The Moon-Voyage

CHAPTER XIV.

PICK­AXE AND TROW­EL.

That same evening Bar­bi­cane and his com­pan­ions re­turned to Tam­pa Town, and Murchi­son, the en­gi­neer, re-​em­barked on board the _Tampi­co_ for New Or­leans. He was to en­gage an army of work­men to bring back the greater part of the work­ing-​stock. The mem­bers of the Gun Club re­mained at Tam­pa Town in or­der to set on foot the pre­lim­inary work with the as­sis­tance of the in­hab­itants of the coun­try.

Eight days af­ter its de­par­ture the _Tampi­co_ re­turned to the Es­pir­itu-​San­to Bay with a fleet of steam­boats. Murchi­son had suc­ceed­ed in get­ting to­geth­er 1,500 work­men. In the evil days of slav­ery he would have lost his time and trou­ble; but since Amer­ica, the land of lib­er­ty, has on­ly con­tained freemen, they flock wher­ev­er they can get good pay. Now mon­ey was not want­ing to the Gun Club; it of­fered a high rate of wages with con­sid­er­able and pro­por­tion­ate perquisites. The work­man en­list­ed for Flori­da could, once the work fin­ished, de­pend up­on a cap­ital placed in his name in the bank of Bal­ti­more.

Murchi­son had there­fore on­ly to pick and choose, and could be se­vere about the in­tel­li­gence and skill of his work­men. He en­rolled in his work­ing le­gion the pick of me­chan­ics, stok­ers, iron-​founders, lime-​burn­ers, min­ers, brick­mak­ers, and ar­ti­sans of ev­ery sort, white or black with­out dis­tinc­tion of colour. Many of them brought their fam­ilies with them. It was quite an em­igra­tion.

On the 31st of Oc­to­ber, at 10 a.m., this troop land­ed on the quays of Tam­pa Town. The move­ment and ac­tiv­ity which reigned in the lit­tle town that had thus dou­bled its pop­ula­tion in a sin­gle day may be imag­ined. In fact, Tam­pa Town was enor­mous­ly ben­efit­ed by this en­ter­prise of the Gun Club, not by the num­ber of work­men who were im­me­di­ate­ly draft­ed to Stony Hill, but by the in­flux of cu­ri­ous idlers who con­verged by de­grees from all points of the globe to­wards the Florid­ian penin­su­la.

Dur­ing the first few days they were oc­cu­pied in un­load­ing the flotil­la of the tools, ma­chines, pro­vi­sions, and a large num­ber of plate iron hous­es made in pieces sep­arate­ly pieced and num­bered. At the same time Bar­bi­cane laid the first sleep­ers of a rail­way fif­teen miles long that was des­tined to unite Stony Hill and Tam­pa Town.

It is known how Amer­ican rail­ways are con­struct­ed, with capri­cious bends, bold slopes, steep hills, and deep val­leys. They do not cost much and are not much in their way, on­ly their trains run off or jump off as they please. The rail­way from Tam­pa Town to Stony Hill was but a tri­fle, and want­ed nei­ther much time nor much mon­ey for its con­struc­tion.

Bar­bi­cane was the soul of this army of work­men who had come at his call. He an­imat­ed them, com­mu­ni­cat­ed to them his ar­dour, en­thu­si­asm, and con­vic­tion. He was ev­ery­where at once, as if en­dowed with the gift of ubiq­ui­ty, and al­ways fol­lowed by J.T. Mas­ton, his blue­bot­tle fly. His prac­ti­cal mind in­vent­ed a thou­sand things. With him there were no ob­sta­cles, dif­fi­cul­ties, or em­bar­rass­ment. He was as good a min­er, ma­son, and me­chan­ic as he was an ar­tillery­man, hav­ing an an­swer to ev­ery ques­tion, and a so­lu­tion to ev­ery prob­lem. He cor­re­spond­ed ac­tive­ly with the Gun Club and the Gold­spring Man­ufac­to­ry, and day and night the _Tampi­co_ kept her steam up await­ing his or­ders in Hillis­boro har­bour.

Bar­bi­cane, on the 1st of Novem­ber, left Tam­pa Town with a de­tach­ment of work­men, and the very next day a small town of work­men's hous­es rose round Stony Hill. They sur­round­ed it with pal­isades, and from its move­ment and ar­dour it might soon have been tak­en for one of the great cities of the Union. Life was reg­ulat­ed at once and work be­gan in per­fect or­der.

