The Moon-Voyage

CHAPTER XVII.

A TELE­GRAM.

The great work un­der­tak­en by the Gun Club was now vir­tu­al­ly end­ed, and yet two months would still elapse be­fore the day the pro­jec­tile would start for the moon. These two months would seem as long as two years to the uni­ver­sal im­pa­tience. Un­til then the small­est de­tails of each op­er­ation had ap­peared in the news­pa­pers ev­ery day, and were ea­ger­ly de­voured by the pub­lic, but now it was to be feared that this “in­ter­est div­idend” would be much di­min­ished, and ev­ery one was afraid of no longer re­ceiv­ing his dai­ly share of emo­tions.

They were all agree­ably dis­ap­point­ed: the most un­ex­pect­ed, ex­traor­di­nary, in­cred­ible, and im­prob­able in­ci­dent hap­pened in time to keep up the gen­er­al ex­cite­ment to its high­est pitch.

On Septem­ber 30th, at 3.47 p.m., a tele­gram, trans­mit­ted through the At­lantic Ca­ble, ar­rived at Tam­pa Town for Pres­ident Bar­bi­cane.

He tore open the en­ve­lope and read the mes­sage, and, notwith­stand­ing his great self-​con­trol, his lips grew pale and his eyes dim as he read the tele­gram.

The fol­low­ing is the text of the mes­sage stored in the archives of the Gun Club:--

"France, Paris,

"Septem­ber 30th, 4 a.m.

"Bar­bi­cane, Tam­pa Town, Flori­da, Unit­ed States.

"Sub­sti­tute a cylin­dro-​con­ical pro­jec­tile for your spher­ical shell. Shall go in­side. Shall ar­rive by steam­er _At­lanta_.

“MICHEL AR­DAN.”