed.

“My dear col­leagues,” said Bar­bi­cane, with­out fur­ther pream­ble, “the sub­ject now be­fore us is the con­struc­tion of the en­gine, its length, its com­po­si­tion, and its weight. It is prob­able that we shall end by giv­ing it gi­gan­tic di­men­sions; but how­ev­er great may be the dif­fi­cul­ties in the way, our me­chan­ical ge­nius will read­ily sur­mount them. Be good enough, then, to give me your at­ten­tion, and do not hes­itate to make ob­jec­tions at the close. I have no fear of them. The prob­lem be­fore us is how to com­mu­ni­cate an ini­tial force of 12,000 yards per sec­ond to a shell of 108 inch­es in di­am­eter, weigh­ing 20,000 pounds. Now when a pro­jec­tile is launched in­to space, what hap­pens to it? It is act­ed up­on by three in­de­pen­dent forces: the re­sis­tance of the air, the at­trac­tion of the earth, and the force of im­pul­sion with which it is en­dowed. Let us ex­am­ine these three forces. The re­sis­tance of the air is of lit­tle im­por­tance. The at­mo­sphere of the earth does not ex­ceed forty miles. Now, with the giv­en ra­pid­ity, the pro­jec­tile will have tra­versed this in five sec­onds, and the pe­ri­od is too brief for the re­sis­tance of the medi­um to be re­gard­ed oth­er­wise than as in­signif­icant. Pro­ced­ing, then, to the at­trac­tion of the earth, that is, the weight of the shell, we know that this weight will di­min­ish in the in­verse ra­tio of the square of the dis­tance. When a body left to it­self falls to the sur­face of the earth, it falls five feet in the first sec­ond; and if the same body were re­moved 257,542 miles fur­ther off, in oth­er words, to the dis­tance of the moon, its fall would be re­duced to about half a line in the first sec­ond. That is al­most equiv­alent to a state of per­fect rest. Our busi­ness, then, is to over­come pro­gres­sive­ly this ac­tion of grav­ita­tion. The mode of ac­com­plish­ing that is by the force of im­pul­sion.”

“There’s the dif­fi­cul­ty,” broke in the ma­jor.

“True,” replied the pres­ident; “but we will over­come that, for the force of im­pul­sion will de­pend on the length of the en­gine and the pow­der em­ployed, the lat­ter be­ing lim­it­ed on­ly by the re­sist­ing pow­er of the for­mer. Our busi­ness, then, to-​day is with the di­men­sions of the can­non.”

“Now, up to the present time,” said Bar­bi­cane, “our longest guns have not ex­ceed­ed twen­ty-​five feet in length. We shall there­fore as­ton­ish the world by the di­men­sions we shall be obliged to adopt. It must ev­ident­ly be, then, a gun of great range, since the length of the piece will in­crease the de­ten­tion of the gas ac­cu­mu­lat­ed be­hind the pro­jec­tile; but there is no ad­van­tage in pass­ing cer­tain lim­its.”

“Quite so,” said the ma­jor. “What is the rule in such a case?”

“Or­di­nar­ily the length of a gun is twen­ty to twen­ty-​five times the di­am­eter of the shot, and its weight two hun­dred and thir­ty-​five to two hun­dred and forty times that of the shot.”

“That is not enough,” cried J. T. Mas­ton im­petu­ous­ly.

“I agree with you, my good friend; and, in fact, fol­low­ing this pro­por­tion for a pro­jec­tile nine feet in di­am­eter, weigh­ing 30,000 pounds, the gun would on­ly have a length of two hun­dred and twen­ty- five feet, and a weight of 7,200,000 pounds.”

“Ridicu­lous!” re­joined Mas­ton. “As well take a pis­tol.”

“I think so too,” replied Bar­bi­cane; “that is why I pro­pose to quadru­ple that length, and to con­struct a gun of nine hun­dred feet.”

The gen­er­al and the ma­jor of­fered some ob­jec­tions; nev­er­the­less, the propo­si­tion, ac­tive­ly sup­port­ed by the sec­re­tary, was def­inite­ly adopt­ed.

“But,” said El­phin­stone, “what thick­ness must we give it?”

“A thick­ness of six feet,” replied Bar­bi­cane.

“You sure­ly don’t think of mount­ing a mass like that up­on a car­riage?” asked the ma­jor.

“It would be a su­perb idea, though,” said Mas­ton.

“But im­prac­ti­ca­ble,” replied Bar­bi­cane. “No, I think of sink­ing this en­gine in the earth alone, bind­ing it with hoops of wrought iron, and fi­nal­ly sur­round­ing it with a thick mass of ma­son­ry of stone and ce­ment. The piece once cast, it must be bored with great pre­ci­sion, so as to pre­clude any pos­si­ble windage. So there will be no loss what­ev­er of gas, and all the ex­pan­sive force of the pow­der will be em­ployed in the propul­sion.”

“One sim­ple ques­tion,” said El­phin­stone: “is our gun to be ri­fled?”

“No, cer­tain­ly not,” replied Bar­bi­cane; “we re­quire an enor­mous ini­tial ve­loc­ity; and you are well aware that a shot quits a ri­fled gun less rapid­ly than it does a smooth-​bore.”

“True,” re­joined the ma­jor.

The com­mit­tee here ad­journed for a few min­utes to tea and sand­wich­es.

On the dis­cus­sion be­ing re­newed, “Gen­tle­men,” said Bar­bi­cane, “we must now take in­to con­sid­er­ation the met­al to be em­ployed. Our can­non must be pos­sessed of great tenac­ity, great hard­ness, be in­fusible by heat, in­dis­sol­uble, and in­ox­id­able by the cor­ro­sive ac­tion of acids.”

“There is no doubt about that,” replied the ma­jor; “and as we shall have to em­ploy an im­mense quan­ti­ty of met­al, we shall not be at a loss for choice.”

“Well, then,” said Mor­gan, “I pro­pose the best al­loy hith­er­to known, which con­sists of one hun­dred parts of cop­per, twelve of tin, and six of brass.”

“I ad­mit,” replied the pres­ident, “that this com­po­si­tion has yield­ed ex­cel­lent re­sults, but in the present case it would be too ex­pen­sive, and very dif­fi­cult to work. I think, then, that we ought to adopt a ma­te­ri­al ex­cel­lent in its way and of low price, such as cast iron. What is your ad­vice, ma­jor?”

“I quite agree with you,” replied El­phin­stone.

“In fact,” con­tin­ued Bar­bi­cane, “cast iron costs ten times less than bronze; it is easy to cast, it runs read­ily from the moulds of sand, it is easy of ma­nip­ula­tion, it is at once eco­nom­ical of mon­ey and of time. In ad­di­tion, it is ex­cel­lent as a ma­te­ri­al, and I well re­mem­ber that dur­ing the war, at the siege of At­lanta, some iron guns fired one thou­sand rounds at in­ter­vals of twen­ty min­utes with­out in­jury.”

“Cast iron is very brit­tle, though,” replied Mor­gan.

“Yes, but it pos­sess­es great re­sis­tance. I will now ask our wor­thy sec­re­tary to cal­cu­late the weight of a cast-​iron gun with a bore of nine feet and a thick­ness of six feet of met­al.”

“In a mo­ment,” replied Mas­ton. Then, dash­ing off some al­ge­braical for­mu­lae with mar­velous fa­cil­ity, in a minute or two he de­clared the fol­low­ing re­sult:

“The can­non will weigh 68,040 tons. And, at two cents a pound, it will cost—-“

“Two mil­lion five hun­dred and ten thou­sand sev­en hun­dred and one dol­lars.”

Mas­ton, the ma­jor, and the gen­er­al re­gard­ed Bar­bi­cane with un­easy looks.

“Well, gen­tle­men,” replied the pres­ident, “I re­peat what I said yes­ter­day. Make your­selves easy; the mil­lions will not be want­ing.”

With this as­sur­ance of their pres­ident the com­mit­tee sep­arat­ed, af­ter hav­ing fixed their third meet­ing for the fol­low­ing evening.

CHAP­TER IX

THE QUES­TION OF THE POW­DERS

There re­mained for con­sid­er­ation mere­ly the ques­tion of pow­ders. The pub­lic await­ed with in­ter­est its fi­nal de­ci­sion. The size of the pro­jec­tile, the length of the can­non be­ing set­tled, what would be the quan­ti­ty of pow­der nec­es­sary to pro­duce im­pul­sion?

It is gen­er­al­ly as­sert­ed that gun­pow­der was in­vent­ed in the four­teenth cen­tu­ry by the monk Schwartz, who paid for his grand dis­cov­ery with his life. It is, how­ev­er, pret­ty well proved that this sto­ry ought to be ranked among the leg­ends of the mid­dle ages. Gun­pow­der was not in­vent­ed by any one; it was the lin­eal suc­ces­sor of the Greek fire, which, like it­self, was com­posed of sul­fur and salt­peter. Few per­sons are ac­quaint­ed with the me­chan­ical pow­er of gun­pow­der. Now this is pre­cise­ly what is nec­es­sary to be un­der­stood in or­der to com­pre­hend the im­por­tance of the ques­tion sub­mit­ted to the com­mit­tee.

A litre of gun­pow­der weighs about two pounds; dur­ing com­bus­tion it pro­duces 400 litres of gas. This gas, on be­ing lib­er­at­ed and act­ed up­on by tem­per­ature raised to 2,400 de­grees, oc­cu­pies a space of 4,000 litres: con­se­quent­ly the vol­ume of pow­der is to the vol­ume of gas pro­duced by its com­bus­tion as 1 to 4,000. One may judge, there­fore, of the tremen­dous pres­sure on this gas when com­pressed with­in a space 4,000 times too con­fined. All this was, of course, well known to the mem­bers of the com­mit­tee when they met on the fol­low­ing evening.

The first speak­er on this oc­ca­sion was Ma­jor El­phin­stone, who had been the di­rec­tor of the gun­pow­der fac­to­ries dur­ing the war.

“Gen­tle­men,” said this dis­tin­guished chemist, “I be­gin with some fig­ures which will serve as the ba­sis of our cal­cu­la­tion. The old 24-pounder shot re­quired for its dis­charge six­teen pounds of pow­der.”

“You are cer­tain of this amount?” broke in Bar­bi­cane.

“Quite cer­tain,” replied the ma­jor. “The Arm­strong can­non em­ploys on­ly sev­en­ty-​five pounds of pow­der for a pro­jec­tile of eight hun­dred pounds, and the Rod­man Columbi­ad us­es on­ly one hun­dred and six­ty pounds of pow­der to send its half ton shot a dis­tance of six miles. These facts can­not be called in ques­tion, for I my­self raised the point dur­ing the de­po­si­tions tak­en be­fore the com­mit­tee of ar­tillery.”

“Quite true,” said the gen­er­al.

“Well,” replied the ma­jor, “these fig­ures go to prove that the quan­ti­ty of pow­der is not in­creased with the weight of the shot; that is to say, if a 24-pounder shot re­quires six­teen pounds of pow­der;– in oth­er words, if in or­di­nary guns we em­ploy a quan­ti­ty of pow­der equal to two-​thirds of the weight of the pro­jec­tile, this pro­por­tion is not con­stant. Cal­cu­late, and you will see that in place of three hun­dred and thir­ty-​three pounds of pow­der, the quan­ti­ty is re­duced to no more than one hun­dred and six­ty pounds.”

“What are you aim­ing at?” asked the pres­ident.

“If you push your the­ory to ex­tremes, my dear ma­jor,” said J. T. Mas­ton, “you will get to this, that as soon as your shot be­comes suf­fi­cient­ly heavy you will not re­quire any pow­der at all.”

“Our friend Mas­ton is al­ways at his jokes, even in se­ri­ous mat­ters,” cried the ma­jor; “but let him make his mind easy, I am go­ing present­ly to pro­pose gun­pow­der enough to sat­is­fy his ar­tillerist’s propen­si­ties. I on­ly keep to sta­tis­ti­cal facts when I say that, dur­ing the war, and for the very largest guns, the weight of the pow­der was re­duced, as the re­sult of ex­pe­ri­ence, to a tenth part of the weight of the shot.”

“Per­fect­ly cor­rect,” said Mor­gan; “but be­fore de­cid­ing the quan­ti­ty of pow­der nec­es­sary to give the im­pulse, I think it would be as well—-“

“We shall have to em­ploy a large-​grained pow­der,” con­tin­ued the ma­jor; “its com­bus­tion is more rapid than that of the small.”

“No doubt about that,” replied Mor­gan; “but it is very de­struc­tive, and ends by en­larg­ing the bore of the pieces.”

“Grant­ed; but that which is in­ju­ri­ous to a gun des­tined to per­form long ser­vice is not so to our Columbi­ad. We shall run no dan­ger of an ex­plo­sion; and it is nec­es­sary that our pow­der should take fire in­stan­ta­neous­ly in or­der that its me­chan­ical ef­fect may be com­plete.”

“We must have,” said Mas­ton, “sev­er­al touch-​holes, so as to fire it at dif­fer­ent points at the same time.”

“Cer­tain­ly,” replied El­phin­stone; “but that will ren­der the work­ing of the piece more dif­fi­cult. I re­turn then to my large-​grained pow­der, which re­moves those dif­fi­cul­ties. In his Columbi­ad charges Rod­man em­ployed a pow­der as large as chest­nuts, made of wil­low char­coal, sim­ply dried in cast- iron pans. This pow­der was hard and glit­ter­ing, left no trace up­on the hand, con­tained hy­dro­gen and oxy­gen in large pro­por­tion, took fire in­stan­ta­neous­ly, and, though very de­struc­tive, did not sen­si­bly in­jure the mouth-​piece.”

Up to this point Bar­bi­cane had kept aloof from the dis­cus­sion; he left the oth­ers to speak while he him­self lis­tened; he had ev­ident­ly got an idea. He now sim­ply said, “Well, my friends, what quan­ti­ty of pow­der do you pro­pose?”

The three mem­bers looked at one an­oth­er.

“Two hun­dred thou­sand pounds.” at last said Mor­gan.

“Five hun­dred thou­sand,” added the ma­jor.

“Eight hun­dred thou­sand,” screamed Mas­ton.

A mo­ment of si­lence fol­lowed this triple pro­pos­al; it was at last bro­ken by the pres­ident.

“Gen­tle­men,” he qui­et­ly said, “I start from this prin­ci­ple, that the re­sis­tance of a gun, con­struct­ed un­der the giv­en con­di­tions, is un­lim­it­ed. I shall sur­prise our friend Mas­ton, then, by stig­ma­tiz­ing his cal­cu­la­tions as timid; and I pro­pose to dou­ble his 800,000 pounds of pow­der.”

“Six­teen hun­dred thou­sand pounds?” shout­ed Mas­ton, leap­ing from his seat.

“Just so.”

“We shall have to come then to my ide­al of a can­non half a mile long; for you see 1,600,000 pounds will oc­cu­py a space of about 20,000 cu­bic feet; and since the con­tents of your can­non do not ex­ceed 54,000 cu­bic feet, it would be half full; and the bore will not be more than long enough for the gas to com­mu­ni­cate to the pro­jec­tile suf­fi­cient im­pulse.”

“Nev­er­the­less,” said the pres­ident, “I hold to that quan­ti­ty of pow­der. Now, 1,600,000 pounds of pow­der will cre­ate 6,000,000,000 litres of gas. Six thou­sand mil­lions! You quite un­der­stand?”

“What is to be done then?” said the gen­er­al.

“The thing is very sim­ple; we must re­duce this enor­mous quan­ti­ty of pow­der, while pre­serv­ing to it its me­chan­ical pow­er.”

“Good; but by what means?”

“I am go­ing to tell you,” replied Bar­bi­cane qui­et­ly.

“Noth­ing is more easy than to re­duce this mass to one quar­ter of its bulk. You know that cu­ri­ous cel­lu­lar mat­ter which con­sti­tutes the el­emen­tary tis­sues of veg­etable? This sub­stance is found quite pure in many bod­ies, es­pe­cial­ly in cot­ton, which is noth­ing more than the down of the seeds of the cot­ton plant. Now cot­ton, com­bined with cold ni­tric acid, be­come trans­formed in­to a sub­stance em­inent­ly in­sol­uble, com­bustible, and ex­plo­sive. It was first dis­cov­ered in 1832, by Bra­con­not, a French chemist, who called it xy­loi­dine. In 1838 an­oth­er French­man, Pelouze, in­ves­ti­gat­ed its dif­fer­ent prop­er­ties, and fi­nal­ly, in 1846, Schon­bein, pro­fes­sor of chem­istry at Bale, pro­posed its em­ploy­ment for pur­pos­es of war. This pow­der, now called py­rox­yle, or ful­mi­nat­ing cot­ton, is pre­pared with great fa­cil­ity by sim­ply plung­ing cot­ton for fif­teen min­utes in ni­tric acid, then wash­ing it in wa­ter, then dry­ing it, and it is ready for use.”

“Noth­ing could be more sim­ple,” said Mor­gan.

“More­over, py­rox­yle is un­al­tered by mois­ture– a valu­able prop­er­ty to us, inas­much as it would take sev­er­al days to charge the can­non. It ig­nites at 170 de­grees in place of 240, and its com­bus­tion is so rapid that one may set light to it on the top of the or­di­nary pow­der, with­out the lat­ter hav­ing time to ig­nite.”

“Per­fect!” ex­claimed the ma­jor.

“On­ly it is more ex­pen­sive.”

“What mat­ter?” cried J. T. Mas­ton.

“Fi­nal­ly, it im­parts to pro­jec­tiles a ve­loc­ity four times su­pe­ri­or to that of gun­pow­der. I will even add, that if we mix it with one-​eighth of its own weight of ni­trate of potas­si­um, its ex­pan­sive force is again con­sid­er­ably aug­ment­ed.”

“Will that be nec­es­sary?” asked the ma­jor.

“I think not,” replied Bar­bi­cane. “So, then, in place of 1,600,000 pounds of pow­der, we shall have but 400,000 pounds of ful­mi­nat­ing cot­ton; and since we can, with­out dan­ger, com­press 500 pounds of cot­ton in­to twen­ty-​sev­en cu­bic feet, the whole quan­ti­ty will not oc­cu­py a height of more than 180 feet with­in the bore of the Columbi­ad. In this way the shot will have more than 700 feet of bore to tra­verse un­der a force of 6,000,000,000 litres of gas be­fore tak­ing its flight to­ward the moon.”

At this junc­ture J. T. Mas­ton could not re­press his emo­tion; he flung him­self in­to the arms of his friend with the vi­olence of a pro­jec­tile, and Bar­bi­cane would have been stove in if he had not been boom-​proof.

This in­ci­dent ter­mi­nat­ed the third meet­ing of the com­mit­tee.

Bar­bi­cane and his bold col­leagues, to whom noth­ing seemed im­pos­si­ble, had suc­ceed­ing in solv­ing the com­plex prob­lems of pro­jec­tile, can­non, and pow­der. Their plan was drawn up, and it on­ly re­mained to put it in­to ex­ecu­tion.

“A mere mat­ter of de­tail, a bagatelle,” said J. T. Mas­ton.

CHAP­TER X

ONE EN­EMY _v._ TWEN­TY-​FIVE MIL­LIONS OF FRIENDS

The Amer­ican pub­lic took a live­ly in­ter­est in the small­est de­tails of the en­ter­prise of the Gun Club. It fol­lowed day by day the dis­cus­sion of the com­mit­tee. The most sim­ple prepa­ra­tions for the great ex­per­iment, the ques­tions of fig­ures which it in­volved, the me­chan­ical dif­fi­cul­ties to be re­solved– in one word, the en­tire plan of work– roused the pop­ular ex­cite­ment to the high­est pitch.

The pure­ly sci­en­tif­ic at­trac­tion was sud­den­ly in­ten­si­fied by the fol­low­ing in­ci­dent:

We have seen what le­gions of ad­mir­ers and friends Bar­bi­cane’s project had ral­lied round its au­thor. There was, how­ev­er, one sin­gle in­di­vid­ual alone in all the States of the Union who protest­ed against the at­tempt of the Gun Club. He at­tacked it fu­ri­ous­ly on ev­ery op­por­tu­ni­ty, and hu­man na­ture is such that Bar­bi­cane felt more keen­ly the op­po­si­tion of that one man than he did the ap­plause of all the oth­ers. He was well aware of the mo­tive of this an­tipa­thy, the ori­gin of this soli­tary en­mi­ty, the cause of its per­son­al­ity and old stand­ing, and in what ri­val­ry of self-​love it had its rise.

This per­se­ver­ing en­emy the pres­ident of the Gun Club had nev­er seen. For­tu­nate that it was so, for a meet­ing be­tween the two men would cer­tain­ly have been at­tend­ed with se­ri­ous con­se­quences. This ri­val was a man of sci­ence, like Bar­bi­cane him­self, of a fiery, dar­ing, and vi­olent dis­po­si­tion; a pure Yan­kee. His name was Cap­tain Nicholl; he lived at Philadel­phia.

Most peo­ple are aware of the cu­ri­ous strug­gle which arose dur­ing the Fed­er­al war be­tween the guns and ar­mor of iron-​plat­ed ships. The re­sult was the en­tire re­con­struc­tion of the navy of both the con­ti­nents; as the one grew heav­ier, the oth­er be­came thick­er in pro­por­tion. The Mer­ri­mac, the Mon­itor, the Ten­nessee, the Wee­hawken dis­charged enor­mous pro­jec­tiles them­selves, af­ter hav­ing been ar­mor-​clad against the pro­jec­tiles of oth­ers. In fact they did to oth­ers that which they would not they should do to them– that grand prin­ci­ple of im­mor­tal­ity up­on which rests the whole art of war.

Now if Bar­bi­cane was a great founder of shot, Nicholl was a great forg­er of plates; the one cast night and day at Bal­ti­more, the oth­er forged day and night at Philadel­phia. As soon as ev­er Bar­bi­cane in­vent­ed a new shot, Nicholl in­vent­ed a new plate; each fol­lowed a cur­rent of ideas es­sen­tial­ly op­posed to the oth­er. Hap­pi­ly for these cit­izens, so use­ful to their coun­try, a dis­tance of from fifty to six­ty miles sep­arat­ed them from one an­oth­er, and they had nev­er yet met. Which of these two in­ven­tors had the ad­van­tage over the oth­er it was dif­fi­cult to de­cide from the re­sults ob­tained. By last ac­counts, how­ev­er, it would seem that the ar­mor-​plate would in the end have to give way to the shot; nev­er­the­less, there were com­pe­tent judges who had their doubts on the point.

At the last ex­per­iment the cylin­dro-​con­ical pro­jec­tiles of Bar­bi­cane stuck like so many pins in the Nicholl plates. On that day the Philadel­phia iron-​forg­er then be­lieved him­self vic­to­ri­ous, and could not evince con­tempt enough for his ri­val; but when the oth­er af­ter­ward sub­sti­tut­ed for con­ical shot sim­ple 600-pound shells, at very mod­er­ate ve­loc­ity, the cap­tain was obliged to give in. In fact, these pro­jec­tiles knocked his best met­al plate to shiv­ers.

Mat­ters were at this stage, and vic­to­ry seemed to rest with the shot, when the war came to an end on the very day when Nicholl had com­plet­ed a new ar­mor-​plate of wrought steel. It was a mas­ter­piece of its kind, and bid de­fi­ance to all the pro­jec­tiles of the world. The cap­tain had it con­veyed to the Poly­gon at Wash­ing­ton, chal­leng­ing the pres­ident of the Gun Club to break it. Bar­bi­cane, peace hav­ing been de­clared, de­clined to try the ex­per­iment.

Nicholl, now fu­ri­ous, of­fered to ex­pose his plate to the shock of any shot, sol­id, hol­low, round, or con­ical. Re­fused by the pres­ident, who did not choose to com­pro­mise his last suc­cess.

Nicholl, dis­gust­ed by this ob­sti­na­cy, tried to tempt Bar­bi­cane by of­fer­ing him ev­ery chance. He pro­posed to fix the plate with­in two hun­dred yards of the gun. Bar­bi­cane still ob­sti­nate in re­fusal. A hun­dred yards? Not even sev­en­ty-​five!

“At fifty then!” roared the cap­tain through the news­pa­pers. “At twen­ty-​five yards! and I’ll stand be­hind!”

Bar­bi­cane re­turned for an­swer that, even if Cap­tain Nicholl would be so good as to stand in front, he would not fire any more.

Nicholl could not con­tain him­self at this re­ply; threw out hints of cow­ardice; that a man who re­fused to fire a can­non-​shot was pret­ty near be­ing afraid of it; that ar­tillerists who fight at six miles dis­tance are sub­sti­tut­ing math­emat­ical for­mu­lae for in­di­vid­ual courage.

To these in­sin­ua­tions Bar­bi­cane re­turned no an­swer; per­haps he nev­er heard of them, so ab­sorbed was he in the cal­cu­la­tions for his great en­ter­prise.

When his fa­mous com­mu­ni­ca­tion was made to the Gun Club, the cap­tain’s wrath passed all bounds; with his in­tense jeal­ousy was min­gled a feel­ing of ab­so­lute im­po­tence. How was he to in­vent any­thing to beat this 900-feet Columbi­ad? What ar­mor-​plate could ev­er re­sist a pro­jec­tile of 30,000 pounds weight? Over­whelmed at first un­der this vi­olent shock, he by and by re­cov­ered him­self, and re­solved to crush the pro­pos­al by weight of his ar­gu­ments.

He then vi­olent­ly at­tacked the labors of the Gun Club, pub­lished a num­ber of let­ters in the news­pa­pers, en­deav­ored to prove Bar­bi­cane ig­no­rant of the first prin­ci­ples of gun­nery. He main­tained that it was ab­so­lute­ly im­pos­si­ble to im­press up­on any body what­ev­er a ve­loc­ity of 12,000 yards per sec­ond; that even with such a ve­loc­ity a pro­jec­tile of such a weight could not tran­scend the lim­its of the earth’s at­mo­sphere. Fur­ther still, even re­gard­ing the ve­loc­ity to be ac­quired, and grant­ing it to be suf­fi­cient, the shell could not re­sist the pres­sure of the gas de­vel­oped by the ig­ni­tion of 1,600,000 pounds of pow­der; and sup­pos­ing it to re­sist that pres­sure, it would be less able to sup­port that tem­per­ature; it would melt on quit­ting the Columbi­ad, and fall back in a red-​hot show­er up­on the heads of the im­pru­dent spec­ta­tors.

Bar­bi­cane con­tin­ued his work with­out re­gard­ing these at­tacks.

