by Anthology
Generally these sounds, addressed to throats made thirsty by the spices they consumed, mingled into one deafening roar. But on this 1st of December these cries were rare. No one thought of eating and drinking, and at 4 p.m. there were many spectators in the crowd who had not taken their customary lunch! A much more significant fact, even the national passion for gaming was allayed by the general emotion. Thimbles, skittles, and cards were left in their wrappings, and testified that the great event of the day absorbed all attention.
Until nightfall a dull, noiseless agitation like that which precedes great catastrophes ran through the anxious crowd. An indescribable uneasiness oppressed all minds, and stopped the beating of all hearts. Every one wished it over.
However, about seven o'clock this heavy silence was suddenly broken. The moon rose above the horizon. Several millions of hurrahs saluted her apparition. She was punctual to the appointment. Shouts of welcome broke from all parts, whilst the blonde Phoebe shone peacefully in a clear sky, and caressed the enraptured crowd with her most affectionate rays.
At that moment the three intrepid travellers appeared. When they appeared the cries redoubled in intensity. Unanimously, instantaneously, the national song of the United States escaped from all the spectators, and "Yankee Doodle," sung by 5,000,000 of hearty throats, rose like a roaring tempest to the farthest limits of the atmosphere.
Then, after this irresistible outburst, the hymn was ended, the last harmonies died away by degrees, and a silent murmur floated over the profoundly-excited crowd.
In the meantime the Frenchman and the two Americans had stepped into the inclosure round which the crowd was pressing. They were accompanied by the members of the Gun Club, and deputations sent by the European observatories. Barbicane was coolly and calmly giving his last orders. Nicholl, with compressed lips and hands crossed behind his back, walked with a firm and measured step. Michel Ardan, always at his ease, clothed in a perfect travelling suit, with leather gaiters on his legs, pouch at his side, in vast garment of maroon velvet, a cigar in his mouth, distributed shakes of the hand with princely prodigality. He was full of inexhaustible gaiety, laughing, joking, playing pranks upon the worthy J.T. Maston, and was, in a word, "French," and, what is worse, "Parisian," till the last second.
Ten o'clock struck. The moment had come to take their places in the projectile; the necessary mechanism for the descent the door-plate to screw down, the removal of the cranes and scaffolding hung over the mouth of the Columbiad, took some time.
Barbicane had set his chronometer to the tenth of a second by that of the engineer Murchison, who was entrusted with setting fire to the powder by means of the electric spark; the travellers shut up in the projectile could thus watch the impassive needle which was going to mark the precise instant of their departure.
The moment for saying farewell had come. The scene was touching; in spite of his gaiety Michel Ardan felt touched. J.T. Maston had found under his dry eyelids an ancient tear that he had, doubtless, kept for the occasion. He shed it upon the forehead of his dear president.
"Suppose I go too?" said he. "There is still time!"
"Impossible, old fellow," answered Barbicane.
A few moments later the three travelling companions were installed in the projectile, and had screwed down the door-plate, and the mouth of the Columbiad, entirely liberated, rose freely towards the sky.
Nicholl, Barbicane, and Michel Ardan were definitively walled up in their metal vehicle.
Who could predict the universal emotion then at its paroxysm?
The moon was rising in a firmament of limpid purity, outshining on her passage the twinkling fire of the stars; she passed over the constellation of the Twins, and was now nearly halfway between the horizon and the zenith.
A frightful silence hung over all that scene. There was not a breath of wind on the earth! Not a sound of breathing from the crowd! Hearts dared not beat. Every eye was fixed on the gaping mouth of the Columbiad.
Murchison watched the needle of his chronometer. Hardly forty seconds had to elapse before the moment of departure struck, and each one lasted a century!
At the twentieth there was a universal shudder, and the thought occurred to all the crowd that the audacious travellers shut up in the vehicle were likewise counting these terrible seconds! Some isolated cries were heard.
"Thirty-five!--thirty-six!--thirty-seven!--thirty--eight!--thirty-nine! --forty! Fire!!!"
Murchison immediately pressed his finger upon the electric knob and hurled the electric spark into the depths of the Columbiad.
A fearful, unheard-of, superhuman report, of which nothing could give an idea, not even thunder or the eruption of volcanoes, was immediately produced. An immense spout of fire sprang up from the bowels of the earth as if from a crater. The soil heaved and very few persons caught a glimpse of the projectile victoriously cleaving the air amidst the flaming smoke.
CHAPTER XXVII.
CLOUDY WEATHER.
At the moment when the pyramid of flame rose to a prodigious height in the air it lighted up the whole of Florida, and for an incalculable moment day was substituted for night over a considerable extent of country. This immense column of fire was perceived for a hundred miles out at sea, from the Gulf and from the Atlantic, and more than one ship's captain noted the apparition of this gigantic meteor in his log-book.
The discharge of the Columbiad was accompanied by a veritable earthquake. Florida was shaken to its very depths. The gases of the powder, expanded by heat, forced back the atmospheric strata with tremendous violence, passing like a waterspout through the air.
