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

CHAPTER XX

THE SOUND­INGS OF THE SUSQUE­HAN­NA

Well, lieu­tenant, and our sound­ings?”

“I think, sir, that the op­er­ation is near­ing its com­ple­tion,” replied Lieu­tenant Brons­field. “But who would have thought of find­ing such a depth so near in shore, and on­ly 200 miles from the Amer­ican coast?”

“Cer­tain­ly, Brons­field, there is a great de­pres­sion,” said Cap­tain Bloms­ber­ry. “In this spot there is a sub­ma­rine val­ley worn by Hum­boldt’s cur­rent, which skirts the coast of Amer­ica as far as the Straits of Mag­el­lan.”

“These great depths,” con­tin­ued the lieu­tenant, “are not fa­vor­able for lay­ing tele­graph­ic ca­bles. A lev­el bot­tom, like that sup­port­ing the Amer­ican ca­ble be­tween Valen­tia and New­found­land, is much bet­ter.”

“I agree with you, Brons­field. With your per­mis­sion, lieu­tenant, where are we now?”

“Sir, at this mo­ment we have 3,508 fath­oms of line out, and the ball which draws the sound­ing lead has not yet touched the bot­tom; for if so, it would have come up of it­self.”

“Brook’s ap­pa­ra­tus is very in­ge­nious,” said Cap­tain Bloms­ber­ry; “it gives us very ex­act sound­ings.”

“Touch!” cried at this mo­ment one of the men at the forewheel, who was su­per­in­tend­ing the op­er­ation.

The cap­tain and the lieu­tenant mount­ed the quar­ter­deck.

“What depth have we?” asked the cap­tain.

“Three thou­sand six hun­dred and twen­ty-​sev­en fath­oms,” replied the lieu­tenant, en­ter­ing it in his note­book.

“Well, Brons­field,” said the cap­tain, “I will take down the re­sult. Now haul in the sound­ing line. It will be the work of some hours. In that time the en­gi­neer can light the fur­naces, and we shall be ready to start as soon as you have fin­ished. It is ten o’clock, and with your per­mis­sion, lieu­tenant, I will turn in.”

“Do so, sir; do so!” replied the lieu­tenant oblig­ing­ly.

The cap­tain of the Susque­han­na, as brave a man as need be, and the hum­ble ser­vant of his of­fi­cers, re­turned to his cab­in, took a brandy-​grog, which earned for the stew­ard no end of praise, and turned in, not with­out hav­ing com­pli­ment­ed his ser­vant up­on his mak­ing beds, and slept a peace­ful sleep.

It was then ten at night. The eleventh day of the month of De­cem­ber was draw­ing to a close in a mag­nif­icent night.

The Susque­han­na, a corvette of 500 horse-​pow­er, of the Unit­ed States navy, was oc­cu­pied in tak­ing sound­ings in the Pa­cif­ic Ocean about 200 miles off the Amer­ican coast, fol­low­ing that long penin­su­la which stretch­es down the coast of Mex­ico.

The wind had dropped by de­grees. There was no dis­tur­bance in the air. The pen­nant hung mo­tion­less from the main­top-​gal­lant- mast truck.

Cap­tain Jonathan Bloms­ber­ry (cousin-​ger­man of Colonel Bloms­ber­ry, one of the most ar­dent sup­port­ers of the Gun Club, who had mar­ried an aunt of the cap­tain and daugh­ter of an hon­or­able Ken­tucky mer­chant)– Cap­tain Bloms­ber­ry could not have wished for fin­er weath­er in which to bring to a close his del­icate op­er­ations of sound­ing. His corvette had not even felt the great tem­pest, which by sweep­ing away the groups of clouds on the Rocky Moun­tains, had al­lowed them to ob­serve the course of the fa­mous pro­jec­tile.