Nicholl then took up the ques­tion in its oth­er as­pects. With­out touch­ing up­on its use­less­ness in all points of view, he re­gard­ed the ex­per­iment as fraught with ex­treme dan­ger, both to the cit­izens, who might sanc­tion by their pres­ence so rep­re­hen­si­ble a spec­ta­cle, and al­so to the towns in the neigh­bor­hood of this de­plorable can­non. He al­so ob­served that if the pro­jec­tile did not suc­ceed in reach­ing its des­ti­na­tion (a re­sult ab­so­lute­ly im­pos­si­ble), it must in­evitably fall back up­on the earth, and that the shock of such a mass, mul­ti­plied by the square of its ve­loc­ity, would se­ri­ous­ly en­dan­ger ev­ery point of the globe. Un­der the cir­cum­stances, there­fore, and with­out in­ter­fer­ing with the rights of free cit­izens, it was a case for the in­ter­ven­tion of Gov­ern­ment, which ought not to en­dan­ger the safe­ty of all for the plea­sure of one in­di­vid­ual.

In spite of all his ar­gu­ments, how­ev­er, Cap­tain Nicholl re­mained alone in his opin­ion. No­body lis­tened to him, and he did not suc­ceed in alien­at­ing a sin­gle ad­mir­er from the pres­ident of the Gun Club. The lat­ter did not even take the pains to re­fute the ar­gu­ments of his ri­val.

Nicholl, driv­en in­to his last en­trench­ments, and not able to fight per­son­al­ly in the cause, re­solved to fight with mon­ey. He pub­lished, there­fore, in the Rich­mond _In­quir­er_ a se­ries of wa­gers, con­ceived in these terms, and on an in­creas­ing scale:

No. 1 ($1,000).– That the nec­es­sary funds for the ex­per­iment of the Gun Club will not be forth­com­ing.

No. 2 ($2,000).– That the op­er­ation of cast­ing a can­non of 900 feet is im­prac­ti­ca­ble, and can­not pos­si­bly suc­ceed.

No. 3 ($3,000).– That is it im­pos­si­ble to load the Columbi­ad, and that the py­rox­yle will take fire spon­ta­neous­ly un­der the pres­sure of the pro­jec­tile.

No. 4 ($4,000).– That the Columbi­ad will burst at the first fire.

No. 5 ($5,000).– That the shot will not trav­el far­ther than six miles, and that it will fall back again a few sec­onds af­ter its dis­charge.

It was an im­por­tant sum, there­fore, which the cap­tain risked in his in­vin­ci­ble ob­sti­na­cy. He had no less than $15,000 at stake.

Notwith­stand­ing the im­por­tance of the chal­lenge, on the 19th of May he re­ceived a sealed pack­et con­tain­ing the fol­low­ing su­perbly la­con­ic re­ply: “BAL­TI­MORE, Oc­to­ber 19. “Done. “BAR­BI­CANE.”

CHAP­TER XI

FLORI­DA AND TEXAS

One ques­tion re­mained yet to be de­cid­ed; it was nec­es­sary to choose a fa­vor­able spot for the ex­per­iment. Ac­cord­ing to the ad­vice of the Ob­ser­va­to­ry of Cam­bridge, the gun must be fired per­pen­dic­ular­ly to the plane of the hori­zon, that is to say, to­ward the zenith. Now the moon does not tra­verse the zenith, ex­cept in places sit­uat­ed be­tween 0@ and 28@ of lat­itude. It be­came, then, nec­es­sary to de­ter­mine ex­act­ly that spot on the globe where the im­mense Columbi­ad should be cast.

On the 20th of Oc­to­ber, at a gen­er­al meet­ing of the Gun Club, Bar­bi­cane pro­duced a mag­nif­icent map of the Unit­ed States. “Gen­tle­men,” said he, in open­ing the dis­cus­sion, “I pre­sume that we are all agreed that this ex­per­iment can­not and ought not to be tried any­where but with­in the lim­its of the soil of the Union. Now, by good for­tune, cer­tain fron­tiers of the Unit­ed States ex­tend down­ward as far as the 28th par­al­lel of the north lat­itude. If you will cast your eye over this map, you will see that we have at our dis­pos­al the whole of the south­ern por­tion of Texas and Flori­da.”

It was fi­nal­ly agreed, then, that the Columbi­ad must be cast on the soil of ei­ther Texas or Flori­da. The re­sult, how­ev­er, of this de­ci­sion was to cre­ate a ri­val­ry en­tire­ly with­out prece­dent be­tween the dif­fer­ent towns of these two States.

The 28th par­al­lel, on reach­ing the Amer­ican coast, tra­vers­es the penin­su­la of Flori­da, di­vid­ing it in­to two near­ly equal por­tions. Then, plung­ing in­to the Gulf of Mex­ico, it sub­tends the arc formed by the coast of Al­aba­ma, Mis­sis­sip­pi, and Louisiana; then skirt­ing Texas, off which it cuts an an­gle, it con­tin­ues its course over Mex­ico, cross­es the Sono­ra, Old Cal­ifor­nia, and los­es it­self in the Pa­cif­ic Ocean. It was, there­fore, on­ly those por­tions of Texas and Flori­da which were sit­uat­ed be­low this par­al­lel which came with­in the pre­scribed con­di­tions of lat­itude.

Flori­da, in its south­ern part, reck­ons no cities of im­por­tance; it is sim­ply stud­ded with forts raised against the rov­ing In­di­ans. One soli­tary town, Tam­pa Town, was able to put in a claim in fa­vor of its sit­ua­tion.

In Texas, on the con­trary, the towns are much more nu­mer­ous and im­por­tant. Cor­pus Christi, in the coun­ty of Nue­ces, and all the cities sit­uat­ed on the Rio Bra­vo, Lare­do, Co­ma­lites, San Ig­na­cio on the Web, Rio Grande City on the Starr, Ed­in­burgh in the Hi­dal­go, San­ta Ri­ta, El­pan­da, Brownsville in the Cameron, formed an im­pos­ing league against the pre­ten­sions of Flori­da. So, scarce­ly was the de­ci­sion known, when the Tex­an and Flori­dan deputies ar­rived at Bal­ti­more in an in­cred­ibly short space of time. From that very mo­ment Pres­ident Bar­bi­cane and the in­flu­en­tial mem­bers of the Gun Club were be­sieged day and night by formidable claims. If sev­en cities of Greece con­tend­ed for the hon­or of hav­ing giv­en birth to a Homer, here were two en­tire States threat­en­ing to come to blows about the ques­tion of a can­non.

The ri­val par­ties prom­enad­ed the streets with arms in their hands; and at ev­ery oc­ca­sion of their meet­ing a col­li­sion was to be ap­pre­hend­ed which might have been at­tend­ed with dis­as­trous re­sults. Hap­pi­ly the pru­dence and ad­dress of Pres­ident Bar­bi­cane avert­ed the dan­ger. These per­son­al demon­stra­tions found a di­vi­sion in the news­pa­pers of the dif­fer­ent States. The New York _Her­ald_ and the _Tri­bune_ sup­port­ed Texas, while the _Times_ and the _Amer­ican Re­view_ es­poused the cause of the Flori­dan deputies. The mem­bers of the Gun Club could not de­cide to which to give the pref­er­ence.

Texas pro­duced its ar­ray of twen­ty-​six coun­ties; Flori­da replied that twelve coun­ties were bet­ter than twen­ty-​six in a coun­try on­ly one-​sixth part of the size.

Texas plumed it­self up­on its 330,000 na­tives; Flori­da, with a far small­er ter­ri­to­ry, boast­ed of be­ing much more dense­ly pop­ulat­ed with 56,000.

The Tex­ans, through the columns of the _Her­ald_ claimed that some re­gard should be had to a State which grew the best cot­ton in all Amer­ica, pro­duced the best green oak for the ser­vice of the navy, and con­tained the finest oil, be­sides iron mines, in which the yield was fifty per cent. of pure met­al.

To this the _Amer­ican Re­view_ replied that the soil of Flori­da, al­though not equal­ly rich, af­ford­ed the best con­di­tions for the mould­ing and cast­ing of the Columbi­ad, con­sist­ing as it did of sand and argilla­ceous earth.

“That may be all very well,” replied the Tex­ans; “but you must first get to this coun­try. Now the com­mu­ni­ca­tions with Flori­da are dif­fi­cult, while the coast of Texas of­fers the bay of Galve­ston, which pos­sess­es a cir­cum­fer­ence of four­teen leagues, and is ca­pa­ble of con­tain­ing the navies of the en­tire world!”

“A pret­ty no­tion tru­ly,” replied the pa­pers in the in­ter­est of Flori­da, “that of Galve­ston bay _be­low the 29th par­al­lel!_ Have we not got the bay of Es­pir­itu San­to, open­ing pre­cise­ly up­on _the 28th de­gree_, and by which ships can reach Tam­pa Town by di­rect route?”

“A fine bay; half choked with sand!”

“Choked your­selves!” re­turned the oth­ers.

Thus the war went on for sev­er­al days, when Flori­da en­deav­ored to draw her ad­ver­sary away on to fresh ground; and one morn­ing the _Times_ hint­ed that, the en­ter­prise be­ing es­sen­tial­ly Amer­ican, it ought not to be at­tempt­ed up­on oth­er than pure­ly Amer­ican ter­ri­to­ry.

To these words Texas re­tort­ed, “Amer­ican! are we not as much so as you? Were not Texas and Flori­da both in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to the Union in 1845?”

“Un­doubt­ed­ly,” replied the _Times_; “but we have be­longed to the Amer­icans ev­er since 1820.”

“Yes!” re­turned the _Tri­bune_; “af­ter hav­ing been Spaniards or En­glish for two hun­dred years, you were sold to the Unit­ed States for five mil­lion dol­lars!”

“Well! and why need we blush for that? Was not Louisiana bought from Napoleon in 1803 at the price of six­teen mil­lion dol­lars?”

“Scan­dalous!” roared the Texas deputies. “A wretched lit­tle strip of coun­try like Flori­da to dare to com­pare it­self to Texas, who, in place of sell­ing her­self, as­sert­ed her own in­de­pen­dence, drove out the Mex­icans in March 2, 1846, and de­clared her­self a fed­er­al re­pub­lic af­ter the vic­to­ry gained by Samuel Hous­ton, on the banks of the San Jac­in­to, over the troops of San­ta An­na!– a coun­try, in fine, which vol­un­tar­ily an­nexed it­self to the Unit­ed States of Amer­ica!”

“Yes; be­cause it was afraid of the Mex­icans!” replied Flori­da.

“Afraid!” From this mo­ment the state of things be­came in­tol­er­able. A san­guinary en­counter seemed dai­ly im­mi­nent be­tween the two par­ties in the streets of Bal­ti­more. It be­came nec­es­sary to keep an eye up­on the deputies.

Pres­ident Bar­bi­cane knew not which way to look. Notes, doc­uments, let­ters full of men­aces show­ered down up­on his house. Which side ought he to take? As re­gard­ed the ap­pro­pri­ation of the soil, the fa­cil­ity of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, the ra­pid­ity of trans­port, the claims of both States were even­ly bal­anced. As for po­lit­ical pre­pos­ses­sions, they had noth­ing to do with the ques­tion.

This dead block had ex­ist­ed for some lit­tle time, when Bar­bi­cane re­solved to get rid of it all at once. He called a meet­ing of his col­leagues, and laid be­fore them a propo­si­tion which, it will be seen, was pro­found­ly saga­cious.

“On care­ful­ly con­sid­er­ing,” he said, “what is go­ing on now be­tween Flori­da and Texas, it is clear that the same dif­fi­cul­ties will re­cur with all the towns of the fa­vored State. The ri­val­ry will de­scend from State to city, and so on down­ward. Now Texas pos­sess­es eleven towns with­in the pre­scribed con­di­tions, which will fur­ther dis­pute the hon­or and cre­ate us new en­emies, while Flori­da has on­ly one. I go in, there­fore, for Flori­da and Tam­pa Town.”

This de­ci­sion, on be­ing made known, ut­ter­ly crushed the Tex­an deputies. Seized with an in­de­scrib­able fury, they ad­dressed threat­en­ing let­ters to the dif­fer­ent mem­bers of the Gun Club by name. The mag­is­trates had but one course to take, and they took it. They char­tered a spe­cial train, forced the Tex­ans in­to it whether they would or no; and they quit­ted the city with a speed of thir­ty miles an hour.

Quick­ly, how­ev­er, as they were despatched, they found time to hurl one last and bit­ter sar­casm at their ad­ver­saries.

Al­lud­ing to the ex­tent of Flori­da, a mere penin­su­la con­fined be­tween two seas, they pre­tend­ed that it could nev­er sus­tain the shock of the dis­charge, and that it would “bust up” at the very first shot.

“Very well, let it bust up!” replied the Flori­dans, with a brevi­ty of the days of an­cient Spar­ta.

CHAP­TER XII

UR­BI ET OR­BI

The as­tro­nom­ical, me­chan­ical, and to­po­graph­ical dif­fi­cul­ties re­solved, fi­nal­ly came the ques­tion of fi­nance. The sum re­quired was far too great for any in­di­vid­ual, or even any sin­gle State, to pro­vide the req­ui­site mil­lions.

Pres­ident Bar­bi­cane un­der­took, de­spite of the mat­ter be­ing a pure­ly Amer­ican af­fair, to ren­der it one of uni­ver­sal in­ter­est, and to re­quest the fi­nan­cial co-​op­er­ation of all peo­ples. It was, he main­tained, the right and du­ty of the whole earth to in­ter­fere in the af­fairs of its satel­lite. The sub­scrip­tion opened at Bal­ti­more ex­tend­ed prop­er­ly to the whole world– _Ur­bi et or­bi_.

This sub­scrip­tion was suc­cess­ful be­yond all ex­pec­ta­tion; notwith­stand­ing that it was a ques­tion not of lend­ing but of giv­ing the mon­ey. It was a pure­ly dis­in­ter­est­ed op­er­ation in the strictest sense of the term, and of­fered not the slight­est chance of prof­it.

The ef­fect, how­ev­er, of Bar­bi­cane’s com­mu­ni­ca­tion was not con­fined to the fron­tiers of the Unit­ed States; it crossed the At­lantic and Pa­cif­ic, in­vad­ing si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly Asia and Eu­rope, Africa and Ocean­ica. The ob­ser­va­to­ries of the Union placed them­selves in im­me­di­ate com­mu­ni­ca­tion with those of for­eign coun­tries. Some, such as those of Paris, Pe­ters­burg, Berlin, Stock­holm, Ham­burg, Mal­ta, Lis­bon, Benares, Madras, and oth­ers, trans­mit­ted their good wish­es; the rest main­tained a pru­dent si­lence, qui­et­ly await­ing the re­sult. As for the ob­ser­va­to­ry at Green­wich, sec­ond­ed as it was by the twen­ty- two as­tro­nom­ical es­tab­lish­ments of Great Britain, it spoke plain­ly enough. It bold­ly de­nied the pos­si­bil­ity of suc­cess, and pro­nounced in fa­vor of the the­ories of Cap­tain Nicholl. But this was noth­ing more than mere En­glish jeal­ousy.

On the 8th of Oc­to­ber Pres­ident Bar­bi­cane pub­lished a man­ifesto full of en­thu­si­asm, in which he made an ap­peal to “all per­sons of good will up­on the face of the earth.” This doc­ument, trans­lat­ed in­to all lan­guages, met with im­mense suc­cess.

Sub­scrip­tion lists were opened in all the prin­ci­pal cities of the Union, with a cen­tral of­fice at the Bal­ti­more Bank, 9 Bal­ti­more Street.

In ad­di­tion, sub­scrip­tions were re­ceived at the fol­low­ing banks in the dif­fer­ent states of the two con­ti­nents:

At Vi­en­na, with S. M. de Roth­schild. At Pe­ters­burg, Stieglitz and Co. At Paris, The Cred­it Mo­bili­er. At Stock­holm, Tot­tie and Ar­fured­son. At Lon­don, N. M. Roth­schild and Son. At Turin, Ar­douin and Co. At Berlin, Mendelssohn. At Gene­va, Lom­bard, Odi­er and Co. At Con­stantino­ple, The Ot­toman Bank. At Brus­sels, J. Lam­bert. At Madrid, Daniel Weisweller. At Am­ster­dam, Nether­lands Cred­it Co. At Rome, Tor­lonia and Co. At Lis­bon, Lecesne. At Copen­hagen, Pri­vate Bank. At Rio de Janeiro, Pri­vate Bank. At Mon­te­video, Pri­vate Bank. At Val­paraiso and Li­ma, Thomas la Cham­bre and Co. At Mex­ico, Mar­tin Daran and Co.

Three days af­ter the man­ifesto of Pres­ident Bar­bi­cane $4,000,000 were paid in­to the dif­fer­ent towns of the Union. With such a bal­ance the Gun Club might be­gin op­er­ations at once. But some days lat­er ad­vices were re­ceived to the ef­fect that for­eign sub­scrip­tions were be­ing ea­ger­ly tak­en up. Cer­tain coun­tries dis­tin­guished them­selves by their lib­er­al­ity; oth­ers un­tied their purse-​strings with less fa­cil­ity–a mat­ter of tem­per­ament. Fig­ures are, how­ev­er, more elo­quent than words, and here is the of­fi­cial state­ment of the sums which were paid in to the cred­it of the Gun Club at the close of the sub­scrip­tion.

Rus­sia paid in as her con­tin­gent the enor­mous sum of 368,733 rou­bles. No one need be sur­prised at this, who bears in mind the sci­en­tif­ic taste of the Rus­sians, and the im­pe­tus which they have giv­en to as­tro­nom­ical stud­ies–thanks to their nu­mer­ous ob­ser­va­to­ries.

France be­gan by de­rid­ing the pre­ten­sions of the Amer­icans. The moon served as a pre­text for a thou­sand stale puns and a score of bal­lads, in which bad taste con­test­ed the palm with ig­no­rance. But as for­mer­ly the French paid be­fore singing, so now they paid af­ter hav­ing had their laugh, and they sub­scribed for a sum of 1,253,930 francs. At that price they had a right to en­joy them­selves a lit­tle.

Aus­tria showed her­self gen­er­ous in the midst of her fi­nan­cial cri­sis. Her pub­lic con­tri­bu­tions amount­ed to the sum of 216,000 florins– a per­fect god­send.

Fifty-​two thou­sand rix-​dol­lars were the re­mit­tance of Swe­den and Nor­way; the amount is large for the coun­try, but it would un­doubt­ed­ly have been con­sid­er­ably in­creased had the sub­scrip­tion been opened in Chris­tiana si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly with that at Stock­holm. For some rea­son or oth­er the Nor­we­gians do not like to send their mon­ey to Swe­den.

Prus­sia, by a re­mit­tance of 250,000 thalers, tes­ti­fied her high ap­proval of the en­ter­prise.

Turkey be­haved gen­er­ous­ly; but she had a per­son­al in­ter­est in the mat­ter. The moon, in fact, reg­ulates the cy­cle of her years and her fast of Ra­madan. She could not do less than give 1,372,640 pi­as­tres; and she gave them with an ea­ger­ness which de­not­ed, how­ev­er, some pres­sure on the part of the gov­ern­ment.

Bel­gium dis­tin­guished her­self among the sec­ond-​rate states by a grant of 513,000 francs– about two cen­times per head of her pop­ula­tion.

Hol­land and her colonies in­ter­est­ed them­selves to the ex­tent of 110,000 florins, on­ly de­mand­ing an al­lowance of five per cent. dis­count for pay­ing ready mon­ey.

Den­mark, a lit­tle con­tract­ed in ter­ri­to­ry, gave nev­er­the­less 9,000 ducats, prov­ing her love for sci­en­tif­ic ex­per­iments.

The Ger­man­ic Con­fed­er­ation pledged it­self to 34,285 florins. It was im­pos­si­ble to ask for more; be­sides, they would not have giv­en it.

Though very much crip­pled, Italy found 200,000 lire in the pock­ets of her peo­ple. If she had had Vene­tia she would have done bet­ter; but she had not.

The States of the Church thought that they could not send less than 7,040 Ro­man crowns; and Por­tu­gal car­ried her de­vo­tion to sci­ence as far as 30,000 cruza­dos. It was the wid­ow’s mite– eighty-​six pi­as­tres; but self-​con­sti­tut­ed em­pires are al­ways rather short of mon­ey.

Two hun­dred and fifty-​sev­en francs, this was the mod­est con­tri­bu­tion of Switzer­land to the Amer­ican work. One must freely ad­mit that she did not see the prac­ti­cal side of the mat­ter. It did not seem to her that the mere despatch of a shot to the moon could pos­si­bly es­tab­lish any re­la­tion of af­fairs with her; and it did not seem pru­dent to her to em­bark her cap­ital in so haz­ardous an en­ter­prise. Af­ter all, per­haps she was right.

As to Spain, she could not scrape to­geth­er more than 110 re­als. She gave as an ex­cuse that she had her rail­ways to fin­ish. The truth is, that sci­ence is not fa­vor­ably re­gard­ed in that coun­try, it is still in a back­ward state; and more­over, cer­tain Spaniards, not by any means the least ed­ucat­ed, did not form a cor­rect es­ti­mate of the bulk of the pro­jec­tile com­pared with that of the moon. They feared that it would dis­turb the es­tab­lished or­der of things. In that case it were bet­ter to keep aloof; which they did to the tune of some re­als.

There re­mained but Eng­land; and we know the con­temp­tu­ous an­tipa­thy with which she re­ceived Bar­bi­cane’s propo­si­tion. The En­glish have but one soul for the whole twen­ty-​six mil­lions of in­hab­itants which Great Britain con­tains. They hint­ed that the en­ter­prise of the Gun Club was con­trary to the “prin­ci­ple of non-​in­ter­ven­tion.” And they did not sub­scribe a sin­gle far­thing.

At this in­ti­ma­tion the Gun Club mere­ly shrugged its shoul­ders and re­turned to its great work. When South Amer­ica, that is to say, Pe­ru, Chili, Brazil, the provinces of La Pla­ta and Columbia, had poured forth their quo­ta in­to their hands, the sum of $300,000, it found it­self in pos­ses­sion of a con­sid­er­able cap­ital, of which the fol­low­ing is a state­ment:

Unit­ed States sub­scrip­tions, . . $4,000,000 For­eign sub­scrip­tions . . . $1,446,675 ———– To­tal, . . . . $5,446,675

Such was the sum which the pub­lic poured in­to the trea­sury of the Gun Club.

Let no one be sur­prised at the vast­ness of the amount. The work of cast­ing, bor­ing, ma­son­ry, the trans­port of work­men, their es­tab­lish­ment in an al­most un­in­hab­it­ed coun­try, the con­struc­tion of fur­naces and work­shops, the plant, the pow­der, the pro­jec­tile, and in­cip­ient ex­pens­es, would, ac­cord­ing to the es­ti­mates, ab­sorb near­ly the whole. Cer­tain can­non-​shots in the Fed­er­al war cost one thou­sand dol­lars apiece. This one of Pres­ident Bar­bi­cane, unique in the an­nals of gun­nery, might well cost five thou­sand times more.

On the 20th of Oc­to­ber a con­tract was en­tered in­to with the man­ufac­to­ry at Cold­spring, near New York, which dur­ing the war had fur­nished the largest Par­rott, cast-​iron guns. It was stip­ulat­ed be­tween the con­tract­ing par­ties that the man­ufac­to­ry of Cold­spring should en­gage to trans­port to Tam­pa Town, in south­ern Flori­da, the nec­es­sary ma­te­ri­als for cast­ing the Columbi­ad. The work was bound to be com­plet­ed at lat­est by the 15th of Oc­to­ber fol­low­ing, and the can­non de­liv­ered in good con­di­tion un­der penal­ty of a for­feit of one hun­dred dol­lars a day to the mo­ment when the moon should again present her­self un­der the same con­di­tions– that is to say, in eigh­teen years and eleven days.

The en­gage­ment of the work­men, their pay, and all the nec­es­sary de­tails of the work, de­volved up­on the Cold­spring Com­pa­ny.

This con­tract, ex­ecut­ed in du­pli­cate, was signed by Bar­bi­cane, pres­ident of the Gun Club, of the one part, and T. Murchi­son di­rec­tor of the Cold­spring man­ufac­to­ry, of the oth­er, who thus ex­ecut­ed the deed on be­half of their re­spec­tive prin­ci­pals.

CHAP­TER XI­II

STONES HILL

When the de­ci­sion was ar­rived at by the Gun Club, to the dis­par­age­ment of Texas, ev­ery one in Amer­ica, where read­ing is a uni­ver­sal ac­quire­ment, set to work to study the ge­og­ra­phy of Flori­da. Nev­er be­fore had there been such a sale for works like “Bertram’s Trav­els in Flori­da,” “Ro­man’s Nat­ural His­to­ry of East and West Flori­da,” “William’s Ter­ri­to­ry of Flori­da,” and “Cle­land on the Cul­ti­va­tion of the Sug­ar-​Cane in Flori­da.” It be­came nec­es­sary to is­sue fresh edi­tions of these works.

Bar­bi­cane had some­thing bet­ter to do than to read. He de­sired to see things with his own eyes, and to mark the ex­act po­si­tion of the pro­posed gun. So, with­out a mo­ment’s loss of time, he placed at the dis­pos­al of the Cam­bridge Ob­ser­va­to­ry the funds nec­es­sary for the con­struc­tion of a tele­scope, and en­tered in­to ne­go­ti­ations with the house of Bread­will and Co., of Al­bany, for the con­struc­tion of an alu­minum pro­jec­tile of the re­quired size. He then quit­ted Bal­ti­more, ac­com­pa­nied by J. T. Mas­ton, Ma­jor El­phin­stone, and the man­ag­er of the Cold­spring fac­to­ry.

On the fol­low­ing day, the four fel­low-​trav­el­ers ar­rived at New Or­leans. There they im­me­di­ate­ly em­barked on board the _Tampi­co_, a despatch-​boat be­long­ing to the Fed­er­al navy, which the gov­ern­ment had placed at their dis­pos­al; and, get­ting up steam, the banks of Louisiana speed­ily dis­ap­peared from sight.

The pas­sage was not long. Two days af­ter start­ing, the _Tampi­co_, hav­ing made four hun­dred and eighty miles, came in sight of the coast of Flori­da. On a near­er ap­proach Bar­bi­cane found him­self in view of a low, flat coun­try of some­what bar­ren as­pect. Af­ter coast­ing along a se­ries of creeks abound­ing in lob­sters and oys­ters, the _Tampi­co_ en­tered the bay of Es­pir­itu San­to, where she fi­nal­ly an­chored in a small nat­ural har­bor, formed by the _em­bouchure_ of the Riv­er Hillis­bor­ough, at sev­en P.M., on the 22d of Oc­to­ber.

Our four pas­sen­gers dis­em­barked at once. “Gen­tle­men,” said Bar­bi­cane, “we have no time to lose; to­mor­row we must ob­tain hors­es, and pro­ceed to re­con­noi­ter the coun­try.”

Bar­bi­cane had scarce­ly set his foot on shore when three thou­sand of the in­hab­itants of Tam­pa Town came forth to meet him, an hon­or due to the pres­ident who had sig­nal­ized their coun­try by his choice.

De­clin­ing, how­ev­er, ev­ery kind of ova­tion, Bar­bi­cane en­sconced him­self in a room of the Franklin Ho­tel.

