ancient tear, which he had doubtless reserved for the occasion.
He dropped it on the forehead of his dear president.
“Can I not go?” he said, “there is still time!”
“Impossible, old fellow!” replied Barbicane. A few moments
later, the three fellow-travelers had ensconced themselves in
the projectile, and screwed down the plate which covered the
entrance-aperture. The mouth of the Columbiad, now completely
disencumbered, was open entirely to the sky.
The moon advanced upward in a heaven of the purest clearness,
outshining in her passage the twinkling light of the stars.
She passed over the constellation of the Twins, and was now
nearing the halfway point between the horizon and the zenith.
A terrible silence weighed upon the entire scene! Not a breath of
wind upon the earth! not a sound of breathing from the countless
chests of the spectators! Their hearts seemed afraid to beat!
All eyes were fixed upon the yawning mouth of the Columbiad.
Murchison followed with his eye the hand of his chronometer.
It wanted scarce forty seconds to the moment of departure, but
each second seemed to last an age! At the twentieth there was
a general shudder, as it occurred to the minds of that vast
assemblage that the bold travelers shut up within the projectile
were also counting those terrible seconds. Some few cries here
and there escaped the crowd.
“Thirty-five!– thirty-six!– thirty-seven!– thirty-eight!–
thirty-nine!– forty! FIRE!!!”
Instantly Murchison pressed with his finger the key of the
electric battery, restored the current of the fluid, and
discharged the spark into the breech of the Columbiad.
An appalling unearthly report followed instantly, such as can be
compared to nothing whatever known, not even to the roar of
thunder, or the blast of volcanic explosions! No words can
convey the slightest idea of the terrific sound! An immense
spout of fire shot up from the bowels of the earth as from a crater.
The earth heaved up, and with great difficulty some few spectators
obtained a momentary glimpse of the projectile victoriously
cleaving the air in the midst of the fiery vapors!
CHAPTER XXVII
FOUL WEATHER
At the moment when that pyramid of fire rose to a prodigious
height into the air, the glare of flame lit up the whole of
Florida; and for a moment day superseded night over a
considerable extent of the country. This immense canopy of fire
was perceived at a distance of one hundred miles out at sea, and
more than one ship’s captain entered in his log the appearance
of this gigantic meteor.
The discharge of the Columbiad was accompanied by a
perfect earthquake. Florida was shaken to its very depths.
The gases of the powder, expanded by heat, forced back the
atmospheric strata with tremendous violence, and this
artificial hurricane rushed like a water-spout through the air.
Not a single spectator remained on his feet! Men, women
children, all lay prostrate like ears of corn under a tempest.
There ensued a terrible tumult; a large number of persons were
seriously injured. J. T. Maston, who, despite all dictates of
prudence, had kept in advance of the mass, was pitched back 120
feet, shooting like a projectile over the heads of his
fellow-citizens. Three hundred thousand persons remained deaf
for a time, and as though struck stupefied.
As soon as the first effects were over, the injured, the deaf,
and lastly, the crowd in general, woke up with frenzied cries.
“Hurrah for Ardan! Hurrah for Barbicane! Hurrah for Nicholl!”
rose to the skies. Thousands of persons, noses in air, armed
with telescopes and race-glasses, were questioning space,
forgetting all contusions and emotions in the one idea of
watching for the projectile. They looked in vain! It was no
longer to be seen, and they were obliged to wait for telegrams
from Long’s Peak. The director of the Cambridge Observatory was
at his post on the Rocky Mountains; and to him, as a skillful
and persevering astronomer, all observations had been confided.
But an unforeseen phenomenon came in to subject the public
impatience to a severe trial.
The weather, hitherto so fine, suddenly changed; the sky became
heavy with clouds. It could not have been otherwise after the
terrible derangement of the atmospheric strata, and the dispersion