Not one spectator remained on his legs; men, women, and children were thrown down like ears of wheat in a storm; there was a terrible tumult, and a large number of people were seriously injured. J.T. Maston, who had very imprudently kept to the fore, was thrown twenty yards backwards like a bullet over the heads of his fellow-citizens. Three hundred thousand people were temporarily deafened and as though thunderstruck.
The atmospheric current, after throwing over huts and cabins, uprooting trees within a radius of twenty miles, throwing the trains off the railway as far as Tampa, burst upon the town like an avalanche and destroyed a hundred houses, amongst others the church of St. Mary and the new edifice of the Exchange. Some of the vessels in the port were run against each other and sunk, and ten of them were stranded high and dry after breaking their chains like threads of cotton.
But the circle of these devastations extended farther still, and beyond the limits of the United States. The recoil, aided by the westerly winds, was felt on the Atlantic at more than 300 miles from the American shores. An unexpected tempest, which even Admiral Fitzroy could not have foreseen, broke upon the ships with unheard-of violence. Several vessels, seized by a sort of whirlwind before they had time to furl their sails, were sunk, amongst others the Childe Harold, of Liverpool, a regrettable catastrophe which was the object of lively recriminations.
Lastly--although the fact is not warranted except by the affirmation of a few natives--half-an-hour after the departure of the projectile the inhabitants of Sierra-Leone pretended that they heard a dull noise, the last displacement of the sonorous waves, which, after crossing the Atlantic, died away on the African coast.
But to return to Florida. The tumult once lessened, the wounded and deaf--in short, all the crowd--rose and shouted in a sort of frenzy, "Hurrah for Ardan! Hurrah for Barbicane! Hurrah for Nicholl!" Several millions of men, nose in air, armed with telescopes and every species of field-glass, looked into space, forgetting contusions and feelings, in order to look at the projectile. But they sought in vain; it was not to be seen, and they resolved to await the telegrams from Long's Peak. The director of the Cambridge Observatory, M. Belfast, was at his post in the Rocky Mountains, and it was to this skilful and persevering astronomer that the observations had been entrusted.
But an unforeseen phenomenon, against which nothing could be done, soon came to put public impatience to a rude
test.
The weather, so fine before, suddenly changed; the sky became covered with clouds. It could not be otherwise after so great a displacement of the atmospheric strata and the dispersion of the enormous quantity of gases from the combustion of 200,000 lbs. of pyroxyle. All natural order had been disturbed. There is nothing astonishing in that, for in sea-fights it has been noticed that the state of the atmosphere has been suddenly changed by the artillery discharge.
The next day the sun rose upon an horizon covered with thick clouds, a heavy and an impenetrable curtain hung between earth and sky, and which unfortunately extended as far as the regions of the Rocky Mountains. It was a fatality. A concert of complaints rose from all parts of the globe. But Nature took no notice, and as men had chosen to disturb the atmosphere with their gun, they must submit to the consequences.
During this first day every one tried to pierce the thick veil of clouds, but no one was rewarded for the trouble; besides, they were all mistaken in supposing they could see it by looking up at the sky, for on account of the diurnal movement of the globe the projectile was then, of course, shooting past the line of the antipodes.
However that might be, when night again enveloped the earth--a dark, impenetrable night--it was impossible to see the moon above the horizon; it might have been thought that she was hiding on purpose from the bold beings who had shot at her. No observation was, therefore, possible, and the despatches from Long's Peak confirmed the disastrous intelligence.
However, if the experiment had succeeded, the travellers, who had started on the 1st of December, at 10h. 46m. 40s. p.m., were due at their destination on the 4th at midnight; so that as up to that time it would, after all, have been difficult to observe a body so small, people waited with all the patience they could muster.
On the 4th of December, from 8 p.m. till midnight, it would have been possible to follow the trace of the projectile, which would have appeared like a black speck on the shining disc of the moon. But the weather remained imperturbably cloudy, and exasperated the public, who swore at the moon for not showing herself. Sic transit gloria mundi!
J.T. Maston, in despair, set out for Long's Peak. He wished to make an observation himself. He did not doubt that his friends had arrived at the goal of their journey. No one had heard that the projectile had fallen upon any continent or island upon earth, and J.T. Maston did not admit for a moment that it could have fallen into any of the oceans with which the earth is three parts covered.
On the 5th the same weather. The large telescopes of the old world--those of Herschel, Rosse, and Foucault--were invariably fixed upon the Queen of Night, for the weather was magnificent in Europe, but the relative weakness of these instruments prevented any useful observation.
On the 6th the same weather reigned. Impatience devoured three parts of the globe. The most insane means were proposed for dissipating the clouds accumulated in the air.
On the 7th the sky seemed to clear a little. Hopes revived but did not last long, and in the evening thick clouds defended the starry vault against all eyes.
Things now became grave. In fact, on the 11th, at 9.11 a.m., the moon would enter her last quarter. After this delay she would decline every day, and even if the sky should clear the chances of observation would be considerably lessened--in fact, the moon would then show only a constantly-decreasing portion of her disc, and would end by becoming new--that is to say, she would rise and set with the sun, whose rays would make her quite invisible. They would, therefore, be obliged to wait till the 3rd of January, at 12.43 p.m., till she would be full again and ready for observation.