On the mor­row some of the small hors­es of the Span­ish breed, full of vig­or and of fire, stood snort­ing un­der his win­dows; but in­stead of four steeds, here were fifty, to­geth­er with their rid­ers. Bar­bi­cane de­scend­ed with his three fel­low- trav­el­ers; and much as­ton­ished were they all to find them­selves in the midst of such a cav­al­cade. He re­marked that ev­ery horse­man car­ried a car­bine slung across his shoul­ders and pis­tols in his hol­sters.

On ex­press­ing his sur­prise at these prepa­ra­tions, he was speed­ily en­light­ened by a young Flori­dan, who qui­et­ly said:

“Sir, there are Semi­noles there.”

“What do you mean by Semi­noles?”

“Sav­ages who scour the prairies. We thought it best, there­fore, to es­cort you on your road.”

“Pooh!” cried J. T. Mas­ton, mount­ing his steed.

“All right,” said the Flori­dan; “but it is true enough, nev­er­the­less.”

“Gen­tle­men,” an­swered Bar­bi­cane, “I thank you for your kind at­ten­tion; but it is time to be off.”

It was five A.M. when Bar­bi­cane and his par­ty, quit­ting Tam­pa Town, made their way along the coast in the di­rec­tion of Al­ifia Creek. This lit­tle riv­er falls in­to Hillis­bor­ough Bay twelve miles above Tam­pa Town. Bar­bi­cane and his es­cort coast­ed along its right bank to the east­ward. Soon the waves of the bay dis­ap­peared be­hind a bend of ris­ing ground, and the Flori­dan “cham­pagne” alone of­fered it­self to view.

Flori­da, dis­cov­ered on Palm Sun­day, in 1512, by Juan Ponce de Leon, was orig­inal­ly named _Pascha Flori­da_. It lit­tle de­served that des­ig­na­tion, with its dry and parched coasts. But af­ter some few miles of tract the na­ture of the soil grad­ual­ly changes and the coun­try shows it­self wor­thy of the name. Cul­ti­vat­ed plains soon ap­pear, where are unit­ed all the pro­duc­tions of the north­ern and trop­ical flo­ras, ter­mi­nat­ing in prairies abound­ing with pineap­ples and yams, to­bac­co, rice, cot­ton-​plants, and sug­ar-​canes, which ex­tend be­yond reach of sight, fling­ing their rich­es broad­cast with care­less prodi­gal­ity.

Bar­bi­cane ap­peared high­ly pleased on ob­serv­ing the pro­gres­sive el­eva­tion of the land; and in an­swer to a ques­tion of J. T. Mas­ton, replied:

“My wor­thy friend, we can­not do bet­ter than sink our Columbi­ad in these high grounds.”

“To get near­er the moon, per­haps?” said the sec­re­tary of the Gun Club.

“Not ex­act­ly,” replied Bar­bi­cane, smil­ing; “do you not see that among these el­evat­ed plateaus we shall have a much eas­ier work of it? No strug­gles with the wa­ter-​springs, which will save us long ex­pen­sive tub­ings; and we shall be work­ing in day­light in­stead of down a deep and nar­row well. Our busi­ness, then, is to open our trench­es up­on ground some hun­dreds of yards above the lev­el of the sea.”

“You are right, sir,” struck in Murchi­son, the en­gi­neer; “and, if I mis­take not, we shall ere long find a suit­able spot for our pur­pose.”

“I wish we were at the first stroke of the pick­axe,” said the pres­ident.

“And I wish we were at the _last_,” cried J. T. Mas­ton.

About ten A.M. the lit­tle band had crossed a dozen miles. To fer­tile plains suc­ceed­ed a re­gion of forests. There per­fumes of the most var­ied kinds min­gled to­geth­er in trop­ical pro­fu­sion. These al­most im­pen­etra­ble forests were com­posed of pomegranates, or­ange-​trees, cit­rons, figs, olives, apri­cots, ba­nanas, huge vines, whose blos­soms and fruits ri­valed each oth­er in col­or and per­fume. Be­neath the odor­ous shade of these mag­nif­icent trees flut­tered and war­bled a lit­tle world of bril­liant­ly plumaged birds.

J. T. Mas­ton and the ma­jor could not re­press their ad­mi­ra­tion on find­ing them­selves in the pres­ence of the glo­ri­ous beau­ties of this wealth of na­ture. Pres­ident Bar­bi­cane, how­ev­er, less sen­si­tive to these won­ders, was in haste to press for­ward; the very lux­uri­ance of the coun­try was dis­pleas­ing to him. They has­tened on­ward, there­fore, and were com­pelled to ford sev­er­al rivers, not with­out dan­ger, for they were in­fest­ed with huge al­li­ga­tors from fif­teen to eigh­teen feet long. Mas­ton coura­geous­ly men­aced them with his steel hook, but he on­ly suc­ceed­ed in fright­en­ing some pel­icans and teal, while tall flamin­gos stared stupid­ly at the par­ty.

At length these denizens of the swamps dis­ap­peared in their turn; small­er trees be­came thin­ly scat­tered among less dense thick­ets– a few iso­lat­ed groups de­tached in the midst of end­less plains over which ranged herds of star­tled deer.

“At last,” cried Bar­bi­cane, ris­ing in his stir­rups, “here we are at the re­gion of pines!”

“Yes! and of sav­ages too,” replied the ma­jor.

In fact, some Semi­noles had just came in sight up­on the hori­zon; they rode vi­olent­ly back­ward and for­ward on their fleet hors­es, bran­dish­ing their spears or dis­charg­ing their guns with a dull re­port. These hos­tile demon­stra­tions, how­ev­er, had no ef­fect up­on Bar­bi­cane and his com­pan­ions.

They were then oc­cu­py­ing the cen­ter of a rocky plain, which the sun scorched with its parch­ing rays. This was formed by a con­sid­er­able el­eva­tion of the soil, which seemed to of­fer to the mem­bers of the Gun Club all the con­di­tions req­ui­site for the con­struc­tion of their Columbi­ad.

“Halt!” said Bar­bi­cane, rein­ing up. “Has this place any lo­cal ap­pel­la­tion?”

“It is called Stones Hill,” replied one of the Flori­dans.

Bar­bi­cane, with­out say­ing a word, dis­mount­ed, seized his in­stru­ments, and be­gan to note his po­si­tion with ex­treme ex­act­ness. The lit­tle band, drawn up in the rear, watched his pro­ceed­ings in pro­found si­lence.

At this mo­ment the sun passed the merid­ian. Bar­bi­cane, af­ter a few mo­ments, rapid­ly wrote down the re­sult of his ob­ser­va­tions, and said:

“This spot is sit­uat­ed eigh­teen hun­dred feet above the lev­el of the sea, in 27@ 7′ N. lat. and 5@ 7′ W. long. of the merid­ian of Wash­ing­ton. It ap­pears to me by its rocky and bar­ren char­ac­ter to of­fer all the con­di­tions req­ui­site for our ex­per­iment. On that plain will be raised our mag­azines, work­shops, fur­naces, and work­men’s huts; and here, from this very spot,” said he, stamp­ing his foot on the sum­mit of Stones Hill, “hence shall our pro­jec­tile take its flight in­to the re­gions of the So­lar World.”

CHAP­TER XIV

PICK­AXE AND TROW­EL

The same evening Bar­bi­cane and his com­pan­ions re­turned to Tam­pa Town; and Murchi­son, the en­gi­neer, re-​em­barked on board the Tampi­co for New Or­leans. His ob­ject was to en­list an army of work­men, and to col­lect to­geth­er the greater part of the ma­te­ri­als. The mem­bers of the Gun Club re­mained at Tam­pa Town, for the pur­pose of set­ting on foot the pre­lim­inary works by the aid of the peo­ple of the coun­try.

Eight days af­ter its de­par­ture, the Tampi­co re­turned in­to the bay of Es­pir­itu San­to, with a whole flotil­la of steam­boats. Murchi­son had suc­ceed­ed in as­sem­bling to­geth­er fif­teen hun­dred ar­ti­sans. At­tract­ed by the high pay and con­sid­er­able boun­ties of­fered by the Gun Club, he had en­list­ed a choice le­gion of stok­ers, iron-​founders, lime-​burn­ers, min­ers, brick­mak­ers, and ar­ti­sans of ev­ery trade, with­out dis­tinc­tion of col­or. As many of these peo­ple brought their fam­ilies with them, their de­par­ture re­sem­bled a per­fect em­igra­tion.

On the 31st of Oc­to­ber, at ten o’clock in the morn­ing, the troop dis­em­barked on the quays of Tam­pa Town; and one may imag­ine the ac­tiv­ity which per­vad­ed that lit­tle town, whose pop­ula­tion was thus dou­bled in a sin­gle day.

Dur­ing the first few days they were busy dis­charg­ing the car­go brought by the flotil­la, the ma­chines, and the ra­tions, as well as a large num­ber of huts con­struct­ed of iron plates, sep­arate­ly pieced and num­bered. At the same pe­ri­od Bar­bi­cane laid the first sleep­ers of a rail­way fif­teen miles in length, in­tend­ed to unite Stones Hill with Tam­pa Town. On the first of Novem­ber Bar­bi­cane quit­ted Tam­pa Town with a de­tach­ment of work­men; and on the fol­low­ing day the whole town of huts was erect­ed round Stones Hill. This they en­closed with pal­isades; and in re­spect of en­er­gy and ac­tiv­ity, it might have been mis­tak­en for one of the great cities of the Union. Ev­ery­thing was placed un­der a com­plete sys­tem of dis­ci­pline, and the works were com­menced in most per­fect or­der.

The na­ture of the soil hav­ing been care­ful­ly ex­am­ined, by means of re­peat­ed bor­ings, the work of ex­ca­va­tion was fixed for the 4th of Novem­ber.

On that day Bar­bi­cane called to­geth­er his fore­men and ad­dressed them as fol­lows: “You are well aware, my friends, of the ob­ject with which I have as­sem­bled you to­geth­er in this wild part of Flori­da. Our busi­ness is to con­struct a can­non mea­sur­ing nine feet in its in­te­ri­or di­am­eter, six feet thick, and with a stone revet­ment of nine­teen and a half feet in thick­ness. We have, there­fore, a well of six­ty feet in di­am­eter to dig down to a depth of nine hun­dred feet. This great work must be com­plet­ed with­in eight months, so that you have 2,543,400 cu­bic feet of earth to ex­ca­vate in 255 days; that is to say, in round num­bers, 2,000 cu­bic feet per day. That which would present no dif­fi­cul­ty to a thou­sand navvies work­ing in open coun­try will be of course more trou­ble­some in a com­par­ative­ly con­fined space. How­ev­er, the thing must be done, and I reck­on for its ac­com­plish­ment up­on your courage as much as up­on your skill.”

At eight o’clock the next morn­ing the first stroke of the pick­axe was struck up­on the soil of Flori­da; and from that mo­ment that prince of tools was nev­er in­ac­tive for one mo­ment in the hands of the ex­ca­va­tors. The gangs re­lieved each oth­er ev­ery three hours.

On the 4th of Novem­ber fifty work­men com­menced dig­ging, in the very cen­ter of the en­closed space on the sum­mit of Stones Hill, a cir­cu­lar hole six­ty feet in di­am­eter. The pick­axe first struck up­on a kind of black earth, six inch­es in thick­ness, which was speed­ily dis­posed of. To this earth suc­ceed­ed two feet of fine sand, which was care­ful­ly laid aside as be­ing valu­able for serv­ing the cast­ing of the in­ner mould. Af­ter the sand ap­peared some com­pact white clay, re­sem­bling the chalk of Great Britain, which ex­tend­ed down to a depth of four feet. Then the iron of the picks struck up­on the hard bed of the soil; a kind of rock formed of pet­ri­fied shells, very dry, very sol­id, and which the picks could with dif­fi­cul­ty pen­etrate. At this point the ex­ca­va­tion ex­hib­it­ed a depth of six and a half feet and the work of the ma­son­ry was be­gun.

At the bot­tom of the ex­ca­va­tion they con­struct­ed a wheel of oak, a kind of cir­cle strong­ly bolt­ed to­geth­er, and of im­mense strength. The cen­ter of this wood­en disc was hol­lowed out to a di­am­eter equal to the ex­te­ri­or di­am­eter of the Columbi­ad. Up­on this wheel rest­ed the first lay­ers of the ma­son­ry, the stones of which were bound to­geth­er by hy­draulic ce­ment, with ir­re­sistible tenac­ity. The work­men, af­ter lay­ing the stones from the cir­cum­fer­ence to the cen­ter, were thus en­closed with­in a kind of well twen­ty-​one feet in di­am­eter. When this work was ac­com­plished, the min­ers re­sumed their picks and cut away the rock from un­der­neath the wheel it­self, tak­ing care to sup­port it as they ad­vanced up­on blocks of great thick­ness. At ev­ery two feet which the hole gained in depth they suc­ces­sive­ly with­drew the blocks. The wheel then sank lit­tle by lit­tle, and with it the mas­sive ring of ma­son­ry, on the up­per bed of which the ma­sons la­bored in­ces­sant­ly, al­ways re­serv­ing some vent holes to per­mit the es­cape of gas dur­ing the op­er­ation of the cast­ing.

This kind of work re­quired on the part of the work­men ex­treme nice­ty and minute at­ten­tion. More than one, in dig­ging un­der­neath the wheel, was dan­ger­ous­ly in­jured by the splin­ters of stone. But their ar­dor nev­er re­laxed, night or day. By day they worked un­der the rays of the scorch­ing sun; by night, un­der the gleam of the elec­tric light. The sounds of the picks against the rock, the burst­ing of mines, the grind­ing of the ma­chines, the wreaths of smoke scat­tered through the air, traced around Stones Hill a cir­cle of ter­ror which the herds of buf­faloes and the war par­ties of the Semi­noles nev­er ven­tured to pass. Nev­er­the­less, the works ad­vanced reg­ular­ly, as the steam-​cranes ac­tive­ly re­moved the rub­bish. Of un­ex­pect­ed ob­sta­cles there was lit­tle ac­count; and with re­gard to fore­seen dif­fi­cul­ties, they were speed­ily dis­posed of.

At the ex­pi­ra­tion of the first month the well had at­tained the depth as­signed for that lapse of time, name­ly, 112 feet. This depth was dou­bled in De­cem­ber, and tre­bled in Jan­uary.

Dur­ing the month of Febru­ary the work­men had to con­tend with a sheet of wa­ter which made its way right across the out­er soil. It be­came nec­es­sary to em­ploy very pow­er­ful pumps and com­pressed-​air en­gines to drain it off, so as to close up the ori­fice from whence it is­sued; just as one stops a leak on board ship. They at last suc­ceed­ed in get­ting the up­per hand of these un­to­ward streams; on­ly, in con­se­quence of the loos­en­ing of the soil, the wheel part­ly gave way, and a slight par­tial set­tle­ment en­sued. This ac­ci­dent cost the life of sev­er­al work­men.

No fresh oc­cur­rence thence­for­ward ar­rest­ed the progress of the op­er­ation; and on the tenth of June, twen­ty days be­fore the ex­pi­ra­tion of the pe­ri­od fixed by Bar­bi­cane, the well, lined through­out with its fac­ing of stone, had at­tained the depth of 900 feet. At the bot­tom the ma­son­ry rest­ed up­on a mas­sive block mea­sur­ing thir­ty feet in thick­ness, while on the up­per por­tion it was lev­el with the sur­round­ing soil.

Pres­ident Bar­bi­cane and the mem­bers of the Gun Club warm­ly con­grat­ulat­ed their en­gi­neer Murchi­son; the cy­clo­pean work had been ac­com­plished with ex­traor­di­nary ra­pid­ity.

Dur­ing these eight months Bar­bi­cane nev­er quit­ted Stones Hill for a sin­gle in­stant. Keep­ing ev­er close by the work of ex­ca­va­tion, he bus­ied him­self in­ces­sant­ly with the wel­fare and health of his workpeo­ple, and was sin­gu­lar­ly for­tu­nate in ward­ing off the epi­demics com­mon to large com­mu­ni­ties of men, and so dis­as­trous in those re­gions of the globe which are ex­posed to the in­flu­ences of trop­ical cli­mates.

Many work­men, it is true, paid with their lives for the rash­ness in­her­ent in these dan­ger­ous labors; but these mishaps are im­pos­si­ble to be avoid­ed, and they are classed among the de­tails with which the Amer­icans trou­ble them­selves but lit­tle. They have in fact more re­gard for hu­man na­ture in gen­er­al than for the in­di­vid­ual in par­tic­ular.

Nev­er­the­less, Bar­bi­cane pro­fessed op­po­site prin­ci­ples to these, and put them in force at ev­ery op­por­tu­ni­ty. So, thanks to his care, his in­tel­li­gence, his use­ful in­ter­ven­tion in all dif­fi­cul­ties, his prodi­gious and hu­mane sagac­ity, the av­er­age of ac­ci­dents did not ex­ceed that of transat­lantic coun­tries, not­ed for their ex­ces­sive pre­cau­tions– France, for in­stance, among oth­ers, where they reck­on about one ac­ci­dent for ev­ery two hun­dred thou­sand francs of work.

CHAP­TER XV

THE FETE OF THE CAST­ING

Dur­ing the eight months which were em­ployed in the work of ex­ca­va­tion the prepara­to­ry works of the cast­ing had been car­ried on si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly with ex­treme ra­pid­ity. A stranger ar­riv­ing at Stones Hill would have been sur­prised at the spec­ta­cle of­fered to his view.

At 600 yards from the well, and cir­cu­lar­ly ar­ranged around it as a cen­tral point, rose 1,200 re­ver­ber­at­ing ovens, each six feet in di­am­eter, and sep­arat­ed from each oth­er by an in­ter­val of three feet. The cir­cum­fer­ence oc­cu­pied by these 1,200 ovens pre­sent­ed a length of two miles. Be­ing all con­struct­ed on the same plan, each with its high quad­ran­gu­lar chim­ney, they pro­duced a most sin­gu­lar ef­fect.

It will be re­mem­bered that on their third meet­ing the com­mit­tee had de­cid­ed to use cast iron for the Columbi­ad, and in par­tic­ular the white de­scrip­tion. This met­al, in fact, is the most tena­cious, the most duc­tile, and the most mal­leable, and con­se­quent­ly suit­able for all mould­ing op­er­ations; and when smelt­ed with pit coal, is of su­pe­ri­or qual­ity for all en­gi­neer­ing works re­quir­ing great re­sist­ing pow­er, such as can­non, steam boil­ers, hy­draulic press­es, and the like.

Cast iron, how­ev­er, if sub­ject­ed to on­ly one sin­gle fu­sion, is rarely suf­fi­cient­ly ho­mo­ge­neous; and it re­quires a sec­ond fu­sion com­plete­ly to re­fine it by dis­pos­sess­ing it of its last earth­ly de­posits. So long be­fore be­ing for­ward­ed to Tam­pa Town, the iron ore, molten in the great fur­naces of Cold­spring, and brought in­to con­tact with coal and sili­ci­um heat­ed to a high tem­per­ature, was car­bur­ized and trans­formed in­to cast iron. Af­ter this first op­er­ation, the met­al was sent on to Stones Hill. They had, how­ev­er, to deal with 136,000,000 pounds of iron, a quan­ti­ty far too cost­ly to send by rail­way. The cost of trans­port would have been dou­ble that of ma­te­ri­al. It ap­peared prefer­able to freight ves­sels at New York, and to load them with the iron in bars. This, how­ev­er, re­quired not less than six­ty- eight ves­sels of 1,000 tons, a ver­ita­ble fleet, which, quit­ting New York on the 3rd of May, on the 10th of the same month as­cend­ed the Bay of Es­pir­itu San­to, and dis­charged their car­goes, with­out dues, in the port at Tam­pa Town. Thence the iron was trans­port­ed by rail to Stones Hill, and about the mid­dle of Jan­uary this enor­mous mass of met­al was de­liv­ered at its des­ti­na­tion.

It will eas­ily be un­der­stood that 1,200 fur­naces were not too many to melt si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly these 60,000 tons of iron. Each of these fur­naces con­tained near­ly 140,000 pounds weight of met­al. They were all built af­ter the mod­el of those which served for the cast­ing of the Rod­man gun; they were trape­zoidal in shape, with a high el­lip­ti­cal arch. These fur­naces, con­struct­ed of fire­proof brick, were es­pe­cial­ly adapt­ed for burn­ing pit coal, with a flat bot­tom up­on which the iron bars were laid. This bot­tom, in­clined at an an­gle of 25 de­grees, al­lowed the met­al to flow in­to the re­ceiv­ing troughs; and the 1,200 con­verg­ing trench­es car­ried the molten met­al down to the cen­tral well.

The day fol­low­ing that on which the works of the ma­son­ry and bor­ing had been com­plet­ed, Bar­bi­cane set to work up­on the cen­tral mould. His ob­ject now was to raise with­in the cen­ter of the well, and with a co­in­ci­dent ax­is, a cylin­der 900 feet high, and nine feet in di­am­eter, which should ex­act­ly fill up the space re­served for the bore of the Columbi­ad. This cylin­der was com­posed of a mix­ture of clay and sand, with the ad­di­tion of a lit­tle hay and straw. The space left be­tween the mould and the ma­son­ry was in­tend­ed to be filled up by the molten met­al, which would thus form the walls six feet in thick­ness. This cylin­der, in or­der to main­tain its equi­lib­ri­um, had to be bound by iron bands, and firm­ly fixed at cer­tain in­ter­vals by cross-​clamps fas­tened in­to the stone lin­ing; af­ter the cast­ings these would be buried in the block of met­al, leav­ing no ex­ter­nal pro­jec­tion.

This op­er­ation was com­plet­ed on the 8th of Ju­ly, and the run of the met­al was fixed for the fol­low­ing day.

“This _fete_ of the cast­ing will be a grand cer­emo­ny,” said J. T. Mas­ton to his friend Bar­bi­cane.

“Un­doubt­ed­ly,” said Bar­bi­cane; “but it will not be a pub­lic _fete_”

“What! will you not open the gates of the en­clo­sure to all com­ers?”

“I must be very care­ful, Mas­ton. The cast­ing of the Columbi­ad is an ex­treme­ly del­icate, not to say a dan­ger­ous op­er­ation, and I should pre­fer its be­ing done pri­vate­ly. At the dis­charge of the pro­jec­tile, a _fete_ if you like– till then, no!”

The pres­ident was right. The op­er­ation in­volved un­fore­seen dan­gers, which a great in­flux of spec­ta­tors would have hin­dered him from avert­ing. It was nec­es­sary to pre­serve com­plete free­dom of move­ment. No one was ad­mit­ted with­in the en­clo­sure ex­cept a del­ega­tion of mem­bers of the Gun Club, who had made the voy­age to Tam­pa Town. Among these was the brisk Bils­by, Tom Hunter, Colonel Bloms­ber­ry, Ma­jor El­phin­stone, Gen­er­al Mor­gan, and the rest of the lot to whom the cast­ing of the Columbi­ad was a mat­ter of per­son­al in­ter­est. J. T. Mas­ton be­came their ci­cerone. He omit­ted no point of de­tail; he con­duct­ed them through­out the mag­azines, work­shops, through the midst of the en­gines, and com­pelled them to vis­it the whole 1,200 fur­naces one af­ter the oth­er. At the end of the twelve-​hun­dredth vis­it they were pret­ty well knocked up.

The cast­ing was to take place at twelve o’clock pre­cise­ly. The pre­vi­ous evening each fur­nace had been charged with 114,000 pounds weight of met­al in bars dis­posed cross-​ways to each oth­er, so as to al­low the hot air to cir­cu­late freely be­tween them. At day­break the 1,200 chim­neys vom­it­ed their tor­rents of flame in­to the air, and the ground was ag­itat­ed with dull trem­blings. As many pounds of met­al as there were to cast, so many pounds of coal were there to burn. Thus there were 68,000 tons of coal which pro­ject­ed in the face of the sun a thick cur­tain of smoke. The heat soon be­came in­sup­port­able with­in the cir­cle of fur­naces, the rum­bling of which re­sem­bled the rolling of thun­der. The pow­er­ful ven­ti­la­tors added their con­tin­uous blasts and sat­urat­ed with oxy­gen the glow­ing plates. The op­er­ation, to be suc­cess­ful, re­quired to be con­duct­ed with great ra­pid­ity. On a sig­nal giv­en by a can­non-​shot each fur­nace was to give vent to the molten iron and com­plete­ly to emp­ty it­self. These ar­range­ments made, fore­men and work­men wait­ed the pre­con­cert­ed mo­ment with an im­pa­tience min­gled with a cer­tain amount of emo­tion. Not a soul re­mained with­in the en­clo­sure. Each su­per­in­ten­dent took his post by the aper­ture of the run.

Bar­bi­cane and his col­leagues, perched on a neigh­bor­ing em­inence, as­sist­ed at the op­er­ation. In front of them was a piece of ar­tillery ready to give fire on the sig­nal from the en­gi­neer. Some min­utes be­fore mid­day the first driblets of met­al be­gan to flow; the reser­voirs filled lit­tle by lit­tle; and, by the time that the whole melt­ing was com­plete­ly ac­com­plished, it was kept in abeyance for a few min­utes in or­der to fa­cil­itate the sep­ara­tion of for­eign sub­stances.

Twelve o’clock struck! A gun­shot sud­den­ly pealed forth and shot its flame in­to the air. Twelve hun­dred melt­ing-​troughs were si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly opened and twelve hun­dred fiery ser­pents crept to­ward the cen­tral well, un­rolling their in­can­des­cent curves. There, down they plunged with a ter­rif­ic noise in­to a depth of 900 feet. It was an ex­cit­ing and a mag­nif­icent spec­ta­cle. The ground trem­bled, while these molten waves, launch­ing in­to the sky their wreaths of smoke, evap­orat­ed the mois­ture of the mould and hurled it up­ward through the vent-​holes of the stone lin­ing in the form of dense va­por-​clouds. These ar­ti­fi­cial clouds un­rolled their thick spi­rals to a height of 1,000 yards in­to the air. A sav­age, wan­der­ing some­where be­yond the lim­its of the hori­zon, might have be­lieved that some new crater was form­ing in the bo­som of Flori­da, al­though there was nei­ther any erup­tion, nor ty­phoon, nor storm, nor strug­gle of the el­ements, nor any of those ter­ri­ble phe­nom­ena which na­ture is ca­pa­ble of pro­duc­ing. No, it was man alone who had pro­duced these red­dish va­pors, these gi­gan­tic flames wor­thy of a vol­cano it­self, these tremen­dous vi­bra­tions re­sem­bling the shock of an earth­quake, these re­ver­ber­ations ri­val­ing those of hur­ri­canes and storms; and it was his hand which pre­cip­itat­ed in­to an abyss, dug by him­self, a whole Ni­agara of molten met­al!

CHAP­TER XVI

THE COLUMBI­AD

Had the cast­ing suc­ceed­ed? They were re­duced to mere con­jec­ture. There was in­deed ev­ery rea­son to ex­pect suc­cess, since the mould has ab­sorbed the en­tire mass of the molten met­al; still some con­sid­er­able time must elapse be­fore they could ar­rive at any cer­tain­ty up­on the mat­ter.

