that composure which distinguishes learned bodies in general,
peacefully discussed the scientific bearings of the question.
At the Gun Club there was an explosion. All the gunners
were assembled. Vice-President the Hon. Wilcome was in the
act of reading the premature dispatch, in which J. T. Maston
and Belfast announced that the projectile had just been seen in
the gigantic reflector of Long’s Peak, and also that it was held
by lunar attraction, and was playing the part of under satellite
to the lunar world.
We know the truth on that point.
But on the arrival of Blomsberry’s dispatch, so decidely
contradicting J. T. Maston’s telegram, two parties were formed
in the bosom of the Gun Club. On one side were those who
admitted the fall of the projectile, and consequently the return
of the travelers; on the other, those who believed in the
observations of Long’s Peak, concluded that the commander of the
Susquehanna had made a mistake. To the latter the pretended
projectile was nothing but a meteor! nothing but a meteor, a
shooting globe, which in its fall had smashed the bows of
the corvette. It was difficult to answer this argument, for
the speed with which it was animated must have made observation
very difficult. The commander of the Susquehanna and her
officers might have made a mistake in all good faith; one argument
however, was in their favor, namely, that if the projectile had
fallen on the earth, its place of meeting with the terrestrial
globe could only take place on this 27@ north latitude, and
(taking into consideration the time that had elapsed, and the
rotary motion of the earth) between the 41@ and the 42@ of
west longitude. In any case, it was decided in the Gun Club
that Blomsberry brothers, Bilsby, and Major Elphinstone should
go straight to San Francisco, and consult as to the means of
raising the projectile from the depths of the ocean.
These devoted men set off at once; and the railroad, which will
soon cross the whole of Central America, took them as far as St.
Louis, where the swift mail-coaches awaited them. Almost at the
same moment in which the Secretary of Marine, the vice-president
of the Gun Club, and the sub-director of the Observatory received
the dispatch from San Francisco, the Honorable J. T. Maston was
undergoing the greatest excitement he had ever experienced in his
life, an excitement which even the bursting of his pet gun, which
had more than once nearly cost him his life, had not caused him.
We may remember that the secretary of the Gun Club had started
soon after the projectile (and almost as quickly) for the station
on Long’s Peak, in the Rocky Mountains, J. Belfast, director of the
Cambridge Observatory, accompanying him. Arrived there, the two
friends had installed themselves at once, never quitting the
summit of their enormous telescope. We know that this gigantic
instrument had been set up according to the reflecting system,
called by the English “front view.” This arrangement subjected
all objects to but one reflection, making the view consequently
much clearer; the result was that, when they were taking
observation, J. T. Maston and Belfast were placed in the _upper_
part of the instrument and not in the lower, which they reached
by a circular staircase, a masterpiece of lightness, while below
them opened a metal well terminated by the metallic mirror,
which measured two hundred and eighty feet in depth.
It was on a narrow platform placed above the telescope that the
two savants passed their existence, execrating the day which hid
the moon from their eyes, and the clouds which obstinately
veiled her during the night.
What, then, was their delight when, after some days of waiting,
on the night of the 5th of December, they saw the vehicle which
was bearing their friends into space! To this delight succeeded
a great deception, when, trusting to a cursory observation, they
launched their first telegram to the world, erroneously
affirming that the projectile had become a satellite of the
moon, gravitating in an immutable orbit.
From that moment it had never shown itself to their eyes– a
disappearance all the more easily explained, as it was then