into account the public impatience; and it was with no pleasant
countenance that he watched the population of Tampa Town
gathering under his windows. The murmurs and vociferations
below presently obliged him to appear. He came forward,
therefore, and on silence being procured, a citizen put
point-blank to him the following question: “Is the person
mentioned in the telegram, under the name of Michel Ardan, on
his way here? Yes or no.”
“Gentlemen,” replied Barbicane, “I know no more than you do.”
“We must know,” roared the impatient voices.
“Time will show,” calmly replied the president.
“Time has no business to keep a whole country in suspense,”
replied the orator. “Have you altered the plans of the
projectile according to the request of the telegram?”
“Not yet, gentlemen; but you are right! we must have better
information to go by. The telegraph must complete its information.”
“To the telegraph!” roared the crowd.
Barbicane descended; and heading the immense assemblage, led the
way to the telegraph office. A few minutes later a telegram was
dispatched to the secretary of the underwriters at Liverpool,
requesting answers to the following queries:
“About the ship Atlanta– when did she leave Europe? Had she on
board a Frenchman named Michel Ardan?”
Two hours afterward Barbicane received information too exact to
leave room for the smallest remaining doubt.
“The steamer Atlanta from Liverpool put to sea on the 2nd of
October, bound for Tampa Town, having on board a Frenchman borne
on the list of passengers by the name of Michel Ardan.”
That very evening he wrote to the house of Breadwill and Co.,
requesting them to suspend the casting of the projectile until
the receipt of further orders. On the 10th of October, at nine
A.M., the semaphores of the Bahama Canal signaled a thick smoke
on the horizon. Two hours later a large steamer exchanged
signals with them. the name of the Atlanta flew at once over
Tampa Town. At four o’clock the English vessel entered the Bay
of Espiritu Santo. At five it crossed the passage of
Hillisborough Bay at full steam. At six she cast anchor at
Port Tampa. The anchor had scarcely caught the sandy bottom when
five hundred boats surrounded the Atlanta, and the steamer was
taken by assault. Barbicane was the first to set foot on deck,
and in a voice of which he vainly tried to conceal the emotion,
called “Michel Ardan.”
“Here!” replied an individual perched on the poop.
Barbicane, with arms crossed, looked fixedly at the passenger of
the Atlanta.
He was a man of about forty-two years of age, of large build,
but slightly round-shouldered. His massive head momentarily
shook a shock of reddish hair, which resembled a lion’s mane.
His face was short with a broad forehead, and furnished with a
moustache as bristly as a cat’s, and little patches of yellowish
whiskers upon full cheeks. Round, wildish eyes, slightly
near-sighted, completed a physiognomy essentially feline.
His nose was firmly shaped, his mouth particularly sweet in
expression, high forehead, intelligent and furrowed with
wrinkles like a newly-plowed field. The body was powerfully
developed and firmly fixed upon long legs. Muscular arms,
and a general air of decision gave him the appearance of a hardy,
jolly, companion. He was dressed in a suit of ample dimensions,
loose neckerchief, open shirtcollar, disclosing a robust neck;
his cuffs were invariably unbuttoned, through which appeared
a pair of red hands.
On the bridge of the steamer, in the midst of the crowd, he
bustled to and fro, never still for a moment, “dragging his
anchors,” as the sailors say, gesticulating, making free with
everybody, biting his nails with nervous avidity. He was one of
those originals which nature sometimes invents in the freak of
a moment, and of which she then breaks the mould.
Among other peculiarities, this curiosity gave himself out for
a sublime ignoramus, “like Shakespeare,” and professed supreme
contempt for all scientific men. Those “fellows,” as he called
them, “are only fit to mark the points, while we play the game.”
He was, in fact, a thorough Bohemian, adventurous, but not an
adventurer; a hare-brained fellow, a kind of Icarus, only
possessing relays of wings. For the rest, he was ever in