The pa­tience of the mem­bers of the Gun Club was sore­ly tried dur­ing this pe­ri­od of time. But they could do noth­ing. J. T. Mas­ton es­caped roast­ing by a mir­acle. Fif­teen days af­ter the cast­ing an im­mense col­umn of smoke was still ris­ing in the open sky and the ground burned the soles of the feet with­in a ra­dius of two hun­dred feet round the sum­mit of Stones Hill. It was im­pos­si­ble to ap­proach near­er. All they could do was to wait with what pa­tience they might.

“Here we are at the 10th of Au­gust,” ex­claimed J. T. Mas­ton one morn­ing, “on­ly four months to the 1st of De­cem­ber! We shall nev­er be ready in time!” Bar­bi­cane said noth­ing, but his si­lence cov­ered se­ri­ous ir­ri­ta­tion.

How­ev­er, dai­ly ob­ser­va­tions re­vealed a cer­tain change go­ing on in the state of the ground. About the 15th of Au­gust the va­pors eject­ed had sen­si­bly di­min­ished in in­ten­si­ty and thick­ness. Some days af­ter­ward the earth ex­haled on­ly a slight puff of smoke, the last breath of the mon­ster en­closed with­in its cir­cle of stone. Lit­tle by lit­tle the belt of heat con­tract­ed, un­til on the 22nd of Au­gust, Bar­bi­cane, his col­leagues, and the en­gi­neer were en­abled to set foot on the iron sheet which lay lev­el up­on the sum­mit of Stones Hill.

“At last!” ex­claimed the pres­ident of the Gun Club, with an im­mense sigh of re­lief.

The work was re­sumed the same day. They pro­ceed­ed at once to ex­tract the in­te­ri­or mould, for the pur­pose of clear­ing out the bor­ing of the piece. Pick­ax­es and bor­ing irons were set to work with­out in­ter­mis­sion. The clayey and sandy soils had ac­quired ex­treme hard­ness un­der the ac­tion of the heat; but, by the aid of the ma­chines, the rub­bish on be­ing dug out was rapid­ly cart­ed away on rail­way wag­ons; and such was the ar­dor of the work, so per­sua­sive the ar­gu­ments of Bar­bi­cane’s dol­lars, that by the 3rd of Septem­ber all traces of the mould had en­tire­ly dis­ap­peared.

Im­me­di­ate­ly the op­er­ation of bor­ing was com­menced; and by the aid of pow­er­ful ma­chines, a few weeks lat­er, the in­ner sur­face of the im­mense tube had been ren­dered per­fect­ly cylin­dri­cal, and the bore of the piece had ac­quired a thor­ough pol­ish.

At length, on the 22d of Septem­ber, less than a twelve­month af­ter Bar­bi­cane’s orig­inal propo­si­tion, the enor­mous weapon, ac­cu­rate­ly bored, and ex­act­ly ver­ti­cal­ly point­ed, was ready for work. There was on­ly the moon now to wait for; and they were pret­ty sure that she would not fail in the ren­dezvous.

The ec­sta­sy of J. T. Mas­ton knew no bounds, and he nar­row­ly es­caped a fright­ful fall while star­ing down the tube. But for the strong hand of Colonel Bloms­ber­ry, the wor­thy sec­re­tary, like a mod­ern Ero­stra­tus, would have found his death in the depths of the Columbi­ad.

The can­non was then fin­ished; there was no pos­si­ble doubt as to its per­fect com­ple­tion. So, on the 6th of Oc­to­ber, Cap­tain Nicholl opened an ac­count be­tween him­self and Pres­ident Bar­bi­cane, in which he deb­it­ed him­self to the lat­ter in the sum of two thou­sand dol­lars. One may be­lieve that the cap­tain’s wrath was in­creased to its high­est point, and must have made him se­ri­ous­ly ill. How­ev­er, he had still three bets of three, four, and five thou­sand dol­lars, re­spec­tive­ly; and if he gained two out of these, his po­si­tion would not be very bad. But the mon­ey ques­tion did not en­ter in­to his cal­cu­la­tions; it was the suc­cess of his ri­val in cast­ing a can­non against which iron plates six­ty feet thick would have been in­ef­fec­tu­al, that dealt him a ter­ri­ble blow.

Af­ter the 23rd of Septem­ber the en­clo­sure of Stones hill was thrown open to the pub­lic; and it will be eas­ily imag­ined what was the con­course of vis­itors to this spot! There was an in­ces­sant flow of peo­ple to and from Tam­pa Town and the place, which re­sem­bled a pro­ces­sion, or rather, in fact, a pil­grim­age.

It was al­ready clear to be seen that, on the day of the ex­per­iment it­self, the ag­gre­gate of spec­ta­tors would be count­ed by mil­lions; for they were al­ready ar­riv­ing from all parts of the earth up­on this nar­row strip of promon­to­ry. Eu­rope was em­igrat­ing to Amer­ica.

Up to that time, how­ev­er, it must be con­fessed, the cu­rios­ity of the nu­mer­ous com­ers was but scant­ily grat­ified. Most had count­ed up­on wit­ness­ing the spec­ta­cle of the cast­ing, and they were treat­ed to noth­ing but smoke. This was sor­ry food for hun­gry eyes; but Bar­bi­cane would ad­mit no one to that op­er­ation. Then en­sued grum­bling, dis­con­tent, mur­murs; they blamed the pres­ident, taxed him with dic­ta­to­ri­al con­duct. His pro­ceed­ings were de­clared “un-​Amer­ican.” There was very near­ly a ri­ot round Stones Hill; but Bar­bi­cane re­mained in­flex­ible. When, how­ev­er, the Columbi­ad was en­tire­ly fin­ished, this state of closed doors could no longer be main­tained; be­sides it would have been bad taste, and even im­pru­dence, to af­front the pub­lic feel­ing. Bar­bi­cane, there­fore, opened the en­clo­sure to all com­ers; but, true to his prac­ti­cal dis­po­si­tion, he de­ter­mined to coin mon­ey out of the pub­lic cu­rios­ity.

It was some­thing, in­deed, to be en­abled to con­tem­plate this im­mense Columbi­ad; but to de­scend in­to its depths, this seemed to the Amer­icans the _ne plus ul­tra_ of earth­ly fe­lic­ity. Con­se­quent­ly, there was not one cu­ri­ous spec­ta­tor who was not will­ing to give him­self the treat of vis­it­ing the in­te­ri­or of this great metal­lic abyss. Bas­kets sus­pend­ed from steam-​cranes per­mit­ted them to sat­is­fy their cu­rios­ity. There was a per­fect ma­nia. Wom­en, chil­dren, old men, all made it a point of du­ty to pen­etrate the mys­ter­ies of the colos­sal gun. The fare for the de­scent was fixed at five dol­lars per head; and de­spite this high charge, dur­ing the two months which pre­ced­ed the ex­per­iment, the in­flux of vis­itors en­abled the Gun Club to pock­et near­ly five hun­dred thou­sand dol­lars!

It is need­less to say that the first vis­itors of the Columbi­ad were the mem­bers of the Gun Club. This priv­ilege was just­ly re­served for that il­lus­tri­ous body. The cer­emo­ny took place on the 25th of Septem­ber. A bas­ket of hon­or took down the pres­ident, J. T. Mas­ton, Ma­jor El­phin­stone, Gen­er­al Mor­gan, Colonel Bloms­ber­ry, and oth­er mem­bers of the club, to the num­ber of ten in all. How hot it was at the bot­tom of that long tube of met­al! They were half suf­fo­cat­ed. But what de­light! What ec­sta­sy! A ta­ble had been laid with six cov­ers on the mas­sive stone which formed the bot­tom of the Columbi­ad, and light­ed by a jet of elec­tric light re­sem­bling that of day it­self. Nu­mer­ous exquisite dish­es, which seemed to de­scend from heav­en, were placed suc­ces­sive­ly be­fore the guests, and the rich­est wines of France flowed in pro­fu­sion dur­ing this splen­did repast, served nine hun­dred feet be­neath the sur­face of the earth!

The fes­ti­val was an­imat­ed, not to say some­what noisy. Toasts flew back­ward and for­ward. They drank to the earth and to her satel­lite, to the Gun Club, the Union, the Moon, Di­ana, Phoebe, Se­lene, the “peace­ful couri­er of the night!” All the hur­rahs, car­ried up­ward up­on the sonorous waves of the im­mense acous­tic tube, ar­rived with the sound of thun­der at its mouth; and the mul­ti­tude ranged round Stones Hill hearti­ly unit­ed their shouts with those of the ten rev­el­ers hid­den from view at the bot­tom of the gi­gan­tic Columbi­ad.

J. T. Mas­ton was no longer mas­ter of him­self. Whether he shout­ed or ges­tic­ulat­ed, ate or drank most, would be a dif­fi­cult mat­ter to de­ter­mine. At all events, he would not have giv­en his place up for an em­pire, “not even if the can­non– load­ed, primed, and fired at that very mo­ment–were to blow him in pieces in­to the plan­etary world.”

CHAP­TER XVII

A TELE­GRAPH­IC DIS­PATCH

The great works un­der­tak­en by the Gun Club had now vir­tu­al­ly come to an end; and two months still re­mained be­fore the day for the dis­charge of the shot to the moon. To the gen­er­al im­pa­tience these two months ap­peared as long as years! Hith­er­to the small­est de­tails of the op­er­ation had been dai­ly chron­icled by the jour­nals, which the pub­lic de­voured with ea­ger eyes.

Just at this mo­ment a cir­cum­stance, the most un­ex­pect­ed, the most ex­traor­di­nary and in­cred­ible, oc­curred to rouse afresh their pant­ing spir­its, and to throw ev­ery mind in­to a state of the most vi­olent ex­cite­ment.

One day, the 30th of Septem­ber, at 3:47 P.M., a tele­gram, trans­mit­ted by ca­ble from Valen­tia (Ire­land) to New­found­land and the Amer­ican Main­land, ar­rived at the ad­dress of Pres­ident Bar­bi­cane.

The pres­ident tore open the en­ve­lope, read the dis­patch, and, de­spite his re­mark­able pow­ers of self-​con­trol, his lips turned pale and his eyes grew dim, on read­ing the twen­ty words of this tele­gram.

Here is the text of the dis­patch, which fig­ures now in the archives of the Gun Club:

FRANCE, PARIS, 30 Septem­ber, 4 A.M. Bar­bi­cane, Tam­pa Town, Flori­da, Unit­ed States.

Sub­sti­tute for your spher­ical shell a cylin­dro-​con­ical pro­jec­tile. I shall go in­side. Shall ar­rive by steam­er At­lanta. MICHEL AR­DAN.

CHAP­TER XVI­II

THE PAS­SEN­GER OF THE AT­LANTA

If this as­tound­ing news, in­stead of fly­ing through the elec­tric wires, had sim­ply ar­rived by post in the or­di­nary sealed en­ve­lope, Bar­bi­cane would not have hes­itat­ed a mo­ment. He would have held his tongue about it, both as a mea­sure of pru­dence, and in or­der not to have to re­con­sid­er his plans. This tele­gram might be a cov­er for some jest, es­pe­cial­ly as it came from a French­man. What hu­man be­ing would ev­er have con­ceived the idea of such a jour­ney? and, if such a per­son re­al­ly ex­ist­ed, he must be an id­iot, whom one would shut up in a lu­natic ward, rather than with­in the walls of the pro­jec­tile.

The con­tents of the dis­patch, how­ev­er, speed­ily be­came known; for the tele­graph­ic of­fi­cials pos­sessed but lit­tle dis­cre­tion, and Michel Ar­dan’s propo­si­tion ran at once through­out the sev­er­al States of the Union. Bar­bi­cane, had, there­fore, no fur­ther mo­tives for keep­ing si­lence. Con­se­quent­ly, he called to­geth­er such of his col­leagues as were at the mo­ment in Tam­pa Town, and with­out any ex­pres­sion of his own opin­ions sim­ply read to them the la­con­ic text it­self. It was re­ceived with ev­ery pos­si­ble va­ri­ety of ex­pres­sions of doubt, in­creduli­ty, and de­ri­sion from ev­ery one, with the ex­cep­tion of J. T. Mas­ton, who ex­claimed, “It is a grand idea, how­ev­er!”

When Bar­bi­cane orig­inal­ly pro­posed to send a shot to the moon ev­ery one looked up­on the en­ter­prise as sim­ple and prac­ti­ca­ble enough– a mere ques­tion of gun­nery; but when a per­son, pro­fess­ing to be a rea­son­able be­ing, of­fered to take pas­sage with­in the pro­jec­tile, the whole thing be­came a farce, or, in plain­er lan­guage a hum­bug.

One ques­tion, how­ev­er, re­mained. Did such a be­ing ex­ist? This tele­gram flashed across the depths of the At­lantic, the des­ig­na­tion of the ves­sel on board which he was to take his pas­sage, the date as­signed for his speedy ar­rival, all com­bined to im­part a cer­tain char­ac­ter of re­al­ity to the pro­pos­al. They must get some clear­er no­tion of the mat­ter. Scat­tered groups of in­quir­ers at length con­densed them­selves in­to a com­pact crowd, which made straight for the res­idence of Pres­ident Bar­bi­cane. That wor­thy in­di­vid­ual was keep­ing qui­et with the in­ten­tion of watch­ing events as they arose. But he had for­got­ten to take in­to ac­count the pub­lic im­pa­tience; and it was with no pleas­ant coun­te­nance that he watched the pop­ula­tion of Tam­pa Town gath­er­ing un­der his win­dows. The mur­murs and vo­cif­er­ations be­low present­ly obliged him to ap­pear. He came for­ward, there­fore, and on si­lence be­ing pro­cured, a cit­izen put point-​blank to him the fol­low­ing ques­tion: “Is the per­son men­tioned in the tele­gram, un­der the name of Michel Ar­dan, on his way here? Yes or no.”

“Gen­tle­men,” replied Bar­bi­cane, “I know no more than you do.”

“We must know,” roared the im­pa­tient voic­es.

“Time will show,” calm­ly replied the pres­ident.

“Time has no busi­ness to keep a whole coun­try in sus­pense,” replied the or­ator. “Have you al­tered the plans of the pro­jec­tile ac­cord­ing to the re­quest of the tele­gram?”

“Not yet, gen­tle­men; but you are right! we must have bet­ter in­for­ma­tion to go by. The tele­graph must com­plete its in­for­ma­tion.”

“To the tele­graph!” roared the crowd.

Bar­bi­cane de­scend­ed; and head­ing the im­mense as­sem­blage, led the way to the tele­graph of­fice. A few min­utes lat­er a tele­gram was dis­patched to the sec­re­tary of the un­der­writ­ers at Liv­er­pool, re­quest­ing an­swers to the fol­low­ing queries:

“About the ship At­lanta– when did she leave Eu­rope? Had she on board a French­man named Michel Ar­dan?”

Two hours af­ter­ward Bar­bi­cane re­ceived in­for­ma­tion too ex­act to leave room for the small­est re­main­ing doubt.

“The steam­er At­lanta from Liv­er­pool put to sea on the 2nd of Oc­to­ber, bound for Tam­pa Town, hav­ing on board a French­man borne on the list of pas­sen­gers by the name of Michel Ar­dan.”

That very evening he wrote to the house of Bread­will and Co., re­quest­ing them to sus­pend the cast­ing of the pro­jec­tile un­til the re­ceipt of fur­ther or­ders. On the 10th of Oc­to­ber, at nine A.M., the semaphores of the Ba­hama Canal sig­naled a thick smoke on the hori­zon. Two hours lat­er a large steam­er ex­changed sig­nals with them. the name of the At­lanta flew at once over Tam­pa Town. At four o’clock the En­glish ves­sel en­tered the Bay of Es­pir­itu San­to. At five it crossed the pas­sage of Hillis­bor­ough Bay at full steam. At six she cast an­chor at Port Tam­pa. The an­chor had scarce­ly caught the sandy bot­tom when five hun­dred boats sur­round­ed the At­lanta, and the steam­er was tak­en by as­sault. Bar­bi­cane was the first to set foot on deck, and in a voice of which he vain­ly tried to con­ceal the emo­tion, called “Michel Ar­dan.”

“Here!” replied an in­di­vid­ual perched on the poop.

Bar­bi­cane, with arms crossed, looked fixed­ly at the pas­sen­ger of the At­lanta.

He was a man of about forty-​two years of age, of large build, but slight­ly round-​shoul­dered. His mas­sive head mo­men­tar­ily shook a shock of red­dish hair, which re­sem­bled a li­on’s mane. His face was short with a broad fore­head, and fur­nished with a mous­tache as bristly as a cat’s, and lit­tle patch­es of yel­low­ish whiskers up­on full cheeks. Round, wild­ish eyes, slight­ly near-​sight­ed, com­plet­ed a phys­iog­no­my es­sen­tial­ly fe­line. His nose was firm­ly shaped, his mouth par­tic­ular­ly sweet in ex­pres­sion, high fore­head, in­tel­li­gent and fur­rowed with wrin­kles like a new­ly-​plowed field. The body was pow­er­ful­ly de­vel­oped and firm­ly fixed up­on long legs. Mus­cu­lar arms, and a gen­er­al air of de­ci­sion gave him the ap­pear­ance of a hardy, jol­ly, com­pan­ion. He was dressed in a suit of am­ple di­men­sions, loose neck­er­chief, open shirt­col­lar, dis­clos­ing a ro­bust neck; his cuffs were in­vari­ably un­but­toned, through which ap­peared a pair of red hands.

On the bridge of the steam­er, in the midst of the crowd, he bus­tled to and fro, nev­er still for a mo­ment, “drag­ging his an­chors,” as the sailors say, ges­tic­ulat­ing, mak­ing free with ev­ery­body, bit­ing his nails with ner­vous avid­ity. He was one of those orig­inals which na­ture some­times in­vents in the freak of a mo­ment, and of which she then breaks the mould.

Among oth­er pe­cu­liar­ities, this cu­rios­ity gave him­self out for a sub­lime ig­no­ra­mus, “like Shake­speare,” and pro­fessed supreme con­tempt for all sci­en­tif­ic men. Those “fel­lows,” as he called them, “are on­ly fit to mark the points, while we play the game.” He was, in fact, a thor­ough Bo­hemi­an, ad­ven­tur­ous, but not an ad­ven­tur­er; a hare-​brained fel­low, a kind of Icarus, on­ly pos­sess­ing re­lays of wings. For the rest, he was ev­er in scrapes, end­ing in­vari­ably by falling on his feet, like those lit­tle fig­ures which they sell for chil­dren’s toys. In a few words, his mot­to was “I have my opin­ions,” and the love of the im­pos­si­ble con­sti­tut­ed his rul­ing pas­sion.

Such was the pas­sen­ger of the At­lanta, al­ways ex­citable, as if boil­ing un­der the ac­tion of some in­ter­nal fire by the char­ac­ter of his phys­ical or­ga­ni­za­tion. If ev­er two in­di­vid­uals of­fered a strik­ing con­trast to each oth­er, these were cer­tain­ly Michel Ar­dan and the Yan­kee Bar­bi­cane; both, more­over, be­ing equal­ly en­ter­pris­ing and dar­ing, each in his own way.

The scruti­ny which the pres­ident of the Gun Club had in­sti­tut­ed re­gard­ing this new ri­val was quick­ly in­ter­rupt­ed by the shouts and hur­rahs of the crowd. The cries be­came at last so up­roar­ious, and the pop­ular en­thu­si­asm as­sumed so per­son­al a form, that Michel Ar­dan, af­ter hav­ing shak­en hands some thou­sands of times, at the im­mi­nent risk of leav­ing his fin­gers be­hind him, was fain at last to make a bolt for his cab­in.

Bar­bi­cane fol­lowed him with­out ut­ter­ing a word.

“You are Bar­bi­cane, I sup­pose?” said Michel Ar­dan, in a tone of voice in which he would have ad­dressed a friend of twen­ty years’ stand­ing.

“Yes,” replied the pres­ident of the Gun Club.

“All right! how d’ye do, Bar­bi­cane? how are you get­ting on– pret­ty well? that’s right.”

“So,” said Bar­bi­cane with­out fur­ther pre­lim­inary, “you are quite de­ter­mined to go.”

“Quite de­cid­ed.”

“Noth­ing will stop you?”

“Noth­ing. Have you mod­ified your pro­jec­tile ac­cord­ing to my tele­gram.”

“I wait­ed for your ar­rival. But,” asked Bar­bi­cane again, “have you care­ful­ly re­flect­ed?”

“Re­flect­ed? have I any time to spare? I find an op­por­tu­ni­ty of mak­ing a tour in the moon, and I mean to prof­it by it. There is the whole gist of the mat­ter.”

Bar­bi­cane looked hard at this man who spoke so light­ly of his project with such com­plete ab­sence of anx­iety. “But, at least,” said he, “you have some plans, some means of car­ry­ing your project in­to ex­ecu­tion?”

“Ex­cel­lent, my dear Bar­bi­cane; on­ly per­mit me to of­fer one re­mark: My wish is to tell my sto­ry once for all, to ev­ery­body, and then have done with it; then there will be no need for re­ca­pit­ula­tion. So, if you have no ob­jec­tion, as­sem­ble your friends, col­leagues, the whole town, all Flori­da, all Amer­ica if you like, and to-​mor­row I shall be ready to ex­plain my plans and an­swer any ob­jec­tions what­ev­er that may be ad­vanced. You may rest as­sured I shall wait with­out stir­ring. Will that suit you?”

“All right,” replied Bar­bi­cane.

So say­ing, the pres­ident left the cab­in and in­formed the crowd of the pro­pos­al of Michel Ar­dan. His words were re­ceived with clap­pings of hands and shouts of joy. They had re­moved all dif­fi­cul­ties. To-​mor­row ev­ery one would con­tem­plate at his ease this Eu­ro­pean hero. How­ev­er, some of the spec­ta­tors, more in­fat­uat­ed than the rest, would not leave the deck of the At­lanta. They passed the night on board. Among oth­ers J. T. Mas­ton got his hook fixed in the comb­ing of the poop, and it pret­ty near­ly re­quired the cap­stan to get it out again.

“He is a hero! a hero!” he cried, a theme of which he was nev­er tired of ring­ing the changes; “and we are on­ly like weak, sil­ly wom­en, com­pared with this Eu­ro­pean!”

As to the pres­ident, af­ter hav­ing sug­gest­ed to the vis­itors it was time to re­tire, he re-​en­tered the pas­sen­ger’s cab­in, and re­mained there till the bell of the steam­er made it mid­night.

But then the two ri­vals in pop­ular­ity shook hands hearti­ly and part­ed on terms of in­ti­mate friend­ship.

CHAP­TER XIX

A MON­STER MEET­ING

On the fol­low­ing day Bar­bi­cane, fear­ing that in­dis­creet ques­tions might be put to Michel Ar­dan, was de­sirous of re­duc­ing the num­ber of the au­di­ence to a few of the ini­ti­at­ed, his own col­leagues for in­stance. He might as well have tried to check the Falls of Ni­agara! he was com­pelled, there­fore, to give up the idea, and let his new friend run the chances of a pub­lic con­fer­ence. The place cho­sen for this mon­ster meet­ing was a vast plain sit­uat­ed in the rear of the town. In a few hours, thanks to the help of the ship­ping in port, an im­mense roof­ing of can­vas was stretched over the parched prairie, and pro­tect­ed it from the burn­ing rays of the sun. There three hun­dred thou­sand peo­ple braved for many hours the sti­fling heat while await­ing the ar­rival of the French­man. Of this crowd of spec­ta­tors a first set could both see and hear; a sec­ond set saw bad­ly and heard noth­ing at all; and as for the third, it could nei­ther see nor hear any­thing at all. At three o’clock Michel Ar­dan made his ap­pear­ance, ac­com­pa­nied by the prin­ci­pal mem­bers of the Gun Club. He was sup­port­ed on his right by Pres­ident Bar­bi­cane, and on his left by J. T. Mas­ton, more ra­di­ant than the mid­day sun, and near­ly as rud­dy. Ar­dan mount­ed a plat­form, from the top of which his view ex­tend­ed over a sea of black hats.

He ex­hib­it­ed not the slight­est em­bar­rass­ment; he was just as gay, fa­mil­iar, and pleas­ant as if he were at home. To the hur­rahs which greet­ed him he replied by a grace­ful bow; then, wav­ing his hands to re­quest si­lence, he spoke in per­fect­ly cor­rect En­glish as fol­lows:

“Gen­tle­men, de­spite the very hot weath­er I re­quest your pa­tience for a short time while I of­fer some ex­pla­na­tions re­gard­ing the projects which seem to have so in­ter­est­ed you. I am nei­ther an or­ator nor a man of sci­ence, and I had no idea of ad­dress­ing you in pub­lic; but my friend Bar­bi­cane has told me that you would like to hear me, and I am quite at your ser­vice. Lis­ten to me, there­fore, with your six hun­dred thou­sand ears, and please ex­cuse the faults of the speak­er. Now pray do not for­get that you see be­fore you a per­fect ig­no­ra­mus whose ig­no­rance goes so far that he can­not even un­der­stand the dif­fi­cul­ties! It seemed to him that it was a mat­ter quite sim­ple, nat­ural, and easy to take one’s place in a pro­jec­tile and start for the moon! That jour­ney must be un­der­tak­en soon­er or lat­er; and, as for the mode of lo­co­mo­tion adopt­ed, it fol­lows sim­ply the law of progress. Man be­gan by walk­ing on all-​fours; then, one fine day, on two feet; then in a car­riage; then in a stage-​coach; and last­ly by rail­way. Well, the pro­jec­tile is the ve­hi­cle of the fu­ture, and the plan­ets them­selves are noth­ing else! Now some of you, gen­tle­men, may imag­ine that the ve­loc­ity we pro­pose to im­part to it is ex­trav­agant. It is noth­ing of the kind. All the stars ex­ceed it in ra­pid­ity, and the earth her­self is at this mo­ment car­ry­ing us round the sun at three times as rapid a rate, and yet she is a mere lounger on the way com­pared with many oth­ers of the plan­ets! And her ve­loc­ity is con­stant­ly de­creas­ing. Is it not ev­ident, then, I ask you, that there will some day ap­pear ve­loc­ities far greater than these, of which light or elec­tric­ity will prob­ably be the me­chan­ical agent?

“Yes, gen­tle­men,” con­tin­ued the or­ator, “in spite of the opin­ions of cer­tain nar­row-​mind­ed peo­ple, who would shut up the hu­man race up­on this globe, as with­in some mag­ic cir­cle which it must nev­er out­step, we shall one day trav­el to the moon, the plan­ets, and the stars, with the same fa­cil­ity, ra­pid­ity, and cer­tain­ty as we now make the voy­age from Liv­er­pool to New York! Dis­tance is but a rel­ative ex­pres­sion, and must end by be­ing re­duced to ze­ro.”