The newspapers published these reflections with a thousand commentaries, and did not fail to tell the public that it must arm itself with angelic patience.
On the 8th no change. On the 9th the sun appeared for a moment, as if to jeer at the Americans. It was received with hisses, and wounded, doubtless, by such a reception, it was very miserly of its rays.
On the 10th no change. J.T. Maston nearly went mad, and fears were entertained for his brain until then so well preserved in its gutta-percha cranium.
But on the 11th one of those frightful tempests peculiar to tropical regions was let loose in the atmosphere. Terrific east winds swept away the clouds which had been so long there, and in the evening the half-disc of the moon rode majestically amidst the limpid constellations of the sky.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
A NEW STAR.
That same night the news so impatiently expected burst like a thunderbolt over the United States of the Union, and thence darting across the Atlantic it ran along all the telegraphic wires of the globe. The projectile had been perceived, thanks to the gigantic reflector of Long's Peak.
The following is the notice drawn up by the director of the Cambridge Observatory. It resumes the scientific conclusion of the great experiment made by the Gun Club:--
"Long's Peak, December 12th.
"To the Staff of the Cambridge Observatory.
"The projectile hurled by the Columbiad of Stony Hill was perceived by Messrs. Belfast and J.T. Maston on the 12th of December at 8.47 p.m., the moon having entered her last quarter.
"The projectile has not reached its goal. It has deviated to the side, but near enough to be detained by lunar attraction.
"There its rectilinear movement changed to a circular one of extreme velocity, and it has been drawn round the moon in an elliptical orbit, and has become her satellite.
"We have not yet been able to determine the elements of this new star. Neither its speed of translation or rotation is known. The distance which separates it from the surface of the moon may be estimated at about 2,833 miles.
"Now two hypotheses may be taken into consideration as to a modification in this state of things:--
"Either the attraction of the moon will end by drawing it towards her, and the travellers will reach the goal of their journey,
"Or the projectile, maintained in an immutable orbit, will gravitate round the lunar disc till the end of time.
"Observation will settle this point some day, but until now the experiment of the Gun Club has had no other result than that of providing our solar system with a new star.
"J BELFAST."
What discussions this unexpected dénouement gave rise to! What a situation full of mystery the future reserved for the investigations of science! Thanks to the courage and devotion of three men, this enterprise of sending a bullet to the moon, futile enough in appearance, had just had an immense result, the consequences of which are incalculable. The travellers imprisoned in a new satellite, if they have not attained their end, form at least part of the lunar world; they gravitate around the Queen of Night, and for the first time human eyes can penetrate all her mysteries. The names of Nicholl, Barbicane, and Michel Ardan would be for ever celebrated in astronomical annals, for these bold explorers, desirous of widening the circle of human knowledge, had audaciously rushed into space, and had risked their lives in the strangest experiment of modern times.
The notice from Long's Peak once made known, there spread throughout the universe a feeling of surprise and horror. Was it possible to go to the aid of these bold inhabitants of the earth? Certainly not, for they had put themselves outside of the pale of humanity by crossing the limits imposed by the Creator on His terrestrial creatures. They could procure themselves air for two months; they had provisions for one year; but after? The hardest hearts palpitated at this terrible question.
One man alone would not admit that the situation was desperate. One alone had confidence, and it was their friend--devoted, audacious, and resolute as they--the brave J.T. Maston.
He resolved not to lose sight of them. His domicile was henceforth the post of Long's Peak--his horizon the immense reflector. As soon as the moon rose above the horizon he immediately framed her in the field of his telescope; he did not lose sight of her for an instant, and assiduously followed her across the stellar spaces; he watched with eternal patience the passage of the project
ile over her disc of silver, and in reality the worthy man remained in perpetual communication with his three friends, whom he did not despair of seeing again one day.
"We will correspond with them," said he to any one who would listen, "as soon as circumstances will allow. We shall have news from them, and they will have news from us. Besides, I know them--they are ingenious men. Those three carry with them into space all the resources of art, science, and industry. With those everything can be accomplished, and you will see that they will get out of the difficulty."
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Contents
ROUND THE MOON
By Jules Verne
INTRODUCTION.
PRELIMINARY CHAPTER.
CONTAINING A SHORT ACCOUNT OF THE FIRST PART OF THIS WORK TO SERVE AS PREFACE TO THE SECOND.
During the course of the year 186---- the entire world was singularly excited by a scientific experiment without precedent in the annals of science. The members of the Gun Club, a circle of artillerymen established at Baltimore after the American war, had the idea of putting themselves in communication with the moon--yes, with the moon--by sending a bullet to her. Their president, Barbicane, the promoter of the enterprise, having consulted the astronomers of the Cambridge Observatory on this subject, took all the precautions necessary for the success of the extraordinary enterprise, declared practicable by the majority of competent people. After having solicited a public subscription which produced nearly 30,000,000 of francs, it began its gigantic labours.