Care­ful bor­ing had es­tab­lished the na­ture of the ground, and dig­ging was be­gun on Novem­ber 4th. That day Bar­bi­cane called his fore­men to­geth­er and said to them--

“You all know, my friends, why I have called you to­geth­er in this part of Flori­da. We want to cast a can­non nine feet in di­am­eter, six feet thick, and with a stone revet­ment nine­teen and a half feet thick; we there­fore want a well 60 feet wide and 900 feet deep. This large work must be ter­mi­nat­ed in nine months. You have, there­fore, 2,543,400 cu­bic feet of soil to dig out in 255 days--that is to say, 10,000 cu­bic feet a day. That would of­fer no dif­fi­cul­ty if you had plen­ty of el­bow-​room, but as you will on­ly have a lim­it­ed space it will be more trou­ble. Nev­er­the­less as the work must be done it will be done, and I de­pend up­on your courage as much as up­on your skill.”

At 8 a.m. the first spade­ful was dug out of the Florid­ian soil, and from that mo­ment this use­ful tool did not stop idle a mo­ment in the hands of the min­er. The gangs re­lieved each oth­er ev­ery three hours.

Be­sides, al­though the work was colos­sal it did not ex­ceed the lim­it of hu­man ca­pa­bil­ity. Far from that. How many works of much greater dif­fi­cul­ty, and in which the el­ements had to be more di­rect­ly con­tend­ed against, had been brought to a suc­cess­ful ter­mi­na­tion! Suf­fice it to men­tion the well of Fa­ther Joseph, made near Cairo by the Sul­tan Sal­adin at an epoch when ma­chines had not yet ap­peared to in­crease the strength of man a hun­dred­fold, and which goes down to the lev­el of the Nile it­self at a depth of 300 feet! And that oth­er well dug at Coblentz by the Mar­grave Jean of Baden, 600 feet deep! All that was need­ed was a triple depth and a dou­ble width, which made the bor­ing eas­ier. There was not one fore­man or work­man who doubt­ed about the suc­cess of the op­er­ation.

An im­por­tant de­ci­sion tak­en by Murchi­son and ap­proved of by Bar­bi­cane ac­cel­er­at­ed the work. An ar­ti­cle in the con­tract de­cid­ed that the Columbi­ad should be hooped with wrought-​iron--a use­less pre­cau­tion, for the can­non could ev­ident­ly do with­out hoops. This clause was there­fore giv­en up. Hence a great econ­omy of time, for they could then em­ploy the new sys­tem of bor­ing now used for dig­ging wells, by which the ma­son­ry is done at the same time as the bor­ing. Thanks to this very sim­ple op­er­ation they were not obliged to prop up the ground; the wall kept it up and went down by its own weight.

This ma­noeu­vre was on­ly to be­gin when the spade should have reached the sol­id part of the ground.

On the 4th of Novem­ber fifty work­men be­gan to dig in the very cen­tre of the in­clo­sure sur­round­ed by pal­isades--that is to say, the top of Stony Hill--a cir­cu­lar hole six­ty feet wide.

The spade first turned up a sort of black soil six inch­es deep, which it soon car­ried away. To this soil suc­ceed­ed two feet of fine sand, which was care­ful­ly tak­en out, as it was to be used for the cast­ing.

Af­ter this sand white clay ap­peared, sim­ilar to En­glish chalk, and which was four feet thick.

Then the pick­ax­es rang up­on the hard lay­er, a species of rock formed by very dry pet­ri­fied shells. At that point the hole was six and a half feet deep, and the ma­son­ry was be­gun.

At the bot­tom of that ex­ca­va­tion they made an oak wheel, a sort of cir­cle strong­ly bolt­ed and of enor­mous strength; in its cen­tre a hole was pierced the size of the ex­te­ri­or di­am­eter of the Columbi­ad. It was up­on this wheel that the foun­da­tions of the ma­son­ry were placed, the hy­draulic ce­ment of which joined the stones solid­ly to­geth­er. Af­ter the work­men had bricked up the space from the cir­cum­fer­ence to the cen­tre, they found them­selves in­closed in a well twen­ty-​one feet wide.