The as­sem­bly, strong­ly pre­dis­posed as they were in fa­vor of the French hero, were slight­ly stag­gered at this bold the­ory. Michel Ar­dan per­ceived the fact.

“Gen­tle­men,” he con­tin­ued with a pleas­ant smile, “you do not seem quite con­vinced. Very good! Let us rea­son the mat­ter out. Do you know how long it would take for an ex­press train to reach the moon? Three hun­dred days; no more! And what is that? The dis­tance is no more than nine times the cir­cum­fer­ence of the earth; and there are no sailors or trav­el­ers, of even mod­er­ate ac­tiv­ity, who have not made longer jour­neys than that in their life­time. And now con­sid­er that I shall be on­ly nine­ty- sev­en hours on my jour­ney. Ah! I see you are reck­on­ing that the moon is a long way off from the earth, and that one must think twice be­fore mak­ing the ex­per­iment. What would you say, then, if we were talk­ing of go­ing to Nep­tune, which re­volves at a dis­tance of more than two thou­sand sev­en hun­dred and twen­ty mil­lions of miles from the sun! And yet what is that com­pared with the dis­tance of the fixed stars, some of which, such as Arc­turus, are bil­lions of miles dis­tant from us? And then you talk of the dis­tance which sep­arates the plan­ets from the sun! And there are peo­ple who af­firm that such a thing as dis­tance ex­ists. Ab­sur­di­ty, fol­ly, id­iot­ic non­sense! Would you know what I think of our own so­lar uni­verse? Shall I tell you my the­ory? It is very sim­ple! In my opin­ion the so­lar sys­tem is a sol­id ho­mo­ge­neous body; the plan­ets which com­pose it are in ac­tu­al con­tact with each oth­er; and what­ev­er space ex­ists be­tween them is noth­ing more than the space which sep­arates the molecules of the dens­est met­al, such as sil­ver, iron, or plat­inum! I have the right, there­fore, to af­firm, and I re­peat, with the con­vic­tion which must pen­etrate all your minds, `Dis­tance is but an emp­ty name; dis­tance does not re­al­ly ex­ist!’”

“Hur­rah!” cried one voice (need it be said it was that of J. T. Mas­ton). “Dis­tance does not ex­ist!” And over­come by the en­er­gy of his move­ments, he near­ly fell from the plat­form to the ground. He just es­caped a se­vere fall, which would have proved to him that dis­tance was by no means an emp­ty name.

“Gen­tle­men,” re­sumed the or­ator, “I re­peat that the dis­tance be­tween the earth and her satel­lite is a mere tri­fle, and un­de­serv­ing of se­ri­ous con­sid­er­ation. I am con­vinced that be­fore twen­ty years are over one-​half of our earth will have paid a vis­it to the moon. Now, my wor­thy friends, if you have any ques­tion to put to me, you will, I fear, sad­ly em­bar­rass a poor man like my­self; still I will do my best to an­swer you.”

Up to this point the pres­ident of the Gun Club had been sat­is­fied with the turn which the dis­cus­sion had as­sumed. It be­came now, how­ev­er, de­sir­able to di­vert Ar­dan from ques­tions of a prac­ti­cal na­ture, with which he was doubt­less far less con­ver­sant. Bar­bi­cane, there­fore, has­tened to get in a word, and be­gan by ask­ing his new friend whether he thought that the moon and the plan­ets were in­hab­it­ed.

“You put be­fore me a great prob­lem, my wor­thy pres­ident,” replied the or­ator, smil­ing. “Still, men of great in­tel­li­gence, such as Plutarch, Swe­den­borg, Bernardin de St. Pierre, and oth­ers have, if I mis­take not, pro­nounced in the af­fir­ma­tive. Look­ing at the ques­tion from the nat­ural philoso­pher’s point of view, I should say that noth­ing use­less ex­ist­ed in the world; and, re­ply­ing to your ques­tion by an­oth­er, I should ven­ture to as­sert, that if these worlds are hab­it­able, they ei­ther are, have been, or will be in­hab­it­ed.”

“No one could an­swer more log­ical­ly or fair­ly,” replied the pres­ident. “The ques­tion then re­verts to this: Are these worlds hab­it­able? For my own part I be­lieve they are.”

“For my­self, I feel cer­tain of it,” said Michel Ar­dan.

“Nev­er­the­less,” re­tort­ed one of the au­di­ence, “there are many ar­gu­ments against the hab­it­abil­ity of the worlds. The con­di­tions of life must ev­ident­ly be great­ly mod­ified up­on the ma­jor­ity of them. To men­tion on­ly the plan­ets, we should be ei­ther broiled alive in some, or frozen to death in oth­ers, ac­cord­ing as they are more or less re­moved from the sun.”

“I re­gret,” replied Michel Ar­dan, “that I have not the hon­or of per­son­al­ly know­ing my con­tra­dic­tor, for I would have at­tempt­ed to an­swer him. His ob­jec­tion has its mer­its, I ad­mit; but I think we may suc­cess­ful­ly com­bat it, as well as all oth­ers which af­fect the hab­it­abil­ity of oth­er worlds. If I were a nat­ural philoso­pher, I would tell him that if less of caloric were set in mo­tion up­on the plan­ets which are near­est to the sun, and more, on the con­trary, up­on those which are far­thest re­moved from it, this sim­ple fact would alone suf­fice to equal­ize the heat, and to ren­der the tem­per­ature of those worlds sup­port­able by be­ings or­ga­nized like our­selves. If I were a nat­ural­ist, I would tell him that, ac­cord­ing to some il­lus­tri­ous men of sci­ence, na­ture has fur­nished us with in­stances up­on the earth of an­imals ex­ist­ing un­der very vary­ing con­di­tions of life; that fish respire in a medi­um fa­tal to oth­er an­imals; that am­phibi­ous crea­tures pos­sess a dou­ble ex­is­tence very dif­fi­cult of ex­pla­na­tion; that cer­tain denizens of the seas main­tain life at enor­mous depths, and there sup­port a pres­sure equal to that of fifty or six­ty at­mo­spheres with­out be­ing crushed; that sev­er­al aquat­ic in­sects, in­sen­si­ble to tem­per­ature, are met with equal­ly among boil­ing springs and in the frozen plains of the Po­lar Sea; in fine, that we can­not help rec­og­niz­ing in na­ture a di­ver­si­ty of means of op­er­ation of­ten­times in­com­pre­hen­si­ble, but not the less re­al. If I were a chemist, I would tell him that the aero­lites, bod­ies ev­ident­ly formed ex­te­ri­or­ly of our ter­res­tri­al globe, have, up­on anal­ysis, re­vealed in­dis­putable traces of car­bon, a sub­stance which owes its ori­gin sole­ly to or­ga­nized be­ings, and which, ac­cord­ing to the ex­per­iments of Re­ichen­bach, must nec­es­sar­ily it­self have been en­dued with an­ima­tion. And last­ly, were I a the­olo­gian, I would tell him that the scheme of the Di­vine Re­demp­tion, ac­cord­ing to St. Paul, seems to be ap­pli­ca­ble, not mere­ly to the earth, but to all the ce­les­tial worlds. But, un­for­tu­nate­ly, I am nei­ther the­olo­gian, nor chemist, nor nat­ural­ist, nor philoso­pher; there­fore, in my ab­so­lute ig­no­rance of the great laws which gov­ern the uni­verse, I con­fine my­self to say­ing in re­ply, `I do not know whether the worlds are in­hab­it­ed or not: and since I do not know, I am go­ing to see!’”

Whether Michel Ar­dan’s an­tag­onist haz­ard­ed any fur­ther ar­gu­ments or not it is im­pos­si­ble to say, for the up­roar­ious shouts of the crowd would not al­low any ex­pres­sion of opin­ion to gain a hear­ing. On si­lence be­ing re­stored, the tri­umphant or­ator con­tent­ed him­self with adding the fol­low­ing re­marks:

“Gen­tle­men, you will ob­serve that I have but slight­ly touched up­on this great ques­tion. There is an­oth­er al­to­geth­er dif­fer­ent line of ar­gu­ment in fa­vor of the hab­it­abil­ity of the stars, which I omit for the present. I on­ly de­sire to call at­ten­tion to one point. To those who main­tain that the plan­ets are _not_ in­hab­it­ed one may re­ply: You might be per­fect­ly in the right, if you could on­ly show that the earth is the best pos­si­ble world, in spite of what Voltaire has said. She has but _one_ satel­lite, while Jupiter, Uranus, Sat­urn, Nep­tune have each sev­er­al, an ad­van­tage by no means to be de­spised. But that which ren­ders our own globe so un­com­fort­able is the in­cli­na­tion of its ax­is to the plane of its or­bit. Hence the in­equal­ity of days and nights; hence the dis­agree­able di­ver­si­ty of the sea­sons. On the sur­face of our un­hap­py spheroid we are al­ways ei­ther too hot or too cold; we are frozen in win­ter, broiled in sum­mer; it is the plan­et of rheuma­tism, coughs, bron­chi­tis; while on the sur­face of Jupiter, for ex­am­ple, where the ax­is is but slight­ly in­clined, the in­hab­itants may en­joy uni­form tem­per­atures. It pos­sess­es zones of per­pet­ual springs, sum­mers, au­tumns, and win­ters; ev­ery Jo­vian may choose for him­self what cli­mate he likes, and there spend the whole of his life in se­cu­ri­ty from all vari­ations of tem­per­ature. You will, I am sure, read­ily ad­mit this su­pe­ri­or­ity of Jupiter over our own plan­et, to say noth­ing of his years, which each equal twelve of ours! Un­der such aus­pices and such mar­velous con­di­tions of ex­is­tence, it ap­pears to me that the in­hab­itants of so for­tu­nate a world must be in ev­ery re­spect su­pe­ri­or to our­selves. All we re­quire, in or­der to at­tain such per­fec­tion, is the mere tri­fle of hav­ing an ax­is of ro­ta­tion less in­clined to the plane of its or­bit!”

“Hur­rah!” roared an en­er­get­ic voice, “let us unite our ef­forts, in­vent the nec­es­sary ma­chines, and rec­ti­fy the earth’s ax­is!”

A thun­der of ap­plause fol­lowed this pro­pos­al, the au­thor of which was, of course, no oth­er than J. T. Mas­ton. And, in all prob­abil­ity, if the truth must be told, if the Yan­kees could on­ly have found a point of ap­pli­ca­tion for it, they would have con­struct­ed a lever ca­pa­ble of rais­ing the earth and rec­ti­fy­ing its ax­is. It was just this de­fi­cien­cy which baf­fled these dar­ing me­chani­cians.

CHAP­TER XX

AT­TACK AND RI­POSTE

As soon as the ex­cite­ment had sub­sid­ed, the fol­low­ing words were heard ut­tered in a strong and de­ter­mined voice:

“Now that the speak­er has fa­vored us with so much imag­ina­tion, would he be so good as to re­turn to his sub­ject, and give us a lit­tle prac­ti­cal view of the ques­tion?”

All eyes were di­rect­ed to­ward the per­son who spoke. He was a lit­tle dried-​up man, of an ac­tive fig­ure, with an Amer­ican “goa­tee” beard. Prof­it­ing by the dif­fer­ent move­ments in the crowd, he had man­aged by de­grees to gain the front row of spec­ta­tors. There, with arms crossed and stern gaze, he watched the hero of the meet­ing. Af­ter hav­ing put his ques­tion he re­mained silent, and ap­peared to take no no­tice of the thou­sands of looks di­rect­ed to­ward him­self, nor of the mur­mur of dis­ap­pro­ba­tion ex­cit­ed by his words. Meet­ing at first with no re­ply, he re­peat­ed his ques­tion with marked em­pha­sis, adding, “We are here to talk about the _moon_ and not about the _earth_.”

“You are right, sir,” replied Michel Ar­dan; “the dis­cus­sion has be­come ir­reg­ular. We will re­turn to the moon.”

“Sir,” said the un­known, “you pre­tend that our satel­lite is in­hab­it­ed. Very good, but if Se­len­ites do ex­ist, that race of be­ings as­sured­ly must live with­out breath­ing, for– I warn you for your own sake– there is not the small­est par­ti­cle of air on the sur­face of the moon.”

At this re­mark Ar­dan pushed up his shock of red hair; he saw that he was on the point of be­ing in­volved in a strug­gle with this per­son up­on the very gist of the whole ques­tion. He looked stern­ly at him in his turn and said:

“Oh! so there is no air in the moon? And pray, if you are so good, who ven­tures to af­firm that?

“The men of sci­ence.”

“Re­al­ly?”

“Re­al­ly.”

“Sir,” replied Michel, “pleas­antry apart, I have a pro­found re­spect for men of sci­ence who do pos­sess sci­ence, but a pro­found con­tempt for men of sci­ence who do not.”

“Do you know any who be­long to the lat­ter cat­ego­ry?”

“De­cid­ed­ly. In France there are some who main­tain that, math­emat­ical­ly, a bird can­not pos­si­bly fly; and oth­ers who demon­strate the­oret­ical­ly that fish­es were nev­er made to live in wa­ter.”

“I have noth­ing to do with per­sons of that de­scrip­tion, and I can quote, in sup­port of my state­ment, names which you can­not refuse def­er­ence to.”

“Then, sir, you will sad­ly em­bar­rass a poor ig­no­rant, who, be­sides, asks noth­ing bet­ter than to learn.”

“Why, then, do you in­tro­duce sci­en­tif­ic ques­tions if you have nev­er stud­ied them?” asked the un­known some­what coarse­ly.

“For the rea­son that `he is al­ways brave who nev­er sus­pects dan­ger.’ I know noth­ing, it is true; but it is pre­cise­ly my very weak­ness which con­sti­tutes my strength.”

“Your weak­ness amounts to fol­ly,” re­tort­ed the un­known in a pas­sion.

“All the bet­ter,” replied our French­man, “if it car­ries me up to the moon.”

Bar­bi­cane and his col­leagues de­voured with their eyes the in­trud­er who had so bold­ly placed him­self in an­tag­onism to their en­ter­prise. No­body knew him, and the pres­ident, un­easy as to the re­sult of so free a dis­cus­sion, watched his new friend with some anx­iety. The meet­ing be­gan to be some­what fid­gety al­so, for the con­test di­rect­ed their at­ten­tion to the dan­gers, if not the ac­tu­al im­pos­si­bil­ities, of the pro­posed ex­pe­di­tion.

“Sir,” replied Ar­dan’s an­tag­onist, “there are many and in­con­tro­vert­ible rea­sons which prove the ab­sence of an at­mo­sphere in the moon. I might say that, _a pri­ori_, if one ev­er did ex­ist, it must have been ab­sorbed by the earth; but I pre­fer to bring for­ward in­dis­putable facts.”

“Bring them for­ward then, sir, as many as you please.”

“You know,” said the stranger, “that when any lu­mi­nous rays cross a medi­um such as the air, they are de­flect­ed out of the straight line; in oth­er words, they un­der­go re­frac­tion. Well! When stars are oc­cult­ed by the moon, their rays, on graz­ing the edge of her disc, ex­hib­it not the least de­vi­ation, nor of­fer the slight­est in­di­ca­tion of re­frac­tion. It fol­lows, there­fore, that the moon can­not be sur­round­ed by an at­mo­sphere.

“In point of fact,” replied Ar­dan, “this is your chief, if not your _on­ly_ ar­gu­ment; and a re­al­ly sci­en­tif­ic man might be puz­zled to an­swer it. For my­self, I will sim­ply say that it is de­fec­tive, be­cause it as­sumes that the an­gu­lar di­am­eter of the moon has been com­plete­ly de­ter­mined, which is not the case. But let us pro­ceed. Tell me, my dear sir, do you ad­mit the ex­is­tence of vol­ca­noes on the moon’s sur­face?”

“Ex­tinct, yes! In ac­tiv­ity, no!”

“These vol­ca­noes, how­ev­er, were at one time in a state of ac­tiv­ity?”

“True, but, as they fur­nish them­selves the oxy­gen nec­es­sary for com­bus­tion, the mere fact of their erup­tion does not prove the pres­ence of an at­mo­sphere.”

“Pro­ceed again, then; and let us set aside this class of ar­gu­ments in or­der to come to di­rect ob­ser­va­tions. In 1715 the as­tronomers Lou­ville and Hal­ley, watch­ing the eclipse of the 3rd of May, re­marked some very ex­traor­di­nary scin­til­la­tions. These jets of light, rapid in na­ture, and of fre­quent re­cur­rence, they at­tribut­ed to thun­der­storms gen­er­at­ed in the lu­nar at­mo­sphere.”

“In 1715,” replied the un­known, “the as­tronomers Lou­ville and Hal­ley mis­took for lu­nar phe­nom­ena some which were pure­ly ter­res­tri­al, such as me­te­oric or oth­er bod­ies which are gen­er­at­ed in our own at­mo­sphere. This was the sci­en­tif­ic ex­pla­na­tion at the time of the facts; and that is my an­swer now.”

“On again, then,” replied Ar­dan; “Her­schel, in 1787, ob­served a great num­ber of lu­mi­nous points on the moon’s sur­face, did he not?”

“Yes! but with­out of­fer­ing any so­lu­tion of them. Her­schel him­self nev­er in­ferred from them the ne­ces­si­ty of a lu­nar at­mo­sphere. And I may add that Baeer and Maedler, the two great au­thor­ities up­on the moon, are quite agreed as to the en­tire ab­sence of air on its sur­face.”

A move­ment was here man­ifest among the as­sem­blage, who ap­peared to be grow­ing ex­cit­ed by the ar­gu­ments of this sin­gu­lar per­son­age.

“Let us pro­ceed,” replied Ar­dan, with per­fect cool­ness, “and come to one im­por­tant fact. A skill­ful French as­tronomer, M. Lausse­dat, in watch­ing the eclipse of Ju­ly 18, 1860, probed that the horns of the lu­nar cres­cent were round­ed and trun­cat­ed. Now, this ap­pear­ance could on­ly have been pro­duced by a de­vi­ation of the so­lar rays in travers­ing the at­mo­sphere of the moon. There is no oth­er pos­si­ble ex­pla­na­tion of the facts.”

“But is this es­tab­lished as a fact?”

“Ab­so­lute­ly cer­tain!”

A counter-​move­ment here took place in fa­vor of the hero of the meet­ing, whose op­po­nent was now re­duced to si­lence. Ar­dan re­sumed the con­ver­sa­tion; and with­out ex­hibit­ing any ex­ul­ta­tion at the ad­van­tage he had gained, sim­ply said:

“You see, then, my dear sir, we must not pro­nounce with ab­so­lute pos­itive­ness against the ex­is­tence of an at­mo­sphere in the moon. That at­mo­sphere is, prob­ably, of ex­treme rar­ity; nev­er­the­less at the present day sci­ence gen­er­al­ly ad­mits that it ex­ists.”

“Not in the moun­tains, at all events,” re­turned the un­known, un­will­ing to give in.

“No! but at the bot­tom of the val­leys, and not ex­ceed­ing a few hun­dred feet in height.”

“In any case you will do well to take ev­ery pre­cau­tion, for the air will be ter­ri­bly rar­ified.”

“My good sir, there will al­ways be enough for a soli­tary in­di­vid­ual; be­sides, once ar­rived up there, I shall do my best to econ­omize, and not to breathe ex­cept on grand oc­ca­sions!”

A tremen­dous roar of laugh­ter rang in the ears of the mys­te­ri­ous in­ter­locu­tor, who glared fierce­ly round up­on the as­sem­bly.

“Then,” con­tin­ued Ar­dan, with a care­less air, “since we are in ac­cord re­gard­ing the pres­ence of a cer­tain at­mo­sphere, we are forced to ad­mit the pres­ence of a cer­tain quan­ti­ty of wa­ter. This is a hap­py con­se­quence for me. More­over, my ami­able con­tra­dic­tor, per­mit me to sub­mit to you one fur­ther ob­ser­va­tion. We on­ly know _one_ side of the moon’s disc; and if there is but lit­tle air on the face pre­sent­ed to us, it is pos­si­ble that there is plen­ty on the one turned away from us.”

“And for what rea­son?”

“Be­cause the moon, un­der the ac­tion of the earth’s at­trac­tion, has as­sumed the form of an egg, which we look at from the small­er end. Hence it fol­lows, by Hausen’s cal­cu­la­tions, that its cen­ter of grav­ity is sit­uat­ed in the oth­er hemi­sphere. Hence it re­sults that the great mass of air and wa­ter must have been drawn away to the oth­er face of our satel­lite dur­ing the first days of its cre­ation.”

“Pure fan­cies!” cried the un­known.

“No! Pure the­ories! which are based up­on the laws of me­chan­ics, and it seems dif­fi­cult to me to re­fute them. I ap­peal then to this meet­ing, and I put it to them whether life, such as ex­ists up­on the earth, is pos­si­ble on the sur­face of the moon?”

Three hun­dred thou­sand au­di­tors at once ap­plaud­ed the propo­si­tion. Ar­dan’s op­po­nent tried to get in an­oth­er word, but he could not ob­tain a hear­ing. Cries and men­aces fell up­on him like hail.

“Enough! enough!” cried some.

“Drive the in­trud­er off!” shout­ed oth­ers.

“Turn him out!” roared the ex­as­per­at­ed crowd.

But he, hold­ing firm­ly on to the plat­form, did not budge an inch, and let the storm pass on, which would soon have as­sumed formidable pro­por­tions, if Michel Ar­dan had not qui­et­ed it by a ges­ture. He was too chival­rous to aban­don his op­po­nent in an ap­par­ent ex­trem­ity.

“You wished to say a few more words?” he asked, in a pleas­ant voice.

“Yes, a thou­sand; or rather, no, on­ly one! If you per­se­vere in your en­ter­prise, you must be a—-“

“Very rash per­son! How can you treat me as such? me, who have de­mand­ed a cylin­dro-​con­ical pro­jec­tile, in or­der to pre­vent turn­ing round and round on my way like a squir­rel?”

“But, un­hap­py man, the dread­ful re­coil will smash you to pieces at your start­ing.”

“My dear con­tra­dic­tor, you have just put your fin­ger up­on the true and on­ly dif­fi­cul­ty; nev­er­the­less, I have too good an opin­ion of the in­dus­tri­al ge­nius of the Amer­icans not to be­lieve that they will suc­ceed in over­com­ing it.”

“But the heat de­vel­oped by the ra­pid­ity of the pro­jec­tile in cross­ing the stra­ta of air?”

“Oh! the walls are thick, and I shall soon have crossed the at­mo­sphere.”

“But vict­uals and wa­ter?”

“I have cal­cu­lat­ed for a twelve­month’s sup­ply, and I shall be on­ly four days on the jour­ney.”

“But for air to breathe on the road?”

“I shall make it by a chem­ical pro­cess.”

“But your fall on the moon, sup­pos­ing you ev­er reach it?”

“It will be six times less dan­ger­ous than a sud­den fall up­on the earth, be­cause the weight will be on­ly one-​sixth as great on the sur­face of the moon.”

“Still it will be enough to smash you like glass!”

“What is to pre­vent my re­tard­ing the shock by means of rock­ets con­ve­nient­ly placed, and light­ed at the right mo­ment?”

“But af­ter all, sup­pos­ing all dif­fi­cul­ties sur­mount­ed, all ob­sta­cles re­moved, sup­pos­ing ev­ery­thing com­bined to fa­vor you, and grant­ing that you may ar­rive safe and sound in the moon, how will you come back?”

“I am not com­ing back!”

At this re­ply, al­most sub­lime in its very sim­plic­ity, the as­sem­bly be­came silent. But its si­lence was more elo­quent than could have been its cries of en­thu­si­asm. The un­known prof­it­ed by the op­por­tu­ni­ty and once more protest­ed:

“You will in­evitably kill your­self!” he cried; “and your death will be that of a mad­man, use­less even to sci­ence!”

“Go on, my dear un­known, for tru­ly your prophe­cies are most agree­able!”

“It re­al­ly is too much!” cried Michel Ar­dan’s ad­ver­sary. “I do not know why I should con­tin­ue so frivolous a dis­cus­sion! Please your­self about this in­sane ex­pe­di­tion! We need not trou­ble our­selves about you!”

“Pray don’t stand up­on cer­emo­ny!”

“No! an­oth­er per­son is re­spon­si­ble for your act.”

“Who, may I ask?” de­mand­ed Michel Ar­dan in an im­pe­ri­ous tone.

“The ig­no­ra­mus who or­ga­nized this equal­ly ab­surd and im­pos­si­ble ex­per­iment!”

The at­tack was di­rect. Bar­bi­cane, ev­er since the in­ter­fer­ence of the un­known, had been mak­ing fear­ful ef­forts of self-​con­trol; now, how­ev­er, see­ing him­self di­rect­ly at­tacked, he could re­strain him­self no longer. He rose sud­den­ly, and was rush­ing up­on the en­emy who thus braved him to the face, when all at once he found him­self sep­arat­ed from him.

The plat­form was lift­ed by a hun­dred strong arms, and the pres­ident of the Gun Club shared with Michel Ar­dan tri­umphal hon­ors. The shield was heavy, but the bear­ers came in con­tin­uous re­lays, dis­put­ing, strug­gling, even fight­ing among them­selves in their ea­ger­ness to lend their shoul­ders to this demon­stra­tion.

How­ev­er, the un­known had not prof­it­ed by the tu­mult to quit his post. Be­sides he could not have done it in the midst of that com­pact crowd. There he held on in the front row with crossed arms, glar­ing at Pres­ident Bar­bi­cane.

The shouts of the im­mense crowd con­tin­ued at their high­est pitch through­out this tri­umphant march. Michel Ar­dan took it all with ev­ident plea­sure. His face gleamed with de­light. Sev­er­al times the plat­form seemed seized with pitch­ing and rolling like a weath­er­beat­en ship. But the two heros of the meet­ing had good sea-​legs. They nev­er stum­bled; and their ves­sel ar­rived with­out dues at the port of Tam­pa Town.

Michel Ar­dan man­aged for­tu­nate­ly to es­cape from the last em­braces of his vig­or­ous ad­mir­ers. He made for the Ho­tel Franklin, quick­ly gained his cham­ber, and slid un­der the bed­clothes, while an army of a hun­dred thou­sand men kept watch un­der his win­dows.

Dur­ing this time a scene, short, grave, and de­ci­sive, took place be­tween the mys­te­ri­ous per­son­age and the pres­ident of the Gun Club.

Bar­bi­cane, free at last, had gone straight at his ad­ver­sary.

“Come!” he said short­ly.

The oth­er fol­lowed him on the quay; and the two present­ly found them­selves alone at the en­trance of an open wharf on Jones’ Fall.

The two en­emies, still mu­tu­al­ly un­known, gazed at each oth­er.

“Who are you?” asked Bar­bi­cane.

“Cap­tain Nicholl!”

“So I sus­pect­ed. Hith­er­to chance has nev­er thrown you in my way.”

“I am come for that pur­pose.”

“You have in­sult­ed me.”

“Pub­licly!”

“And you will an­swer to me for this in­sult?”