Ev­ery­thing went well, and with all the fer­vor of a Pres­by­te­ri­an, he did not for­get to thank heav­en for it. The se­ries of sound­ings tak­en by the Susque­han­na, had for its aim the find­ing of a fa­vor­able spot for the lay­ing of a sub­ma­rine ca­ble to con­nect the Hawai­ian Is­lands with the coast of Amer­ica.

It was a great un­der­tak­ing, due to the in­sti­ga­tion of a pow­er­ful com­pa­ny. Its man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, the in­tel­li­gent Cyrus Field, pur­posed even cov­er­ing all the is­lands of Ocean­ica with a vast elec­tri­cal net­work, an im­mense en­ter­prise, and one wor­thy of Amer­ican ge­nius.

To the corvette Susque­han­na had been con­fid­ed the first op­er­ations of sound­ing. It was on the night of the 11th-12th of De­cem­ber, she was in ex­act­ly 27@ 7′ north lat­itude, and 41@ 37′ west lon­gi­tude, on the merid­ian of Wash­ing­ton.

The moon, then in her last quar­ter, was be­gin­ning to rise above the hori­zon.

Af­ter the de­par­ture of Cap­tain Bloms­ber­ry, the lieu­tenant and some of­fi­cers were stand­ing to­geth­er on the poop. On the ap­pear­ance of the moon, their thoughts turned to that orb which the eyes of a whole hemi­sphere were con­tem­plat­ing. The best naval glass­es could not have dis­cov­ered the pro­jec­tile wan­der­ing around its hemi­sphere, and yet all were point­ed to­ward that bril­liant disc which mil­lions of eyes were look­ing at at the same mo­ment.

“They have been gone ten days,” said Lieu­tenant Brons­field at last. “What has be­come of them?”

“They have ar­rived, lieu­tenant,” ex­claimed a young mid­ship­man, “and they are do­ing what all trav­el­ers do when they ar­rive in a new coun­try, tak­ing a walk!”

“Oh! I am sure of that, if you tell me so, my young friend,” said Lieu­tenant Brons­field, smil­ing.

“But,” con­tin­ued an­oth­er of­fi­cer, “their ar­rival can­not be doubt­ed. The pro­jec­tile was to reach the moon when full on the 5th at mid­night. We are now at the 11th of De­cem­ber, which makes six days. And in six times twen­ty-​four hours, with­out dark­ness, one would have time to set­tle com­fort­ably. I fan­cy I see my brave coun­try­men en­camped at the bot­tom of some val­ley, on the bor­ders of a Se­len­ite stream, near a pro­jec­tile half-​buried by its fall amid vol­canic rub­bish, Cap­tain Nicholl be­gin­ning his lev­el­ing op­er­ations, Pres­ident Bar­bi­cane writ­ing out his notes, and Michel Ar­dan em­balm­ing the lu­nar soli­tudes with the per­fume of his—-“

“Yes! it must be so, it is so!” ex­claimed the young mid­ship­man, worked up to a pitch of en­thu­si­asm by this ide­al de­scrip­tion of his su­pe­ri­or of­fi­cer.

“I should like to be­lieve it,” replied the lieu­tenant, who was quite un­moved. “Un­for­tu­nate­ly di­rect news from the lu­nar world is still want­ing.”

“Beg par­don, lieu­tenant,” said the mid­ship­man, “but can­not Pres­ident Bar­bi­cane write?”

A burst of laugh­ter greet­ed this an­swer.

“No let­ters!” con­tin­ued the young man quick­ly. “The postal ad­min­is­tra­tion has some­thing to see to there.”

“Might it not be the tele­graph­ic ser­vice that is at fault?” asked one of the of­fi­cers iron­ical­ly.

“Not nec­es­sar­ily,” replied the mid­ship­man, not at all con­fused. “But it is very easy to set up a graph­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the earth.”

“And how?”