When this work was end­ed the min­ers be­gan again with spade and pick­axe, and set up­on the rock un­der the wheel it­self, tak­ing care to sup­port it on ex­treme­ly strong tres­sels; ev­ery time the hole was two feet deep­er they took away the tres­sels; the wheel grad­ual­ly sank, tak­ing with it its cir­cle of ma­son­ry, at the up­per lay­er of which the ma­sons worked in­ces­sant­ly, tak­ing care to make vent-​holes for the es­cape of gas dur­ing the op­er­ation of cast­ing.

This kind of work re­quired great skill and con­stant at­ten­tion on the part of the work­men; more than one dig­ging un­der the wheel was dan­ger­ous, and some were even mor­tal­ly wound­ed by the splin­ters of stone; but their en­er­gy did not slack­en for a mo­ment by day nor night; by day, when the sun's rays sent the ther­mome­ter up to 99° on the cal­cined planes; by night, un­der the white waves of elec­tric light, the noise of the pick­axe on the rock, the blast­ing and the ma­chines, to­geth­er with the wreaths of smoke scat­tered through the air, traced a cir­cle of ter­ror round Stony Hill, which the herds of buf­faloes and the de­tach­ments of Semi­noles nev­er dared to pass.

In the mean­time the work reg­ular­ly ad­vanced; steam-​cranes speed­ed the car­ry­ing away of the rub­bish; of un­ex­pect­ed ob­sta­cles there were none; all the dif­fi­cul­ties had been fore­seen and guard­ed against.

When the first month had gone by the well had at­tained the depth as­signed for the time--i.e., 112 feet. In De­cem­ber this depth was dou­bled, and tripled in Jan­uary. Dur­ing Febru­ary the work­men had to con­tend against a sheet of wa­ter which sprang from the ground. They were obliged to em­ploy pow­er­ful pumps and ap­pa­ra­tus of com­pressed air to drain it off, so as to close up the ori­fice from which it is­sued, just as leaks are caulked on board ship. At last they got the bet­ter of these un­wel­come springs, on­ly in con­se­quence of the loos­en­ing of the soil the wheel par­tial­ly gave way, and there was a land­slip. The fright­ful force of this bricked cir­cle, more than 400 feet high, may be imag­ined! This ac­ci­dent cost the life of sev­er­al work­men. Three weeks had to be tak­en up in prop­ping the stone revet­ment and mak­ing the wheel sol­id again. But, thanks to the skill of the en­gi­neer and the pow­er of the ma­chines, it was all set right, and the bor­ing con­tin­ued.

No fresh in­ci­dent hence­forth stopped the progress of the work, and on the 10th of June, twen­ty days be­fore the ex­pi­ra­tion of the de­lay fixed by Bar­bi­cane, the well, quite bricked round, had reached the depth of 900 feet. At the bot­tom the ma­son­ry rest­ed up­on a mas­sive block, thir­ty feet thick, whilst at the top it was on a lev­el with the soil.

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

Dur­ing these eight months Bar­bi­cane did not leave Stony Hill for a minute; whilst he nar­row­ly watched over the bor­ing op­er­ations, he took ev­ery pre­cau­tion to in­sure the health and well-​be­ing of his work­men, and he was for­tu­nate enough to avoid the epi­demics com­mon to large ag­glom­er­ations of men, and so dis­as­trous in those re­gions of the globe ex­posed to trop­ical in­flu­ence.

It is true that sev­er­al work­men paid with their lives for the care­less­ness en­gen­dered by these dan­ger­ous oc­cu­pa­tions; but such de­plorable mis­for­tunes can­not be avoid­ed, and these are de­tails that Amer­icans pay very lit­tle at­ten­tion to. They are more oc­cu­pied with hu­man­ity in gen­er­al than with in­di­vid­uals in par­tic­ular. How­ev­er, Bar­bi­cane pro­fessed the con­trary prin­ci­ples, and ap­plied them up­on ev­ery oc­ca­sion. Thanks to his care, to his in­tel­li­gence and re­spect­ful in­ter­ven­tion in dif­fi­cult cas­es, to his prodi­gious and hu­mane wis­dom, the av­er­age of catas­tro­phes did not ex­ceed that of cities on the oth­er side of the At­lantic, amongst oth­ers those of France, where they count about one ac­ci­dent up­on ev­ery 200,000 francs of work.