“At this very mo­ment.”

“No! I de­sire that all that pass­es be­tween us shall be se­cret. Their is a wood sit­uat­ed three miles from Tam­pa, the wood of Sker­snaw. Do you know it?”

“I know it.”

“Will you be so good as to en­ter it to-​mor­row morn­ing at five o’clock, on one side?”

“Yes! if you will en­ter at the oth­er side at the same hour.”

“And you will not for­get your ri­fle?” said Bar­bi­cane.

“No more than you will for­get yours?” replied Nicholl.

These words hav­ing been cold­ly spo­ken, the pres­ident of the Gun Club and the cap­tain part­ed. Bar­bi­cane re­turned to his lodg­ing; but in­stead of snatch­ing a few hours of re­pose, he passed the night in en­deav­or­ing to dis­cov­er a means of evad­ing the re­coil of the pro­jec­tile, and re­solv­ing the dif­fi­cult prob­lem pro­posed by Michel Ar­dan dur­ing the dis­cus­sion at the meet­ing.

CHAP­TER XXI

HOW A FRENCH­MAN MAN­AGES AN AF­FAIR

While the con­tract of this du­el was be­ing dis­cussed by the pres­ident and the cap­tain– this dread­ful, sav­age du­el, in which each ad­ver­sary be­came a man-​hunter– Michel Ar­dan was rest­ing from the fa­tigues of his tri­umph. Rest­ing is hard­ly an ap­pro­pri­ate ex­pres­sion, for Amer­ican beds ri­val mar­ble or gran­ite ta­bles for hard­ness.

Ar­dan was sleep­ing, then, bad­ly enough, toss­ing about be­tween the cloths which served him for sheets, and he was dream­ing of mak­ing a more com­fort­able couch in his pro­jec­tile when a fright­ful noise dis­turbed his dreams. Thun­der­ing blows shook his door. They seemed to be caused by some iron in­stru­ment. A great deal of loud talk­ing was dis­tin­guish­able in this rack­et, which was rather too ear­ly in the morn­ing. “Open the door,” some one shrieked, “for heav­en’s sake!” Ar­dan saw no rea­son for com­ply­ing with a de­mand so rough­ly ex­pressed. How­ev­er, he got up and opened the door just as it was giv­ing way be­fore the blows of this de­ter­mined vis­itor. The sec­re­tary of the Gun Club burst in­to the room. A bomb could not have made more noise or have en­tered the room with less cer­emo­ny.

“Last night,” cried J. T. Mas­ton, _ex abrup­to_, “our pres­ident was pub­licly in­sult­ed dur­ing the meet­ing. He pro­voked his ad­ver­sary, who is none oth­er than Cap­tain Nicholl! They are fight­ing this morn­ing in the wood of Sker­snaw. I heard all the par­tic­ulars from the mouth of Bar­bi­cane him­self. If he is killed, then our scheme is at an end. We must pre­vent his du­el; and one man alone has enough in­flu­ence over Bar­bi­cane to stop him, and that man is Michel Ar­dan.”

While J. T. Mas­ton was speak­ing, Michel Ar­dan, with­out in­ter­rupt­ing him, had hasti­ly put on his clothes; and, in less than two min­utes, the two friends were mak­ing for the sub­urbs of Tam­pa Town with rapid strides.

It was dur­ing this walk that Mas­ton told Ar­dan the state of the case. He told him the re­al caus­es of the hos­til­ity be­tween Bar­bi­cane and Nicholl; how it was of old date, and why, thanks to un­known friends, the pres­ident and the cap­tain had, as yet, nev­er met face to face. He added that it arose sim­ply from a ri­val­ry be­tween iron plates and shot, and, fi­nal­ly, that the scene at the meet­ing was on­ly the long-​wished-​for op­por­tu­ni­ty for Nicholl to pay off an old grudge.

Noth­ing is more dread­ful than pri­vate du­els in Amer­ica. The two ad­ver­saries at­tack each oth­er like wild beasts. Then it is that they might well cov­et those won­der­ful prop­er­ties of the In­di­ans of the prairies– their quick in­tel­li­gence, their in­ge­nious cun­ning, their scent of the en­emy. A sin­gle mis­take, a mo­ment’s hes­ita­tion, a sin­gle false step may cause death. On these oc­ca­sions Yan­kees are of­ten ac­com­pa­nied by their dogs, and keep up the strug­gle for hours.

“What demons you are!” cried Michel Ar­dan, when his com­pan­ion had de­pict­ed this scene to him with much en­er­gy.

“Yes, we are,” replied J. T. mod­est­ly; “but we had bet­ter make haste.”

Though Michel Ar­dan and he had crossed the plains still wet with dew, and had tak­en the short­est route over creeks and rice­fields, they could not reach Sker­snaw in un­der five hours and a half.

Bar­bi­cane must have passed the bor­der half an hour ago.

There was an old bush­man work­ing there, oc­cu­pied in sell­ing fagots from trees that had been lev­eled by his axe.

Mas­ton ran to­ward him, say­ing, “Have you seen a man go in­to the wood, armed with a ri­fle? Bar­bi­cane, the pres­ident, my best friend?”

The wor­thy sec­re­tary of the Gun Club thought that his pres­ident must be known by all the world. But the bush­man did not seem to un­der­stand him.

“A hunter?” said Ar­dan.

“A hunter? Yes,” replied the bush­man.

“Long ago?”

“About an hour.”

“Too late!” cried Mas­ton.

“Have you heard any gun­shots?” asked Ar­dan.

“No!”

“Not one?”

“Not one! that hunter did not look as if he knew how to hunt!”

“What is to be done?” said Mas­ton.

“We must go in­to the wood, at the risk of get­ting a ball which is not in­tend­ed for us.”

“Ah!” cried Mas­ton, in a tone which could not be mis­tak­en, “I would rather have twen­ty balls in my own head than one in Bar­bi­cane’s.”

“For­ward, then,” said Ar­dan, press­ing his com­pan­ion’s hand.

A few mo­ments lat­er the two friends had dis­ap­peared in the copse. It was a dense thick­et, in which rose huge cy­press­es, sycamores, tulip-​trees, olives, tamarinds, oaks, and mag­no­lias. These dif­fer­ent trees had in­ter­wo­ven their branch­es in­to an in­ex­tri­ca­ble maze, through which the eye could not pen­etrate. Michel Ar­dan and Mas­ton walked side by side in si­lence through the tall grass, cut­ting them­selves a path through the strong creep­ers, cast­ing cu­ri­ous glances on the bush­es, and mo­men­tar­ily ex­pect­ing to hear the sound of ri­fles. As for the traces which Bar­bi­cane ought to have left of his pas­sage through the wood, there was not a ves­tige of them vis­ible: so they fol­lowed the bare­ly per­cep­ti­ble paths along which In­di­ans had tracked some en­emy, and which the dense fo­liage dark­ly over­shad­owed.

Af­ter an hour spent in vain pur­suit the two stopped in in­ten­si­fied anx­iety.

“It must be all over,” said Mas­ton, dis­cour­aged. “A man like Bar­bi­cane would not dodge with his en­emy, or en­snare him, would not even ma­neu­ver! He is too open, too brave. He has gone straight ahead, right in­to the dan­ger, and doubt­less far enough from the bush­man for the wind to pre­vent his hear­ing the re­port of the ri­fles.”

“But sure­ly,” replied Michel Ar­dan, “since we en­tered the wood we should have heard!”

“And what if we came too late?” cried Mas­ton in tones of de­spair.

For once Ar­dan had no re­ply to make, he and Mas­ton re­sum­ing their walk in si­lence. From time to time, in­deed, they raised great shouts, call­ing al­ter­nate­ly Bar­bi­cane and Nicholl, nei­ther of whom, how­ev­er, an­swered their cries. On­ly the birds, awak­ened by the sound, flew past them and dis­ap­peared among the branch­es, while some fright­ened deer fled pre­cip­itate­ly be­fore them.

For an­oth­er hour their search was con­tin­ued. The greater part of the wood had been ex­plored. There was noth­ing to re­veal the pres­ence of the com­bat­ants. The in­for­ma­tion of the bush­man was af­ter all doubt­ful, and Ar­dan was about to pro­pose their aban­don­ing this use­less pur­suit, when all at once Mas­ton stopped.

“Hush!” said he, “there is some one down there!”

“Some one?” re­peat­ed Michel Ar­dan.

“Yes; a man! He seems mo­tion­less. His ri­fle is not in his hands. What can he be do­ing?”

“But can you rec­og­nize him?” asked Ar­dan, whose short sight was of lit­tle use to him in such cir­cum­stances.

“Yes! yes! He is turn­ing to­ward us,” an­swered Mas­ton.

“And it is?”

“Cap­tain Nicholl!”

“Nicholl?” cried Michel Ar­dan, feel­ing a ter­ri­ble pang of grief.

“Nicholl un­armed! He has, then, no longer any fear of his ad­ver­sary!”

“Let us go to him,” said Michel Ar­dan, “and find out the truth.”

But he and his com­pan­ion had bare­ly tak­en fifty steps, when they paused to ex­am­ine the cap­tain more at­ten­tive­ly. They ex­pect­ed to find a blood­thirsty man, hap­py in his re­venge.

On see­ing him, they re­mained stu­pe­fied.

A net, com­posed of very fine mesh­es, hung be­tween two enor­mous tulip-​trees, and in the midst of this snare, with its wings en­tan­gled, was a poor lit­tle bird, ut­ter­ing piti­ful cries, while it vain­ly strug­gled to es­cape. The bird-​catch­er who had laid this snare was no hu­man be­ing, but a ven­omous spi­der, pe­cu­liar to that coun­try, as large as a pi­geon’s egg, and armed with enor­mous claws. The hideous crea­ture, in­stead of rush­ing on its prey, had beat­en a sud­den re­treat and tak­en refuge in the up­per branch­es of the tulip-​tree, for a formidable en­emy men­aced its stronghold.

Here, then, was Nicholl, his gun on the ground, for­get­ful of dan­ger, try­ing if pos­si­ble to save the vic­tim from its cob­web prison. At last it was ac­com­plished, and the lit­tle bird flew joy­ful­ly away and dis­ap­peared.

Nicholl lov­ing­ly watched its flight, when he heard these words pro­nounced by a voice full of emo­tion:

“You are in­deed a brave man.”

He turned. Michel Ar­dan was be­fore him, re­peat­ing in a dif­fer­ent tone:

“And a kind­heart­ed one!”

“Michel Ar­dan!” cried the cap­tain. “Why are you here?”

“To press your hand, Nicholl, and to pre­vent you from ei­ther killing Bar­bi­cane or be­ing killed by him.”

“Bar­bi­cane!” re­turned the cap­tain. “I have been look­ing for him for the last two hours in vain. Where is he hid­ing?”

“Nicholl!” said Michel Ar­dan, “this is not cour­te­ous! we ought al­ways to treat an ad­ver­sary with re­spect; rest as­sureed if Bar­bi­cane is still alive we shall find him all the more eas­ily; be­cause if he has not, like you, been amus­ing him­self with free­ing op­pressed birds, he must be look­ing for _you_. When we have found him, Michel Ar­dan tells you this, there will be no du­el be­tween you.”

“Be­tween Pres­ident Bar­bi­cane and my­self,” grave­ly replied Nicholl, “there is a ri­val­ry which the death of one of us—-“

“Pooh, pooh!” said Ar­dan. “Brave fel­lows like you in­deed! you shall not fight!”

“I will fight, sir!”

“No!”

“Cap­tain,” said J. T. Mas­ton, with much feel­ing, “I am a friend of the pres­ident’s, his _al­ter ego_, his sec­ond self; if you re­al­ly must kill some one, _shoot me!_ it will do just as well!”

“Sir,” Nicholl replied, seiz­ing his ri­fle con­vul­sive­ly, “these jokes—-“

“Our friend Mas­ton is not jok­ing,” replied Ar­dan. “I ful­ly un­der­stand his idea of be­ing killed him­self in or­der to save his friend. But nei­ther he nor Bar­bi­cane will fall be­fore the balls of Cap­tain Nicholl. In­deed I have so at­trac­tive a pro­pos­al to make to the two ri­vals, that both will be ea­ger to ac­cept it.”

“What is it?” asked Nicholl with man­ifest in­creduli­ty.

“Pa­tience!” ex­claimed Ar­dan. “I can on­ly re­veal it in the pres­ence of Bar­bi­cane.”

“Let us go in search of him then!” cried the cap­tain.

The three men start­ed off at once; the cap­tain hav­ing dis­charged his ri­fle threw it over his shoul­der, and ad­vanced in si­lence. An­oth­er half hour passed, and the pur­suit was still fruit­less. Mas­ton was op­pressed by sin­is­ter fore­bod­ings. He looked fierce­ly at Nicholl, ask­ing him­self whether the cap­tain’s vengeance had al­ready been sat­is­fied, and the un­for­tu­nate Bar­bi­cane, shot, was per­haps ly­ing dead on some bloody track. The same thought seemed to oc­cur to Ar­dan; and both were cast­ing in­quir­ing glances on Nicholl, when sud­den­ly Mas­ton paused.

The mo­tion­less fig­ure of a man lean­ing against a gi­gan­tic catal­pa twen­ty feet off ap­peared, half-​veiled by the fo­liage.

“It is he!” said Mas­ton.

Bar­bi­cane nev­er moved. Ar­dan looked at the cap­tain, but he did not wince. Ar­dan went for­ward cry­ing:

“Bar­bi­cane! Bar­bi­cane!”

No an­swer! Ar­dan rushed to­ward his friend; but in the act of seiz­ing his arms, he stopped short and ut­tered a cry of sur­prise.

Bar­bi­cane, pen­cil in hand, was trac­ing ge­omet­ri­cal fig­ures in a mem­oran­dum book, while his un­load­ed ri­fle lay be­side him on the ground.

Ab­sorbed in his stud­ies, Bar­bi­cane, in his turn for­get­ful of the du­el, had seen and heard noth­ing.

When Ar­dan took his hand, he looked up and stared at his vis­itor in as­ton­ish­ment.

“Ah, it is you!” he cried at last. “I have found it, my friend, I have found it!”

“What?”

“My plan!”

“What plan?”

“The plan for coun­ter­ing the ef­fect of the shock at the de­par­ture of the pro­jec­tile!”

“In­deed?” said Michel Ar­dan, look­ing at the cap­tain out of the cor­ner of his eye.

“Yes! wa­ter! sim­ply wa­ter, which will act as a spring– ah! Mas­ton,” cried Bar­bi­cane, “you here al­so?”

“Him­self,” replied Ar­dan; “and per­mit me to in­tro­duce to you at the same time the wor­thy Cap­tain Nicholl!”

“Nicholl!” cried Bar­bi­cane, who jumped up at once. “Par­don me, cap­tain, I had quite for­got­ten– I am ready!”

Michel Ar­dan in­ter­fered, with­out giv­ing the two en­emies time to say any­thing more.

“Thank heav­en!” said he. “It is a hap­py thing that brave men like you two did not meet soon­er! we should now have been mourn­ing for one or oth­er of you. But, thanks to Prov­idence, which has in­ter­fered, there is now no fur­ther cause for alarm. When one for­gets one’s anger in me­chan­ics or in cob­webs, it is a sign that the anger is not dan­ger­ous.”

Michel Ar­dan then told the pres­ident how the cap­tain had been found oc­cu­pied.

“I put it to you now,” said he in con­clu­sion, “are two such good fel­lows as you are made on pur­pose to smash each oth­er’s skulls with shot?”

There was in “the sit­ua­tion” some­what of the ridicu­lous, some­thing quite un­ex­pect­ed; Michel Ar­dan saw this, and de­ter­mined to ef­fect a rec­on­cil­ia­tion.

“My good friends,” said he, with his most be­witch­ing smile, “this is noth­ing but a mis­un­der­stand­ing. Noth­ing more! well! to prove that it is all over be­tween you, ac­cept frankly the pro­pos­al I am go­ing to make to you.”

“Make it,” said Nicholl.

“Our friend Bar­bi­cane be­lieves that his pro­jec­tile will go straight to the moon?”

“Yes, cer­tain­ly,” replied the pres­ident.

“And our friend Nicholl is per­suad­ed it will fall back up­on the earth?”

“I am cer­tain of it,” cried the cap­tain.

“Good!” said Ar­dan. “I can­not pre­tend to make you agree; but I sug­gest this: Go with me, and so see whether we are stopped on our jour­ney.”

“What?” ex­claimed J. T. Mas­ton, stu­pe­fied.

The two ri­vals, on this sud­den pro­pos­al, looked steadi­ly at each oth­er. Bar­bi­cane wait­ed for the cap­tain’s an­swer. Nicholl watched for the de­ci­sion of the pres­ident.

“Well?” said Michel. “There is now no fear of the shock!”

“Done!” cried Bar­bi­cane.

But quick­ly as he pro­nounced the word, he was not be­fore Nicholl.

“Hur­rah! bra­vo! hip! hip! hur­rah!” cried Michel, giv­ing a hand to each of the late ad­ver­saries. “Now that it is all set­tled, my friends, al­low me to treat you af­ter French fash­ion. Let us be off to break­fast!”

CHAP­TER XXII

THE NEW CIT­IZEN OF THE UNIT­ED STATES

That same day all Amer­ica heard of the af­fair of Cap­tain Nicholl and Pres­ident Bar­bi­cane, as well as its sin­gu­lar _de­noue­ment_. From that day forth, Michel Ar­dan had not one mo­ment’s rest. Dep­uta­tions from all cor­ners of the Union ha­rassed him with­out ces­sa­tion or in­ter­mis­sion. He was com­pelled to re­ceive them all, whether he would or no. How many hands he shook, how many peo­ple he was “hail-​fel­low-​well-​met” with, it is im­pos­si­ble to guess! Such a tri­umphal re­sult would have in­tox­icat­ed any oth­er man; but he man­aged to keep him­self in a state of de­light­ful _se­mi_-tipsi­ness.

Among the dep­uta­tions of all kinds which as­sailed him, that of “The Lu­natics” were care­ful not to for­get what they owed to the fu­ture con­queror of the moon. One day, cer­tain of these poor peo­ple, so nu­mer­ous in Amer­ica, came to call up­on him, and re­quest­ed per­mis­sion to re­turn with him to their na­tive coun­try.

“Sin­gu­lar hal­lu­ci­na­tion!” said he to Bar­bi­cane, af­ter hav­ing dis­missed the dep­uta­tion with promis­es to con­vey num­bers of mes­sages to friends in the moon. “Do you be­lieve in the in­flu­ence of the moon up­on dis­tem­pers?”

“Scarce­ly!”

“No more do I, de­spite some re­mark­able record­ed facts of his­to­ry. For in­stance, dur­ing an epi­dem­ic in 1693, a large num­ber of per­sons died at the very mo­ment of an eclipse. The cel­ebrat­ed Ba­con al­ways faint­ed dur­ing an eclipse. Charles VI re­lapsed six times in­to mad­ness dur­ing the year 1399, some­times dur­ing the new, some­times dur­ing the full moon. Gall ob­served that in­sane per­sons un­der­went an ac­ces­sion of their dis­or­der twice in ev­ery month, at the epochs of new and full moon. In fact, nu­mer­ous ob­ser­va­tions made up­on fevers, som­nam­bu­lisms, and oth­er hu­man mal­adies, seem to prove that the moon does ex­er­cise some mys­te­ri­ous in­flu­ence up­on man.”

“But the how and the where­fore?” asked Bar­bi­cane.

“Well, I can on­ly give you the an­swer which Ara­go bor­rowed from Plutarch, which is nine­teen cen­turies old. `Per­haps the sto­ries are not true!’”

In the height of his tri­umph, Michel Ar­dan had to en­counter all the an­noy­ances in­ci­den­tal to a man of celebri­ty. Man­agers of en­ter­tain­ments want­ed to ex­hib­it him. Bar­num of­fered him a mil­lion dol­lars to make a tour of the Unit­ed States in his show. As for his pho­tographs, they were sold of all size, and his por­trait tak­en in ev­ery imag­in­able pos­ture. More than half a mil­lion copies were dis­posed of in an in­cred­ibly short space of time.

But it was not on­ly the men who paid him homage, but the wom­en as well. He might have mar­ried well a hun­dred times over, if he had been will­ing to set­tle in life. The old maids, in par­tic­ular, of forty years and up­ward, and dry in pro­por­tion, de­voured his pho­tographs day and night. They would have mar­ried him by hun­dreds, even if he had im­posed up­on them the con­di­tion of ac­com­pa­ny­ing him in­to space. He had, how­ev­er, no in­ten­tion of trans­plant­ing a race of Fran­co-​Amer­icans up­on the sur­face of the moon.

He there­fore de­clined all of­fers.

As soon as he could with­draw from these some­what em­bar­rass­ing demon­stra­tions, he went, ac­com­pa­nied by his friends, to pay a vis­it to the Columbi­ad. He was high­ly grat­ified by his in­spec­tion, and made the de­scent to the bot­tom of the tube of this gi­gan­tic ma­chine which was present­ly to launch him to the re­gions of the moon. It is nec­es­sary here to men­tion a pro­pos­al of J. T. Mas­ton’s. When the sec­re­tary of the Gun Club found that Bar­bi­cane and Nicholl ac­cept­ed the pro­pos­al of Michel Ar­dan, he de­ter­mined to join them, and make one of a smug par­ty of four. So one day he de­ter­mined to be ad­mit­ted as one of the trav­el­ers. Bar­bi­cane, pained at hav­ing to refuse him, gave him clear­ly to un­der­stand that the pro­jec­tile could not pos­si­bly con­tain so many pas­sen­gers. Mas­ton, in de­spair, went in search of Michel Ar­dan, who coun­seled him to re­sign him­self to the sit­ua­tion, adding one or two ar­gu­ments _ad hominem_.

“You see, old fel­low,” he said, “you must not take what I say in bad part; but re­al­ly, be­tween our­selves, you are in too in­com­plete a con­di­tion to ap­pear in the moon!”

“In­com­plete?” shrieked the valiant in­valid.

“Yes, my dear fel­low! imag­ine our meet­ing some of the in­hab­itants up there! Would you like to give them such a melan­choly no­tion of what goes on down here? to teach them what war is, to in­form them that we em­ploy our time chiefly in de­vour­ing each oth­er, in smash­ing arms and legs, and that too on a globe which is ca­pa­ble of sup­port­ing a hun­dred bil­lions of in­hab­itants, and which ac­tu­al­ly does con­tain near­ly two hun­dred mil­lions? Why, my wor­thy friend, we should have to turn you out of doors!”

“But still, if you ar­rive there in pieces, you will be as in­com­plete as I am.”

“Un­ques­tion­ably,” replied Michel Ar­dan; “but we shall not.”

In fact, a prepara­to­ry ex­per­iment, tried on the 18th of Oc­to­ber, had yield­ed the best re­sults and caused the most well-​ground­ed hopes of suc­cess. Bar­bi­cane, de­sirous of ob­tain­ing some no­tion of the ef­fect of the shock at the mo­ment of the pro­jec­tile’s de­par­ture, had pro­cured a 38-inch mor­tar from the ar­se­nal of Pen­saco­la. He had this placed on the bank of Hillis­bor­ough Roads, in or­der that the shell might fall back in­to the sea, and the shock be there­by de­stroyed. His ob­ject was to as­cer­tain the ex­tent of the shock of de­par­ture, and not that of the re­turn.

A hol­low pro­jec­tile had been pre­pared for this cu­ri­ous ex­per­iment. A thick padding fas­tened up­on a kind of elas­tic net­work, made of the best steel, lined the in­side of the walls. It was a ver­ita­ble _nest_ most care­ful­ly wadded.

“What a pity I can’t find room in there,” said J. T. Mas­ton, re­gret­ting that his height did not al­low of his try­ing the ad­ven­ture.

With­in this shell were shut up a large cat, and a squir­rel be­long­ing to J. T. Mas­ton, and of which he was par­tic­ular­ly fond. They were de­sirous, how­ev­er, of as­cer­tain­ing how this lit­tle an­imal, least of all oth­ers sub­ject to gid­di­ness, would en­dure this ex­per­imen­tal voy­age.

The mor­tar was charged with 160 pounds of pow­der, and the shell placed in the cham­ber. On be­ing fired, the pro­jec­tile rose with great ve­loc­ity, de­scribed a ma­jes­tic parabo­la, at­tained a height of about a thou­sand feet, and with a grace­ful curve de­scend­ed in the midst of the ves­sels that lay there at an­chor.

With­out a mo­ment’s loss of time a small boat put off in the di­rec­tion of its fall; some divers plunged in­to the wa­ter and at­tached ropes to the han­dles of the shell, which was quick­ly dragged on board. Five min­utes did not elapse be­tween the mo­ment of en­clos­ing the an­imals and that of un­screw­ing the cov­er­lid of their prison.

Ar­dan, Bar­bi­cane, Mas­ton, and Nicholl were present on board the boat, and as­sist­ed at the op­er­ation with an in­ter­est which may read­ily be com­pre­hend­ed. Hard­ly had the shell been opened when the cat leaped out, slight­ly bruised, but full of life, and ex­hibit­ing no signs what­ev­er of hav­ing made an aeri­al ex­pe­di­tion. No trace, how­ev­er, of the squir­rel could be dis­cov­ered. The truth at last be­came ap­par­ent– the cat had eat­en its fel­low-​trav­el­er!

J. T. Mas­ton grieved much for the loss of his poor squir­rel, and pro­posed to add its case to that of oth­er mar­tyrs to sci­ence.

Af­ter this ex­per­iment all hes­ita­tion, all fear dis­ap­peared. Be­sides, Bar­bi­cane’s plans would en­sure greater per­fec­tion for his pro­jec­tile, and go far to an­ni­hi­late al­to­geth­er the ef­fects of the shock. Noth­ing now re­mained but to go!

Two days lat­er Michel Ar­dan re­ceived a mes­sage from the Pres­ident of the Unit­ed States, an hon­or of which he showed him­self es­pe­cial­ly sen­si­ble.

Af­ter the ex­am­ple of his il­lus­tri­ous fel­low-​coun­try­man, the Mar­quis de la Fayette, the gov­ern­ment had de­creed to him the ti­tle of “Cit­izen of the Unit­ed States of Amer­ica.”

CHAP­TER XXI­II

THE PRO­JEC­TILE-​VE­HI­CLE

On the com­ple­tion of the Columbi­ad the pub­lic in­ter­est cen­tered in the pro­jec­tile it­self, the ve­hi­cle which was des­tined to car­ry the three hardy ad­ven­tur­ers in­to space.

The new plans had been sent to Bread­will and Co., of Al­bany, with the re­quest for their speedy ex­ecu­tion. The pro­jec­tile was con­se­quent­ly cast on the 2nd of Novem­ber, and im­me­di­ate­ly for­ward­ed by the East­ern Rail­way to Stones Hill, which it reached with­out ac­ci­dent on the 10th of that month, where Michel Ar­dan, Bar­bi­cane, and Nicholl were wait­ing im­pa­tient­ly for it.