“By means of the tele­scope at Long’s Peak. You know it brings the moon to with­in four miles of the Rocky Moun­tains, and that it shows ob­jects on its sur­face of on­ly nine feet in di­am­eter. Very well; let our in­dus­tri­ous friends con­struct a gi­ant al­pha­bet; let them write words three fath­oms long, and sen­tences three miles long, and then they can send us news of them­selves.”

The young mid­ship­man, who had a cer­tain amount of imag­ina­tion, was loud­ly ap­plaud­ed; Lieu­tenant Brons­field al­low­ing that the idea was pos­si­ble, but ob­serv­ing that if by these means they could re­ceive news from the lu­nar world they could not send any from the ter­res­tri­al, un­less the Se­len­ites had in­stru­ments fit for tak­ing dis­tant ob­ser­va­tions at their dis­pos­al.

“Ev­ident­ly,” said one of the of­fi­cers; “but what has be­come of the trav­el­ers? what they have done, what they have seen, that above all must in­ter­est us. Be­sides, if the ex­per­iment has suc­ceed­ed (which I do not doubt), they will try it again. The Columbi­ad is still sunk in the soil of Flori­da. It is now on­ly a ques­tion of pow­der and shot; and ev­ery time the moon is at her zenith a car­go of vis­itors may be sent to her.”

“It is clear,” replied Lieu­tenant Brons­field, “that J. T. Mas­ton will one day join his friends.”

“If he will have me,” cried the mid­ship­man, “I am ready!”

“Oh! vol­un­teers will not be want­ing,” an­swered Brons­field; “and if it were al­lowed, half of the earth’s in­hab­itants would em­igrate to the moon!”

This con­ver­sa­tion be­tween the of­fi­cers of the Susque­han­na was kept up un­til near­ly one in the morn­ing. We can­not say what blun­der­ing sys­tems were broached, what in­con­sis­tent the­ories ad­vanced by these bold spir­its. Since Bar­bi­cane’s at­tempt, noth­ing seemed im­pos­si­ble to the Amer­icans. They had al­ready de­signed an ex­pe­di­tion, not on­ly of sa­vants, but of a whole colony to­ward the Se­len­ite bor­ders, and a com­plete army, con­sist­ing of in­fantry, ar­tillery, and cav­al­ry, to con­quer the lu­nar world.

At one in the morn­ing, the haul­ing in of the sound­ing-​line was not yet com­plet­ed; 1,670 fath­oms were still out, which would en­tail some hours’ work. Ac­cord­ing to the com­man­der’s or­ders, the fires had been light­ed, and steam was be­ing got up. The Susque­han­na could have start­ed that very in­stant.

At that mo­ment (it was sev­en­teen min­utes past one in the morn­ing) Lieu­tenant Brons­field was prepar­ing to leave the watch and re­turn to his cab­in, when his at­ten­tion was at­tract­ed by a dis­tant hiss­ing noise. His com­rades and him­self first thought that this hiss­ing was caused by the let­ting off of steam; but lift­ing their heads, they found that the noise was pro­duced in the high­est re­gions of the air. They had not time to ques­tion each oth­er be­fore the hiss­ing be­came fright­ful­ly in­tense, and sud­den­ly there ap­peared to their daz­zled eyes an enor­mous me­te­or, ig­nit­ed by the ra­pid­ity of its course and its fric­tion through the at­mo­spher­ic stra­ta.

This fiery mass grew larg­er to their eyes, and fell, with the noise of thun­der, up­on the bowsprit, which it smashed close to the stem, and buried it­self in the waves with a deaf­en­ing roar!

A few feet near­er, and the Susque­han­na would have foundered with all on board!

At this in­stant Cap­tain Bloms­ber­ry ap­peared, half-​dressed, and rush­ing on to the fore­cas­tle-​deck, whith­er all the of­fi­cers had hur­ried, ex­claimed, “With your per­mis­sion, gen­tle­men, what has hap­pened?”

And the mid­ship­man, mak­ing him­self as it were the echo of the body, cried, “Com­man­der, it is `they’ come back again!”