never have started.”
“There’s an answer!” cried Nicholl.
“I quite approve of Michel’s words,” said Barbicane; “and add,
that the question has no real interest. Later, when we think it
is advisable to return, we will take counsel together. If the
Columbiad is not there, the projectile will be.”
“That is a step certainly. A ball without a gun!”
“The gun,” replied Barbicane, “can be manufactured. The powder
can be made. Neither metals, saltpeter, nor coal can fail in
the depths of the moon, and we need only go 8,000 leagues in
order to fall upon the terrestrial globe by virtue of the mere
laws of weight.”
“Enough,” said Michel with animation. “Let it be no longer a
question of returning: we have already entertained it too long.
As to communicating with our former earthly colleagues, that
will not be difficult.”
“And how?”
“By means of meteors launched by lunar volcanoes.”
“Well thought of, Michel,” said Barbicane in a convinced tone
of voice. “Laplace has calculated that a force five times greater
than that of our gun would suffice to send a meteor from the
moon to the earth, and there is not one volcano which has not a
greater power of propulsion than that.”
“Hurrah!” exclaimed Michel; “these meteors are handy postmen,
and cost nothing. And how we shall be able to laugh at the
post-office administration! But now I think of it—-”
“What do you think of?”
“A capital idea. Why did we not fasten a thread to our
projectile, and we could have exchanged telegrams with the earth?”
“The deuce!” answered Nicholl. “Do you consider the weight of
a thread 250,000 miles long nothing?”
“As nothing. They could have trebled the Columbiad’s charge;
they could have quadrupled or quintupled it!” exclaimed Michel,
with whom the verb took a higher intonation each time.
“There is but one little objection to make to your proposition,”
replied Barbicane, “which is that, during the rotary motion of
the globe, our thread would have wound itself round it like a
chain on a capstan, and that it would inevitably have brought us
to the ground.”
“By the thirty-nine stars of the Union!” said Michel, “I have
nothing but impracticable ideas to-day; ideas worthy of J.
T. Maston. But I have a notion that, if we do not return to
earth, J. T. Maston will be able to come to us.”
“Yes, he’ll come,” replied Barbicane; “he is a worthy and a
courageous comrade. Besides, what is easier? Is not the
Columbiad still buried in the soil of Florida? Is cotton and
nitric acid wanted wherewith to manufacture the pyroxyle?
Will not the moon pass the zenith of Florida? In eighteen
years’ time will she not occupy exactly the same place as to-day?”
“Yes,” continued Michel, “yes, Maston will come, and with him
our friends Elphinstone, Blomsberry, all the members of the Gun
Club, and they will be well received. And by and by they will
run trains of projectiles between the earth and the moon!
Hurrah for J. T. Maston!”
It is probable that, if the Hon. J. T. Maston did not hear the
hurrahs uttered in his honor, his ears at least tingled. What was
he doing then? Doubtless, posted in the Rocky Mountains, at the
station of Long’s Peak, he was trying to find the invisible
projectile gravitating in space. If he was thinking of his dear
companions, we must allow that they were not far behind him; and
that, under the influence of a strange excitement, they were
devoting to him their best thoughts.
But whence this excitement, which was evidently growing upon the
tenants of the projectile? Their sobriety could not be doubted.
This strange irritation of the brain, must it be attributed to
the peculiar circumstances under which they found themselves, to
their proximity to the orb of night, from which only a few hours
separated them, to some secret influence of the moon acting upon
their nervous system? Their faces were as rosy as if they had
been exposed to the roaring flames of an oven; their voices
resounded in loud accents; their words escaped like a champagne
cork driven out by carbonic acid; their gestures became annoying,