The pro­jec­tile had now to be filled to the depth of three feet with a bed of wa­ter, in­tend­ed to sup­port a wa­ter-​tight wood­en disc, which worked eas­ily with­in the walls of the pro­jec­tile. It was up­on this kind of raft that the trav­el­ers were to take their place. This body of wa­ter was di­vid­ed by hor­izon­tal par­ti­tions, which the shock of the de­par­ture would have to break in suc­ces­sion. Then each sheet of the wa­ter, from the low­est to the high­est, run­ning off in­to es­cape tubes to­ward the top of the pro­jec­tile, con­sti­tut­ed a kind of spring; and the wood­en disc, sup­plied with ex­treme­ly pow­er­ful plugs, could not strike the low­est plate ex­cept af­ter break­ing suc­ces­sive­ly the dif­fer­ent par­ti­tions. Un­doubt­ed­ly the trav­el­ers would still have to en­counter a vi­olent re­coil af­ter the com­plete es­cape­ment of the wa­ter; but the first shock would be al­most en­tire­ly de­stroyed by this pow­er­ful spring. The up­per parts of the walls were lined with a thick padding of leather, fas­tened up­on springs of the best steel, be­hind which the es­cape tubes were com­plete­ly con­cealed; thus all imag­in­able pre­cau­tions had been tak­en for avert­ing the first shock; and if they did get crushed, they must, as Michel Ar­dan said, be made of very bad ma­te­ri­als.

The en­trance in­to this metal­lic tow­er was by a nar­row aper­ture con­trived in the wall of the cone. This was her­met­ical­ly closed by a plate of alu­minum, fas­tened in­ter­nal­ly by pow­er­ful screw-​pres­sure. The trav­el­ers could there­fore quit their prison at plea­sure, as soon as they should reach the moon.

Light and view were giv­en by means of four thick lentic­ular glass scut­tles, two pierced in the cir­cu­lar wall it­self, the third in the bot­tom, the fourth in the top. These scut­tles then were pro­tect­ed against the shock of de­par­ture by plates let in­to sol­id grooves, which could eas­ily be opened out­ward by un­screw­ing them from the in­side. Reser­voirs firm­ly fixed con­tained wa­ter and the nec­es­sary pro­vi­sions; and fire and light were procur­able by means of gas, con­tained in a spe­cial reser­voir un­der a pres­sure of sev­er­al at­mo­spheres. They had on­ly to turn a tap, and for six hours the gas would light and warm this com­fort­able ve­hi­cle.

There now re­mained on­ly the ques­tion of air; for al­low­ing for the con­sump­tion of air by Bar­bi­cane, his two com­pan­ions, and two dogs which he pro­posed tak­ing with him, it was nec­es­sary to re­new the air of the pro­jec­tile. Now air con­sists prin­ci­pal­ly of twen­ty-​one parts of oxy­gen and sev­en­ty-​nine of ni­tro­gen. The lungs ab­sorb the oxy­gen, which is in­dis­pens­able for the sup­port of life, and re­ject the ni­tro­gen. The air ex­pired los­es near­ly five per cent. of the for­mer and con­tains near­ly an equal vol­ume of car­bon­ic acid, pro­duced by the com­bus­tion of the el­ements of the blood. In an air-​tight en­clo­sure, then, af­ter a cer­tain time, all the oxy­gen of the air will be re­placed by the car­bon­ic acid– a gas fa­tal to life. There were two things to be done then– first, to re­place the ab­sorbed oxy­gen; sec­ond­ly, to de­stroy the ex­pired car­bon­ic acid; both easy enough to do, by means of chlo­rate of potas­si­um and caus­tic potash. The for­mer is a salt which ap­pears un­der the form of white crys­tals; when raised to a tem­per­ature of 400 de­grees it is trans­formed in­to chlorure of potas­si­um, and the oxy­gen which it con­tains is en­tire­ly lib­er­at­ed. Now twen­ty-​eight pounds of chlo­rate of potas­si­um pro­duces sev­en pounds of oxy­gen, or 2,400 litres– the quan­ti­ty nec­es­sary for the trav­el­ers dur­ing twen­ty-​four hours.

Caus­tic potash has a great affin­ity for car­bon­ic acid; and it is suf­fi­cient to shake it in or­der for it to seize up­on the acid and form bi­car­bon­ate of potas­si­um. By these two means they would be en­abled to re­store to the vi­ti­at­ed air its life- sup­port­ing prop­er­ties.

It is nec­es­sary, how­ev­er, to add that the ex­per­iments had hith­er­to been made _in an­ima vili_. What­ev­er its sci­en­tif­ic ac­cu­ra­cy was, they were at present ig­no­rant how it would an­swer with hu­man be­ings. The hon­or of putting it to the proof was en­er­get­ical­ly claimed by J. T. Mas­ton.

“Since I am not to go,” said the brave ar­tillerist, “I may at least live for a week in the pro­jec­tile.”

It would have been hard to refuse him; so they con­sent­ed to his wish. A suf­fi­cient quan­ti­ty of chlo­rate of potas­si­um and of caus­tic potash was placed at his dis­pos­al, to­geth­er with pro­vi­sions for eight days. And hav­ing shak­en hands with his friends, on the 12th of Novem­ber, at six o’clock A.M., af­ter strict­ly in­form­ing them not to open his prison be­fore the 20th, at six o’clock P.M., he slid down the pro­jec­tile, the plate of which was at once her­met­ical­ly sealed. What did he do with him­self dur­ing that week? They could get no in­for­ma­tion. The thick­ness of the walls of the pro­jec­tile pre­vent­ed any sound reach­ing from the in­side to the out­side. On the 20th of Novem­ber, at six P.M. ex­act­ly, the plate was opened. The friends of J. T. Mas­ton had been all along in a state of much anx­iety; but they were prompt­ly re­as­sured on hear­ing a jol­ly voice shout­ing a bois­ter­ous hur­rah.

Present­ly af­ter­ward the sec­re­tary of the Gun Club ap­peared at the top of the cone in a tri­umphant at­ti­tude. He had grown fat!

CHAP­TER XXIV

THE TELE­SCOPE OF THE ROCKY MOUN­TAINS

On the 20th of Oc­to­ber in the pre­ced­ing year, af­ter the close of the sub­scrip­tion, the pres­ident of the Gun Club had cred­it­ed the Ob­ser­va­to­ry of Cam­bridge with the nec­es­sary sums for the con­struc­tion of a gi­gan­tic op­ti­cal in­stru­ment. This in­stru­ment was de­signed for the pur­pose of ren­der­ing vis­ible on the sur­face of the moon any ob­ject ex­ceed­ing nine feet in di­am­eter.

At the pe­ri­od when the Gun Club es­sayed their great ex­per­iment, such in­stru­ments had reached a high de­gree of per­fec­tion, and pro­duced some mag­nif­icent re­sults. Two tele­scopes in par­tic­ular, at this time, were pos­sessed of re­mark­able pow­er and of gi­gan­tic di­men­sions. The first, con­struct­ed by Her­schel, was thir­ty-​six feet in length, and had an ob­ject-​glass of four feet six inch­es; it pos­sessed a mag­ni­fy­ing pow­er of 6,000. The sec­ond was raised in Ire­land, in Par­son­stown Park, and be­longs to Lord Rosse. The length of this tube is forty-​eight feet, and the di­am­eter of its ob­ject-​glass six feet; it mag­ni­fies 6,400 times, and re­quired an im­mense erec­tion of brick work and ma­son­ry for the pur­pose of work­ing it, its weight be­ing twelve and a half tons.

Still, de­spite these colos­sal di­men­sions, the ac­tu­al en­large­ments scarce­ly ex­ceed­ed 6,000 times in round num­bers; con­se­quent­ly, the moon was brought with­in no near­er an ap­par­ent dis­tance than thir­ty-​nine miles; and ob­jects of less than six­ty feet in di­am­eter, un­less they were of very con­sid­er­able length, were still im­per­cep­ti­ble.

In the present case, deal­ing with a pro­jec­tile nine feet in di­am­eter and fif­teen feet long, it be­came nec­es­sary to bring the moon with­in an ap­par­ent dis­tance of five miles at most; and for that pur­pose to es­tab­lish a mag­ni­fy­ing pow­er of 48,000 times.

Such was the ques­tion pro­posed to the Ob­ser­va­to­ry of Cam­bridge, There was no lack of funds; the dif­fi­cul­ty was pure­ly one of con­struc­tion.

Af­ter con­sid­er­able dis­cus­sion as to the best form and prin­ci­ple of the pro­posed in­stru­ment the work was fi­nal­ly com­menced. Ac­cord­ing to the cal­cu­la­tions of the Ob­ser­va­to­ry of Cam­bridge, the tube of the new re­flec­tor would re­quire to be 280 feet in length, and the ob­ject-​glass six­teen feet in di­am­eter. Colos­sal as these di­men­sions may ap­pear, they were diminu­tive in com­par­ison with the 10,000 foot tele­scope pro­posed by the as­tronomer Hooke on­ly a few years ago!

Re­gard­ing the choice of lo­cal­ity, that mat­ter was prompt­ly de­ter­mined. The ob­ject was to se­lect some lofty moun­tain, and there are not many of these in the Unit­ed States. In fact there are but two chains of mod­er­ate el­eva­tion, be­tween which runs the mag­nif­icent Mis­sis­sip­pi, the “king of rivers” as these Re­pub­li­can Yan­kees de­light to call it.

East­wards rise the Ap­palachi­ans, the very high­est point of which, in New Hamp­shire, does not ex­ceed the very mod­er­ate al­ti­tude of 5,600 feet.

On the west, how­ev­er, rise the Rocky Moun­tains, that im­mense range which, com­menc­ing at the Straights of Mag­el­lan, fol­lows the west­ern coast of South­ern Amer­ica un­der the name of the An­des or the Cordilleras, un­til it cross­es the Isth­mus of Pana­ma, and runs up the whole of North Amer­ica to the very bor­ders of the Po­lar Sea. The high­est el­eva­tion of this range still does not ex­ceed 10,700 feet. With this el­eva­tion, nev­er­the­less, the Gun Club were com­pelled to be con­tent, inas­much as they had de­ter­mined that both tele­scope and Columbi­ad should be erect­ed with­in the lim­its of the Union. All the nec­es­sary ap­pa­ra­tus was con­se­quent­ly sent on to the sum­mit of Long’s Peak, in the ter­ri­to­ry of Mis­souri.

Nei­ther pen nor lan­guage can de­scribe the dif­fi­cul­ties of all kinds which the Amer­ican en­gi­neers had to sur­mount, of the prodi­gies of dar­ing and skill which they ac­com­plished. They had to raise enor­mous stones, mas­sive pieces of wrought iron, heavy cor­ner-​clamps and huge por­tions of cylin­der, with an ob­ject-​glass weigh­ing near­ly 30,000 pounds, above the line of per­pet­ual snow for more than 10,000 feet in height, af­ter cross­ing desert prairies, im­pen­etra­ble forests, fear­ful rapids, far from all cen­ters of pop­ula­tion, and in the midst of sav­age re­gions, in which ev­ery de­tail of life be­comes an al­most in­sol­uble prob­lem. And yet, notwith­stand­ing these in­nu­mer­able ob­sta­cles, Amer­ican ge­nius tri­umphed. In less than a year af­ter the com­mence­ment of the works, to­ward the close of Septem­ber, the gi­gan­tic re­flec­tor rose in­to the air to a height of 280 feet. It was raised by means of an enor­mous iron crane; an in­ge­nious mech­anism al­lowed it to be eas­ily worked to­ward all the points of the heav­ens, and to fol­low the stars from the one hori­zon to the oth­er dur­ing their jour­ney through the heav­ens.

It had cost $400,000. The first time it was di­rect­ed to­ward the moon the ob­servers evinced both cu­rios­ity and anx­iety. What were they about to dis­cov­er in the field of this tele­scope which mag­ni­fied ob­jects 48,000 times? Would they per­ceive peo­ples, herds of lu­nar an­imals, towns, lakes, seas? No! there was noth­ing which sci­ence had not al­ready dis­cov­ered! and on all the points of its disc the vol­canic na­ture of the moon be­came de­ter­minable with the ut­most pre­ci­sion.

But the tele­scope of the Rocky Moun­tains, be­fore do­ing its du­ty to the Gun Club, ren­dered im­mense ser­vices to as­tron­omy. Thanks to its pen­etra­tive pow­er, the depths of the heav­ens were sound­ed to the ut­most ex­tent; the ap­par­ent di­am­eter of a great num­ber of stars was ac­cu­rate­ly mea­sured; and Mr. Clark, of the Cam­bridge staff, re­solved the Crab neb­ula in Tau­rus, which the re­flec­tor of Lord Rosse had nev­er been able to de­com­pose.

CHAP­TER XXV

FI­NAL DE­TAILS

It was the 22nd of Novem­ber; the de­par­ture was to take place in ten days. One op­er­ation alone re­mained to be ac­com­plished to bring all to a hap­py ter­mi­na­tion; an op­er­ation del­icate and per­ilous, re­quir­ing in­fi­nite pre­cau­tions, and against the suc­cess of which Cap­tain Nicholl had laid his third bet. It was, in fact, noth­ing less than the load­ing of the Columbi­ad, and the in­tro­duc­tion in­to it of 400,000 pounds of gun-​cot­ton. Nicholl had thought, not per­haps with­out rea­son, that the han­dling of such formidable quan­ti­ties of py­rox­yle would, in all prob­abil­ity, in­volve a grave catas­tro­phe; and at any rate, that this im­mense mass of em­inent­ly in­flammable mat­ter would in­evitably ig­nite when sub­mit­ted to the pres­sure of the pro­jec­tile.

There were in­deed dan­gers ac­cru­ing as be­fore from the care­less­ness of the Amer­icans, but Bar­bi­cane had set his heart on suc­cess, and took all pos­si­ble pre­cau­tions. In the first place, he was very care­ful as to the trans­porta­tion of the gun-​cot­ton to Stones Hill. He had it con­veyed in small quan­ti­ties, care­ful­ly packed in sealed cas­es. These were brought by rail from Tam­pa Town to the camp, and from thence were tak­en to the Columbi­ad by bare­foot­ed work­men, who de­posit­ed them in their places by means of cranes placed at the ori­fice of the can­non. No steam-​en­gine was per­mit­ted to work, and ev­ery fire was ex­tin­guished with­in two miles of the works.

Even in Novem­ber they feared to work by day, lest the sun’s rays act­ing on the gun-​cot­ton might lead to un­hap­py re­sults. This led to their work­ing at night, by light pro­duced in a vac­uum by means of Ruhmko­rff’s ap­pa­ra­tus, which threw an ar­ti­fi­cial bright­ness in­to the depths of the Columbi­ad. There the car­tridges were ar­ranged with the ut­most reg­ular­ity, con­nect­ed by a metal­lic thread, des­tined to com­mu­ni­cate to them all si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly the elec­tric spark, by which means this mass of gun-​cot­ton was even­tu­al­ly to be ig­nit­ed.

By the 28th of Novem­ber eight hun­dred car­tridges had been placed in the bot­tom of the Columbi­ad. So far the op­er­ation had been suc­cess­ful! But what con­fu­sion, what anx­ieties, what strug­gles were un­der­gone by Pres­ident Bar­bi­cane! In vain had he re­fused ad­mis­sion to Stones Hill; ev­ery day the in­quis­itive neigh­bors scaled the pal­isades, some even car­ry­ing their im­pru­dence to the point of smok­ing while sur­round­ed by bales of gun-​cot­ton. Bar­bi­cane was in a per­pet­ual state of alarm. J. T. Mas­ton sec­ond­ed him to the best of his abil­ity, by giv­ing vig­or­ous chase to the in­trud­ers, and care­ful­ly pick­ing up the still light­ed cigar ends which the Yan­kees threw about. A some­what dif­fi­cult task! see­ing that more than 300,000 per­sons were gath­ered round the en­clo­sure. Michel Ar­dan had vol­un­teered to su­per­in­tend the trans­port of the car­tridges to the mouth of the Columbi­ad; but the pres­ident, hav­ing sur­prised him with an enor­mous cigar in his mouth, while he was hunt­ing out the rash spec­ta­tors to whom he him­self of­fered so dan­ger­ous an ex­am­ple, saw that he could not trust this fear­less smok­er, and was there­fore obliged to mount a spe­cial guard over him.

At last, Prov­idence be­ing pro­pi­tious, this won­der­ful load­ing came to a hap­py ter­mi­na­tion, Cap­tain Nicholl’s third bet be­ing thus lost. It re­mained now to in­tro­duce the pro­jec­tile in­to the Columbi­ad, and to place it on its soft bed of gun-​cot­ton.

But be­fore do­ing this, all those things nec­es­sary for the jour­ney had to be care­ful­ly ar­ranged in the pro­jec­tile ve­hi­cle. These nec­es­saries were nu­mer­ous; and had Ar­dan been al­lowed to fol­low his own wish­es, there would have been no space re­main­ing for the trav­el­ers. It is im­pos­si­ble to con­ceive of half the things this charm­ing French­man wished to con­vey to the moon. A ver­ita­ble stock of use­less tri­fles! But Bar­bi­cane in­ter­fered and re­fused ad­mis­sion to any­thing not ab­so­lute­ly need­ed. Sev­er­al ther­mome­ters, barom­eters, and tele­scopes were packed in the in­stru­ment case.

The trav­el­ers be­ing de­sirous of ex­am­ing the moon care­ful­ly dur­ing their voy­age, in or­der to fa­cil­itate their stud­ies, they took with them Boeer and Moeller’s ex­cel­lent _Map­pa Se­leno­graph­ica_, a mas­ter­piece of pa­tience and ob­ser­va­tion, which they hoped would en­able them to iden­ti­fy those phys­ical fea­tures in the moon, with which they were ac­quaint­ed. This map re­pro­duced with scrupu­lous fi­deli­ty the small­est de­tails of the lu­nar sur­face which faces the earth; the moun­tains, val­leys, craters, peaks, and ridges were all rep­re­sent­ed, with their ex­act di­men­sions, rel­ative po­si­tions, and names; from the moun­tains Do­er­fel and Leib­nitz on the east­ern side of the disc, to the _Mare frig­oris_ of the North Pole.

They took al­so three ri­fles and three fowl­ing-​pieces, and a large quan­ti­ty of balls, shot, and pow­der.

“We can­not tell whom we shall have to deal with,” said Michel Ar­dan. “Men or beasts may pos­si­bly ob­ject to our vis­it. It is on­ly wise to take all pre­cau­tions.”

These de­fen­sive weapons were ac­com­pa­nied by pick­ax­es, crow­bars, saws, and oth­er use­ful im­ple­ments, not to men­tion cloth­ing adapt­ed to ev­ery tem­per­ature, from that of po­lar re­gions to that of the tor­rid zone.

Ar­dan wished to con­vey a num­ber of an­imals of dif­fer­ent sorts, not in­deed a pair of ev­ery known species, as he could not see the ne­ces­si­ty of ac­cli­ma­tiz­ing ser­pents, tigers, al­li­ga­tors, or any oth­er nox­ious beasts in the moon. “Nev­er­the­less,” he said to Bar­bi­cane, “some valu­able and use­ful beasts, bul­locks, cows, hors­es, and don­keys, would bear the jour­ney very well, and would al­so be very use­ful to us.”

“I dare say, my dear Ar­dan,” replied the pres­ident, “but our pro­jec­tile-​ve­hi­cle is no Noah’s ark, from which it dif­fers both in di­men­sions and ob­ject. Let us con­fine our­selves to pos­si­bil­ities.”

Af­ter a pro­longed dis­cus­sion, it was agreed that the trav­el­ers should re­strict them­selves to a sport­ing-​dog be­long­ing to Nicholl, and to a large New­found­land. Sev­er­al pack­ets of seeds were al­so in­clud­ed among the nec­es­saries. Michel Ar­dan, in­deed, was anx­ious to add some sacks full of earth to sow them in; as it was, he took a dozen shrubs care­ful­ly wrapped up in straw to plant in the moon.

The im­por­tant ques­tion of pro­vi­sions still re­mained; it be­ing nec­es­sary to pro­vide against the pos­si­bil­ity of their find­ing the moon ab­so­lute­ly bar­ren. Bar­bi­cane man­aged so suc­cess­ful­ly, that he sup­plied them with suf­fi­cient ra­tions for a year. These con­sist­ed of pre­served meats and veg­eta­bles, re­duced by strong hy­draulic pres­sure to the small­est pos­si­ble di­men­sions. They were al­so sup­plied with brandy, and took wa­ter enough for two months, be­ing con­fi­dent, from as­tro­nom­ical ob­ser­va­tions, that there was no lack of wa­ter on the moon’s sur­face. As to pro­vi­sions, doubt­less the in­hab­itants of the _earth_ would find nour­ish­ment some­where in the _moon_. Ar­dan nev­er ques­tioned this; in­deed, had he done so, he would nev­er have un­der­tak­en the jour­ney.

“Be­sides,” he said one day to his friends, “we shall not be com­plete­ly aban­doned by our ter­res­tri­al friends; they will take care not to for­get us.”

“No, in­deed!” replied J. T. Mas­ton.

“Noth­ing would be sim­pler,” replied Ar­dan; “the Columbi­ad will be al­ways there. Well! when­ev­er the moon is in a fa­vor­able con­di­tion as to the zenith, if not to the perigee, that is to say about once a year, could you not send us a shell packed with pro­vi­sions, which we might ex­pect on some ap­point­ed day?”

“Hur­rah! hur­rah!” cried J. T. Mat­son; “what an in­ge­nious fel­low! what a splen­did idea! In­deed, my good friends, we shall not for­get you!”

“I shall reck­on up­on you! Then, you see, we shall re­ceive news reg­ular­ly from the earth, and we shall in­deed be stupid if we hit up­on no plan for com­mu­ni­cat­ing with our good friends here!”

These words in­spired such con­fi­dence, that Michel Ar­dan car­ried all the Gun Club with him in his en­thu­si­asm. What he said seemed so sim­ple and so easy, so sure of suc­cess, that none could be so sor­did­ly at­tached to this earth as to hes­itate to fol­low the three trav­el­ers on their lu­nar ex­pe­di­tion.

All be­ing ready at last, it re­mained to place the pro­jec­tile in the Columbi­ad, an op­er­ation abun­dant­ly ac­com­pa­nied by dan­gers and dif­fi­cul­ties.

The enor­mous shell was con­veyed to the sum­mit of Stones Hill. There, pow­er­ful cranes raised it, and held it sus­pend­ed over the mouth of the cylin­der.

It was a fear­ful mo­ment! What if the chains should break un­der its enor­mous weight? The sud­den fall of such a body would in­evitably cause the gun-​cot­ton to ex­plode!

For­tu­nate­ly this did not hap­pen; and some hours lat­er the pro­jec­tile-​ve­hi­cle de­scend­ed gen­tly in­to the heart of the can­non and rest­ed on its couch of py­rox­yle, a ver­ita­ble bed of ex­plo­sive ei­der-​down. Its pres­sure had no re­sult, oth­er than the more ef­fec­tu­al ram­ming down of the charge in the Columbi­ad.

“I have lost,” said the cap­tain, who forth­with paid Pres­ident Bar­bi­cane the sum of three thou­sand dol­lars.

Bar­bi­cane did not wish to ac­cept the mon­ey from one of his fel­low-​trav­el­ers, but gave way at last be­fore the de­ter­mi­na­tion of Nicholl, who wished be­fore leav­ing the earth to ful­fill all his en­gage­ments.

“Now,” said Michel Ar­dan, “I have on­ly one thing more to wish for you, my brave cap­tain.”

“What is that?” asked Nicholl.

“It is that you may lose your two oth­er bets! Then we shall be sure not to be stopped on our jour­ney!”

CHAP­TER XXVI

FIRE!

The first of De­cem­ber had ar­rived! the fa­tal day! for, if the pro­jec­tile were not dis­charged that very night at 10h. 48m. 40s. P.M., more than eigh­teen years must roll by be­fore the moon would again present her­self un­der the same con­di­tions of zenith and perigee.

The weath­er was mag­nif­icent. De­spite the ap­proach of win­ter, the sun shone bright­ly, and bathed in its ra­di­ant light that earth which three of its denizens were about to aban­don for a new world.

How many per­sons lost their rest on the night which pre­ced­ed this long-​ex­pect­ed day! All hearts beat with dis­qui­etude, save on­ly the heart of Michel Ar­dan. That im­per­turbable per­son­age came and went with his ha­bit­ual busi­ness-​like air, while noth­ing what­ev­er de­not­ed that any un­usu­al mat­ter pre­oc­cu­pied his mind.

Af­ter dawn, an in­nu­mer­able mul­ti­tude cov­ered the prairie which ex­tends, as far as the eye can reach, round Stones Hill. Ev­ery quar­ter of an hour the rail­way brought fresh ac­ces­sions of sight­seers; and, ac­cord­ing to the state­ment of the Tam­pa Town _Ob­serv­er_, not less than five mil­lions of spec­ta­tors thronged the soil of Flori­da.

For a whole month pre­vi­ous­ly, the mass of these per­sons had bivouacked round the en­clo­sure, and laid the foun­da­tions for a town which was af­ter­ward called “Ar­dan’s Town.” The whole plain was cov­ered with huts, cot­tages, and tents. Ev­ery na­tion un­der the sun was rep­re­sent­ed there; and ev­ery lan­guage might be heard spo­ken at the same time. It was a per­fect Ba­bel re-​en­act­ed. All the var­ious class­es of Amer­ican so­ci­ety were min­gled to­geth­er in terms of ab­so­lute equal­ity. Bankers, farm­ers, sailors, cot­ton-​planters, bro­kers, mer­chants, wa­ter­men, mag­is­trates, el­bowed each oth­er in the most free-​and-​easy way. Louisiana Cre­oles frat­er­nized with farm­ers from In­di­ana; Ken­tucky and Ten­nessee gen­tle­men and haughty Vir­gini­ans con­versed with trap­pers and the half-​sav­ages of the lakes and butch­ers from Cincin­nati. Broad-​brimmed white hats and Pana­mas, blue-​cot­ton trousers, light-​col­ored stock­ings, cam­bric frills, were all here dis­played; while up­on shirt-​fronts, wrist­bands, and neck­ties, up­on ev­ery fin­ger, even up­on the very ears, they wore an as­sort­ment of rings, shirt-​pins, brooches, and trin­kets, of which the val­ue on­ly equaled the ex­ecrable taste. Wom­en, chil­dren, and ser­vants, in equal­ly ex­pen­sive dress, sur­round­ed their hus­bands, fa­thers, or mas­ters, who re­sem­bled the pa­tri­archs of tribes in the midst of their im­mense house­holds.

At meal-​times all fell to work up­on the dish­es pe­cu­liar to the South­ern States, and con­sumed with an ap­petite that threat­ened speedy ex­haus­tion of the vict­ual­ing pow­ers of Flori­da, fric­as­seed frogs, stuffed mon­key, fish chow­der, un­der­done ‘pos­sum, and rac­coon steaks. And as for the liquors which ac­com­pa­nied this in­di­gestible repast! The shouts, the vo­cif­er­ations that re­sound­ed through the bars and tav­erns dec­orat­ed with glass­es, tankards, and bot­tles of mar­velous shape, mor­tars for pound­ing sug­ar, and bun­dles of straws! “Mint-​julep” roars one of the bar­men; “Claret san­ga­ree!” shouts an­oth­er; “Cock­tail!” “Brandy-​smash!” “Re­al mint-​julep in the new style!” All these cries in­ter­min­gled pro­duced a be­wil­der­ing and deaf­en­ing hub­bub.

But on this day, 1st of De­cem­ber, such sounds were rare. No one thought of eat­ing or drink­ing, and at four P.M. there were vast num­bers of spec­ta­tors who had not even tak­en their cus­tom­ary lunch! And, a still more sig­nif­icant fact, even the na­tion­al pas­sion for play seemed quelled for the time un­der the gen­er­al ex­cite­ment of the hour.

Up till night­fall, a dull, noise­less ag­ita­tion, such as pre­cedes great catas­tro­phes, ran through the anx­ious mul­ti­tude. An in­de­scrib­able un­easi­ness per­vad­ed all minds, an in­de­fin­able sen­sa­tion which op­pressed the heart. Ev­ery one wished it was over.

How­ev­er, about sev­en o’clock, the heavy si­lence was dis­si­pat­ed. The moon rose above the hori­zon. Mil­lions of hur­rahs hailed her ap­pear­ance. She was punc­tu­al to the ren­dezvous, and shouts of wel­come greet­ed her on all sides, as her pale beams shone grace­ful­ly in the clear heav­ens. At this mo­ment the three in­trepid trav­el­ers ap­peared. This was the sig­nal for re­newed cries of still greater in­ten­si­ty. In­stant­ly the vast as­sem­blage, as with one ac­cord, struck up the na­tion­al hymn of the Unit­ed States, and “Yan­kee Doo­dle,” sung by five mil­lion of hearty throats, rose like a roar­ing tem­pest to the far­thest lim­its of the at­mo­sphere. Then a pro­found si­lence reigned through­out the crowd.

The French­man and the two Amer­icans had by this time en­tered the en­clo­sure re­served in the cen­ter of the mul­ti­tude. They were ac­com­pa­nied by the mem­bers of the Gun Club, and by dep­uta­tions sent from all the Eu­ro­pean Ob­ser­va­to­ries. Bar­bi­cane, cool and col­lect­ed, was giv­ing his fi­nal di­rec­tions. Nicholl, with com­pressed lips, his arms crossed be­hind his back, walked with a firm and mea­sured step. Michel Ar­dan, al­ways easy, dressed in thor­ough trav­el­er’s cos­tume, leath­ern gaiters on his legs, pouch by his side, in loose vel­vet suit, cigar in mouth, was full of in­ex­haustible gayety, laugh­ing, jok­ing, play­ing pranks with J. T. Mas­ton. In one word, he was the thor­ough “French­man” (and worse, a “Parisian”) to the last mo­ment.

Ten o’clock struck! The mo­ment had ar­rived for tak­ing their places in the pro­jec­tile! The nec­es­sary op­er­ations for the de­scent, and the sub­se­quent re­moval of the cranes and scaf­fold­ing that in­clined over the mouth of the Columbi­ad, re­quired a cer­tain pe­ri­od of time.

Bar­bi­cane had reg­ulat­ed his chronome­ter to the tenth part of a sec­ond by that of Murchi­son the en­gi­neer, who was charged with the du­ty of fir­ing the gun by means of an elec­tric spark. Thus the trav­el­ers en­closed with­in the pro­jec­tile were en­abled to fol­low with their eyes the im­pas­sive nee­dle which marked the pre­cise mo­ment of their de­par­ture.

The mo­ment had ar­rived for say­ing “good-​by!” The scene was a touch­ing one. De­spite his fever­ish gayety, even Michel Ar­dan was touched. J. T. Mas­ton had found in his own dry eyes one an­cient tear, which he had doubt­less re­served for the oc­ca­sion. He dropped it on the fore­head of his dear pres­ident.

“Can I not go?” he said, “there is still time!”

“Im­pos­si­ble, old fel­low!” replied Bar­bi­cane. A few mo­ments lat­er, the three fel­low-​trav­el­ers had en­sconced them­selves in the pro­jec­tile, and screwed down the plate which cov­ered the en­trance-​aper­ture. The mouth of the Columbi­ad, now com­plete­ly dis­en­cum­bered, was open en­tire­ly to the sky.

The moon ad­vanced up­ward in a heav­en of the purest clear­ness, out­shin­ing in her pas­sage the twin­kling light of the stars. She passed over the con­stel­la­tion of the Twins, and was now near­ing the halfway point be­tween the hori­zon and the zenith. A ter­ri­ble si­lence weighed up­on the en­tire scene! Not a breath of wind up­on the earth! not a sound of breath­ing from the count­less chests of the spec­ta­tors! Their hearts seemed afraid to beat! All eyes were fixed up­on the yawn­ing mouth of the Columbi­ad.

Murchi­son fol­lowed with his eye the hand of his chronome­ter. It want­ed scarce forty sec­onds to the mo­ment of de­par­ture, but each sec­ond seemed to last an age! At the twen­ti­eth there was a gen­er­al shud­der, as it oc­curred to the minds of that vast as­sem­blage that the bold trav­el­ers shut up with­in the pro­jec­tile were al­so count­ing those ter­ri­ble sec­onds. Some few cries here and there es­caped the crowd.

“Thir­ty-​five!– thir­ty-​six!– thir­ty-​sev­en!– thir­ty-​eight!– thir­ty-​nine!– forty! FIRE!!!”

In­stant­ly Murchi­son pressed with his fin­ger the key of the elec­tric bat­tery, re­stored the cur­rent of the flu­id, and dis­charged the spark in­to the breech of the Columbi­ad.

An ap­palling un­earth­ly re­port fol­lowed in­stant­ly, such as can be com­pared to noth­ing what­ev­er known, not even to the roar of thun­der, or the blast of vol­canic ex­plo­sions! No words can con­vey the slight­est idea of the ter­rif­ic sound! An im­mense spout of fire shot up from the bow­els of the earth as from a crater. The earth heaved up, and with great dif­fi­cul­ty some few spec­ta­tors ob­tained a mo­men­tary glimpse of the pro­jec­tile vic­to­ri­ous­ly cleav­ing the air in the midst of the fiery va­pors!

CHAP­TER XXVII

FOUL WEATH­ER

At the mo­ment when that pyra­mid of fire rose to a prodi­gious height in­to the air, the glare of flame lit up the whole of Flori­da; and for a mo­ment day su­per­seded night over a con­sid­er­able ex­tent of the coun­try. This im­mense canopy of fire was per­ceived at a dis­tance of one hun­dred miles out at sea, and more than one ship’s cap­tain en­tered in his log the ap­pear­ance of this gi­gan­tic me­te­or.

The dis­charge of the Columbi­ad was ac­com­pa­nied by a per­fect earth­quake. Flori­da was shak­en to its very depths. The gas­es of the pow­der, ex­pand­ed by heat, forced back the at­mo­spher­ic stra­ta with tremen­dous vi­olence, and this ar­ti­fi­cial hur­ri­cane rushed like a wa­ter-​spout through the air.

Not a sin­gle spec­ta­tor re­mained on his feet! Men, wom­en chil­dren, all lay pros­trate like ears of corn un­der a tem­pest. There en­sued a ter­ri­ble tu­mult; a large num­ber of per­sons were se­ri­ous­ly in­jured. J. T. Mas­ton, who, de­spite all dic­tates of pru­dence, had kept in ad­vance of the mass, was pitched back 120 feet, shoot­ing like a pro­jec­tile over the heads of his fel­low-​cit­izens. Three hun­dred thou­sand per­sons re­mained deaf for a time, and as though struck stu­pe­fied.

As soon as the first ef­fects were over, the in­jured, the deaf, and last­ly, the crowd in gen­er­al, woke up with fren­zied cries. “Hur­rah for Ar­dan! Hur­rah for Bar­bi­cane! Hur­rah for Nicholl!” rose to the skies. Thou­sands of per­sons, noses in air, armed with tele­scopes and race-​glass­es, were ques­tion­ing space, for­get­ting all con­tu­sions and emo­tions in the one idea of watch­ing for the pro­jec­tile. They looked in vain! It was no longer to be seen, and they were obliged to wait for tele­grams from Long’s Peak. The di­rec­tor of the Cam­bridge Ob­ser­va­to­ry was at his post on the Rocky Moun­tains; and to him, as a skill­ful and per­se­ver­ing as­tronomer, all ob­ser­va­tions had been con­fid­ed.

But an un­fore­seen phe­nomenon came in to sub­ject the pub­lic im­pa­tience to a se­vere tri­al.

The weath­er, hith­er­to so fine, sud­den­ly changed; the sky be­came heavy with clouds. It could not have been oth­er­wise af­ter the ter­ri­ble de­range­ment of the at­mo­spher­ic stra­ta, and the dis­per­sion of the enor­mous quan­ti­ty of va­por aris­ing from the com­bus­tion of 200,000 pounds of py­rox­yle!

On the mor­row the hori­zon was cov­ered with clouds– a thick and im­pen­etra­ble cur­tain be­tween earth and sky, which un­hap­pi­ly ex­tend­ed as far as the Rocky Moun­tains. It was a fa­tal­ity! But since man had cho­sen so to dis­turb the at­mo­sphere, he was bound to ac­cept the con­se­quences of his ex­per­iment.

Sup­pos­ing, now, that the ex­per­iment had suc­ceed­ed, the trav­el­ers hav­ing start­ed on the 1st of De­cem­ber, at 10h. 46m. 40s. P.M., were due on the 4th at 0h. P.M. at their des­ti­na­tion. So that up to that time it would have been very dif­fi­cult af­ter all to have ob­served, un­der such con­di­tions, a body so small as the shell. There­fore they wait­ed with what pa­tience they might.

From the 4th to the 6th of De­cem­ber in­clu­sive, the weath­er re­main­ing much the same in Amer­ica, the great Eu­ro­pean in­stru­ments of Her­schel, Rosse, and Fou­cault, were con­stant­ly di­rect­ed to­ward the moon, for the weath­er was then mag­nif­icent; but the com­par­ative weak­ness of their glass­es pre­vent­ed any trust­wor­thy ob­ser­va­tions be­ing made.

On the 7th the sky seemed to light­en. They were in hopes now, but their hope was of but short du­ra­tion, and at night again thick clouds hid the star­ry vault from all eyes.

Mat­ters were now be­com­ing se­ri­ous, when on the 9th the sun reap­peared for an in­stant, as if for the pur­pose of teas­ing the Amer­icans. It was re­ceived with hiss­es; and wound­ed, no doubt, by such a re­cep­tion, showed it­self very spar­ing of its rays.

On the 10th, no change! J. T. Mas­ton went near­ly mad, and great fears were en­ter­tained re­gard­ing the brain of this wor­thy in­di­vid­ual, which had hith­er­to been so well pre­served with­in his gut­ta-​per­cha cra­ni­um.

But on the 11th one of those in­ex­pli­ca­ble tem­pests pe­cu­liar to those in­tertrop­ical re­gions was let loose in the at­mo­sphere. A ter­rif­ic east wind swept away the groups of clouds which had been so long gath­er­ing, and at night the se­mi-​disc of the orb of night rode ma­jes­ti­cal­ly amid the soft con­stel­la­tions of the sky.

CHAP­TER XXVI­II

A NEW STAR

That very night, the startling news so im­pa­tient­ly await­ed, burst like a thun­der­bolt over the Unit­ed States of the Union, and thence, dart­ing across the ocean, ran through all the tele­graph­ic wires of the globe. The pro­jec­tile had been de­tect­ed, thanks to the gi­gan­tic re­flec­tor of Long’s Peak! Here is the note re­ceived by the di­rec­tor of the Ob­ser­va­to­ry of Cam­bridge. It con­tains the sci­en­tif­ic con­clu­sion re­gard­ing this great ex­per­iment of the Gun Club.

LONG’S PEAK, De­cem­ber 12. To the Of­fi­cers of the Ob­ser­va­to­ry of Cam­bridge. The pro­jec­tile dis­charged by the Columbi­ad at Stones Hill has been de­tect­ed by Messrs. Belfast and J. T. Mas­ton, 12th of De­cem­ber, at 8:47 P.M., the moon hav­ing en­tered her last quar­ter. This pro­jec­tile has not ar­rived at its des­ti­na­tion. It has passed by the side; but suf­fi­cient­ly near to be re­tained by the lu­nar at­trac­tion.

The rec­ti­lin­ear move­ment has thus be­come changed in­to a cir­cu­lar mo­tion of ex­treme ve­loc­ity, and it is now pur­su­ing an el­lip­ti­cal or­bit round the moon, of which it has be­come a true satel­lite.

The el­ements of this new star we have as yet been un­able to de­ter­mine; we do not yet know the ve­loc­ity of its pas­sage. The dis­tance which sep­arates it from the sur­face of the moon may be es­ti­mat­ed at about 2,833 miles.

How­ev­er, two hy­pothe­ses come here in­to our con­sid­er­ation.

1. Ei­ther the at­trac­tion of the moon will end by draw­ing them in­to it­self, and the trav­el­ers will at­tain their des­ti­na­tion; or,

2. The pro­jec­tile, fol­low­ing an im­mutable law, will con­tin­ue to grav­itate round the moon till the end of time.

At some fu­ture time, our ob­ser­va­tions will be able to de­ter­mine this point, but till then the ex­per­iment of the Gun Club can have no oth­er re­sult than to have pro­vid­ed our so­lar sys­tem with a new star. J. BELFAST.

To how many ques­tions did this un­ex­pect­ed _de­noue­ment_ give rise? What mys­te­ri­ous re­sults was the fu­ture re­serv­ing for the in­ves­ti­ga­tion of sci­ence? At all events, the names of Nicholl, Bar­bi­cane, and Michel Ar­dan were cer­tain to be im­mor­tal­ized in the an­nals of as­tron­omy!

When the dis­patch from Long’s Peak had once be­come known, there was but one uni­ver­sal feel­ing of sur­prise and alarm. Was it pos­si­ble to go to the aid of these bold trav­el­ers? No! for they had placed them­selves be­yond the pale of hu­man­ity, by cross­ing the lim­its im­posed by the Cre­ator on his earth­ly crea­tures. They had air enough for _two_ months; they had vict­uals enough for _twelve;– but af­ter that?_ There was on­ly one man who would not ad­mit that the sit­ua­tion was des­per­ate– he alone had con­fi­dence; and that was their de­vot­ed friend J. T. Mas­ton.

Be­sides, he nev­er let them get out of sight. His home was hence­forth the post at Long’s Peak; his hori­zon, the mir­ror of that im­mense re­flec­tor. As soon as the moon rose above the hori­zon, he im­me­di­ate­ly caught her in the field of the tele­scope; he nev­er let her go for an in­stant out of his sight, and fol­lowed her as­sid­uous­ly in her course through the stel­lar spaces. He watched with un­tir­ing pa­tience the pas­sage of the pro­jec­tile across her sil­very disc, and re­al­ly the wor­thy man re­mained in per­pet­ual com­mu­ni­ca­tion with his three friends, whom he did not de­spair of see­ing again some day.

“Those three men,” said he, “have car­ried in­to space all the re­sources of art, sci­ence, and in­dus­try. With that, one can do any­thing; and you will see that, some day, they will come out all right.”

ROUND THE MOON

A SE­QUEL TO

FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON

ROUND THE MOON

PRE­LIM­INARY CHAP­TER

THE FIRST PART OF THIS WORK, AND SERV­ING AS A PREF­ACE TO THE SEC­OND

Dur­ing the year 186-, the whole world was great­ly ex­cit­ed by a sci­en­tif­ic ex­per­iment un­prece­dent­ed in the an­nals of sci­ence. The mem­bers of the Gun Club, a cir­cle of ar­tillery­men formed at Bal­ti­more af­ter the Amer­ican war, con­ceived the idea of putting them­selves in com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the moon!– yes, with the moon– by send­ing to her a pro­jec­tile. Their pres­ident, Bar­bi­cane, the pro­mot­er of the en­ter­prise, hav­ing con­sult­ed the as­tronomers of the Cam­bridge Ob­ser­va­to­ry up­on the sub­ject, took all nec­es­sary means to en­sure the suc­cess of this ex­traor­di­nary en­ter­prise, which had been de­clared prac­ti­ca­ble by the ma­jor­ity of com­pe­tent judges. Af­ter set­ting on foot a pub­lic sub­scrip­tion, which re­al­ized near­ly L1,200,000, they be­gan the gi­gan­tic work.

Ac­cord­ing to the ad­vice for­ward­ed from the mem­bers of the Ob­ser­va­to­ry, the gun des­tined to launch the pro­jec­tile had to be fixed in a coun­try sit­uat­ed be­tween the 0 and 28th de­grees of north or south lat­itude, in or­der to aim at the moon when at the zenith; and its ini­tia­to­ry ve­loc­ity was fixed at twelve thou­sand yards to the sec­ond. Launched on the 1st of De­cem­ber, at 10hrs. 46m. 40s. P.M., it ought to reach the moon four days af­ter its de­par­ture, that is on the 5th of De­cem­ber, at mid­night pre­cise­ly, at the mo­ment of her at­tain­ing her perigee, that is her near­est dis­tance from the earth, which is ex­act­ly 86,410 leagues (French), or 238,833 miles mean dis­tance (En­glish).

The prin­ci­pal mem­bers of the Gun Club, Pres­ident Bar­bi­cane, Ma­jor El­phin­stone, the sec­re­tary Joseph T. Mas­ton, and oth­er learned men, held sev­er­al meet­ings, at which the shape and com­po­si­tion of the pro­jec­tile were dis­cussed, al­so the po­si­tion and na­ture of the gun, and the qual­ity and quan­ti­ty of pow­der to be used. It was de­cid­ed: First, that the pro­jec­tile should be a shell made of alu­minum with a di­am­eter of 108 inch­es and a thick­ness of twelve inch­es to its walls; and should weigh 19,250 pounds. Sec­ond, that the gun should be a Columbi­ad cast in iron, 900 feet long, and run per­pen­dic­ular­ly in­to the earth. Third, that the charge should con­tain 400,000 pounds of gun-​cot­ton, which, giv­ing out six bil­lions of litres of gas in rear of the pro­jec­tile, would eas­ily car­ry it to­ward the orb of night.

These ques­tions de­ter­mined Pres­ident Bar­bi­cane, as­sist­ed by Murchi­son the en­gi­neer, to choose a spot sit­uat­ed in Flori­da, in 27@ 7′ North lat­itude, and 77@ 3′ West (Green­wich) lon­gi­tude. It was on this spot, af­ter stu­pen­dous la­bor, that the Columbi­ad was cast with full suc­cess. Things stood thus, when an in­ci­dent took place which in­creased the in­ter­est at­tached to this great en­ter­prise a hun­dred­fold.

A French­man, an en­thu­si­as­tic Parisian, as wit­ty as he was bold, asked to be en­closed in the pro­jec­tile, in or­der that he might reach the moon, and re­con­noi­ter this ter­res­tri­al satel­lite. The name of this in­trepid ad­ven­tur­er was Michel Ar­dan. He land­ed in Amer­ica, was re­ceived with en­thu­si­asm, held meet­ings, saw him­self car­ried in tri­umph, rec­on­ciled Pres­ident Bar­bi­cane to his mor­tal en­emy, Cap­tain Nicholl, and, as a to­ken of rec­on­cil­ia­tion, per­suad­ed them both to start with him in the pro­jec­tile. The propo­si­tion be­ing ac­cept­ed, the shape of the pro­jec­tile was slight­ly al­tered. It was made of a cylin­dro-​con­ical form. This species of aeri­al car was lined with strong springs and par­ti­tions to dead­en the shock of de­par­ture. It was pro­vid­ed with food for a year, wa­ter for some months, and gas for some days. A self-​act­ing ap­pa­ra­tus sup­plied the three trav­el­ers with air to breathe. At the same time, on one of the high­est points of the Rocky Moun­tains, the Gun Club had a gi­gan­tic tele­scope erect­ed, in or­der that they might be able to fol­low the course of the pro­jec­tile through space. All was then ready.

On the 30th of Novem­ber, at the hour fixed up­on, from the midst of an ex­traor­di­nary crowd of spec­ta­tors, the de­par­ture took place, and for the first time, three hu­man be­ings quit­ted the ter­res­tri­al globe, and launched in­to in­ter-​plan­etary space with al­most a cer­tain­ty of reach­ing their des­ti­na­tion. These bold trav­el­ers, Michel Ar­dan, Pres­ident Bar­bi­cane, and Cap­tain Nicholl, ought to make the pas­sage in nine­ty-​sev­en hours, thir­teen min­utes, and twen­ty sec­onds. Con­se­quent­ly, their ar­rival on the lu­nar disc could not take place un­til the 5th of De­cem­ber at twelve at night, at the ex­act mo­ment when the moon should be full, and not on the 4th, as some bad­ly in­formed jour­nal­ists had an­nounced.

But an un­fore­seen cir­cum­stance, viz., the det­ona­tion pro­duced by the Columbi­ad, had the im­me­di­ate ef­fect of trou­bling the ter­res­tri­al at­mo­sphere, by ac­cu­mu­lat­ing a large quan­ti­ty of va­por, a phe­nomenon which ex­cit­ed uni­ver­sal in­dig­na­tion, for the moon was hid­den from the eyes of the watch­ers for sev­er­al nights.

The wor­thy Joseph T. Mas­ton, the staunch­est friend of the three trav­el­ers, start­ed for the Rocky Moun­tains, ac­com­pa­nied by the Hon. J. Belfast, di­rec­tor of the Cam­bridge Ob­ser­va­to­ry, and reached the sta­tion of Long’s Peak, where the tele­scope was erect­ed which brought the moon with­in an ap­par­ent dis­tance of two leagues. The hon­or­able sec­re­tary of the Gun Club wished him­self to ob­serve the ve­hi­cle of his dar­ing friends.

The ac­cu­mu­la­tion of the clouds in the at­mo­sphere pre­vent­ed all ob­ser­va­tion on the 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th of De­cem­ber. In­deed it was thought that all ob­ser­va­tions would have to be put off to the 3d of Jan­uary in the fol­low­ing year; for the moon en­ter­ing its last quar­ter on the 11th, would then on­ly present an ev­er-​de­creas­ing por­tion of her disc, in­suf­fi­cient to al­low of their fol­low­ing the course of the pro­jec­tile.

At length, to the gen­er­al sat­is­fac­tion, a heavy storm cleared the at­mo­sphere on the night of the 11th and 12th of De­cem­ber, and the moon, with half-​il­lu­mi­nat­ed disc, was plain­ly to be seen up­on the black sky.

That very night a tele­gram was sent from the sta­tion of Long’s Peak by Joseph T. Mas­ton and Belfast to the gen­tle­men of the Cam­bridge Ob­ser­va­to­ry, an­nounc­ing that on the 11th of De­cem­ber at 8h. 47m. P.M., the pro­jec­tile launched by the Columbi­ad of Stones Hill had been de­tect­ed by Messrs. Belfast and Mas­ton– that it had de­vi­at­ed from its course from some un­known cause, and had not reached its des­ti­na­tion; but that it had passed near enough to be re­tained by the lu­nar at­trac­tion; that its rec­ti­lin­ear move­ment had been changed to a cir­cu­lar one, and that fol­low­ing an el­lip­ti­cal or­bit round the star of night it had be­come its satel­lite. The tele­gram added that the el­ements of this new star had not yet been cal­cu­lat­ed; and in­deed three ob­ser­va­tions made up­on a star in three dif­fer­ent po­si­tions are nec­es­sary to de­ter­mine these el­ements. Then it showed that the dis­tance sep­arat­ing the pro­jec­tile from the lu­nar sur­face “might” be reck­oned at about 2,833 miles.

It end­ed with the dou­ble hy­poth­esis: ei­ther the at­trac­tion of the moon would draw it to her­self, and the trav­el­ers thus at­tain their end; or that the pro­jec­tile, held in one im­mutable or­bit, would grav­itate around the lu­nar disc to all eter­ni­ty.

With such al­ter­na­tives, what would be the fate of the trav­el­ers? Cer­tain­ly they had food for some time. But sup­pos­ing they did suc­ceed in their rash en­ter­prise, how would they re­turn? Could they ev­er re­turn? Should they hear from them? These ques­tions, de­bat­ed by the most learned pens of the day, strong­ly en­grossed the pub­lic at­ten­tion.

It is ad­vis­able here to make a re­mark which ought to be well con­sid­ered by hasty ob­servers. When a pure­ly spec­ula­tive dis­cov­ery is an­nounced to the pub­lic, it can­not be done with too much pru­dence. No one is obliged to dis­cov­er ei­ther a plan­et, a comet, or a satel­lite; and who­ev­er makes a mis­take in such a case ex­pos­es him­self just­ly to the de­ri­sion of the mass. Far bet­ter is it to wait; and that is what the im­pa­tient Joseph T. Mas­ton should have done be­fore send­ing this tele­gram forth to the world, which, ac­cord­ing to his idea, told the whole re­sult of the en­ter­prise. In­deed this tele­gram con­tained two sorts of er­rors, as was proved even­tu­al­ly. First, er­rors of ob­ser­va­tion, con­cern­ing the dis­tance of the pro­jec­tile from the sur­face of the moon, for on the 11th of De­cem­ber it was im­pos­si­ble to see it; and what Joseph T. Mas­ton had seen, or thought he saw, could not have been the pro­jec­tile of the Columbi­ad. Sec­ond, er­rors of the­ory on the fate in store for the said pro­jec­tile; for in mak­ing it a satel­lite of the moon, it was putting it in di­rect con­tra­dic­tion of all me­chan­ical laws.

One sin­gle hy­poth­esis of the ob­servers of Long’s Peak could ev­er be re­al­ized, that which fore­saw the case of the trav­el­ers (if still alive) unit­ing their ef­forts with the lu­nar at­trac­tion to at­tain the sur­face of the disc.

Now these men, as clever as they were dar­ing, had sur­vived the ter­ri­ble shock con­se­quent on their de­par­ture, and it is their jour­ney in the pro­jec­tile car which is here re­lat­ed in its most dra­mat­ic as well as in its most sin­gu­lar de­tails. This recital will de­stroy many il­lu­sions and sur­mis­es; but it will give a true idea of the sin­gu­lar changes in store for such an en­ter­prise; it will bring out the sci­en­tif­ic in­stincts of Bar­bi­cane, the in­dus­tri­ous re­sources of Nicholl, and the au­da­cious hu­mor of Michel Ar­dan. Be­sides this, it will prove that their wor­thy friend, Joseph T. Mas­ton, was wast­ing his time, while lean­ing over the gi­gan­tic tele­scope he watched the course of the moon through the star­ry space.