by Anthology
The direction of the corvette was therefore given in view of reaching the precise spot.
At 12.47 p.m. the buoy was sighted. It was in perfect order, and did not seem to have drifted far.
"At last!" exclaimed J.T. Maston.
"Shall we begin?" asked Captain Blomsberry.
"Without losing a second," answered J.T. Maston.
Every precaution was taken to keep the corvette perfectly motionless.
Before trying to grapple the projectile, the engineer, Murchison, wished to find out its exact position on the sea-bottom. The submarine apparatus destined for this search received their provision of air. The handling of these engines is not without danger, for at 20,000 feet below the surface of the water and under such great pressure they are exposed to ruptures the consequences of which would be terrible.
J.T. Maston, the commander's brother, and the engineer Murchison, without a thought of these dangers, took their places in the air-chambers. The commander, on his foot-bridge, presided over the operation, ready to stop or haul in his chains at the least signal. The screw had been taken off, and all the force of the machines upon the windlass would soon have brought up the apparatus on board.
The descent began at 1.25 p.m., and the chamber, dragged down by its reservoirs filled with water, disappeared under the surface of the ocean.
The emotion of the officers and sailors on board was now divided between the prisoners in the projectile and the prisoners of the submarine apparatus. These latter forgot themselves, and, glued to the panes of the port-lights, they attentively observed the liquid masses they were passing through.
The descent was rapid. At 2.17 p.m. J.T. Maston and his companions had reached the bottom of the Pacific; but they saw nothing except the arid desert which neither marine flora nor fauna any longer animated. By the light of their lamps, furnished with powerful reflectors, they could observe the dark layers of water in a rather large radius, but the projectile remained invisible in their eyes.
The impatience of these bold divers could hardly be described. Their apparatus being in electric communication with the corvette, they made a signal agreed upon, and the Susquehanna carried their chamber over a mile of space at one yard from the soil.
They thus explored all the submarine plain, deceived at every instant by optical delusions which cut them to the heart. Here a rock, there a swelling of the ground, looked to them like the much-sought-for projectile; then they would soon find out their error and despair again.
"Where are they? Where can they be?" cried J.T. Maston.
And the poor man called aloud to Nicholl, Barbicane, and Michel Ardan, as if his unfortunate friends could have heard him through that impenetrable medium!
The search went on under those conditions until the vitiated state of the air in the apparatus forced the divers to go up again.
The hauling in was begun at 6 p.m., and was not terminated before midnight.
"We will try again to-morrow," said J.T. Maston as he stepped on to the deck of the corvette.
"Yes," answered Captain Blomsberry.
"And in another place."
"Yes."
J.T. Maston did not yet doubt of his ultimate success, but his companions, who were no longer intoxicated with the animation of the first few hours, already took in all the difficulties of the enterprise. What seemed easy at San Francisco in open ocean appeared almost impossible. The chances of success diminished in a large proportion, and it was to chance alone that the finding of the projectile had to be left.
The next day, the 24th of December, notwithstanding the fatigues of the preceding day, operations were resumed. The corvette moved some minutes farther west, and the apparatus, provisioned with air again, took the same explorers to the depths of the ocean.
All that day was passed in a fruitless search. The bed of the sea was a desert. The day of the 25th brought no result, neither did that of the 26th.
It was disheartening. They thought of the unfortunate men shut up for twenty-six days in the projectile. Perhaps they were all feeling the first symptoms of suffocation, even if they had escaped the dangers of their fall. The air was getting exhausted, and doubtless with the air their courage and spirits.
"The air very likely, but their courage never," said J.T. Maston.
On the 28th, after two days' search, all hope was lost. This bullet was an atom in the immensity of the sea! They must give up the hope of finding it.
Still J.T. Maston would not hear about leaving. He would not abandon the place without having at least found the tomb of his friends. But Captain Blomsberry could not stay on obstinately, and notwithstanding the opposition of the worthy secretary, he was obliged to give orders to set sail.
On the 29th of December, at 9 a.m., the Susquehanna, heading north-east, began to return to the bay of San Francisco.
It was 10 a.m. The corvette was leaving slowly and as if with regret the scene of the catastrophe, when the sailor at the masthead, who was on the look-out, called out all at once--
"A buoy on the lee bow!"
The officers looked in the direction indicated. They saw through their telescopes the object signalled, which did look like one of those buoys used for marking the openings of bays or rivers; but, unlike them, a flag floating in the wind surmounted a cone which emerged five or six feet. This buoy shone in the sunshine as if made of plates of silver.
The commander, Blomsberry, J.T. Maston, and the delegates of the Gun Club ascended the foot-bridge and examined the object thus drifting on the waves.
All looked with feverish anxiety, but in silence. None of them dared utter the thought that came into all their minds.
The corvette approached to within two cables' length of the object.
A shudder ran through the whole crew.
The flag was an American one!
At that moment a veritable roar was heard. It was the worthy J.T. Maston, who had fallen in a heap; forgetting on the one hand that he had only an iron hook for one arm, and on the other that a simple gutta-percha cap covered his cranium-box, he had given himself a formidable blow.
They rushed towards him and picked him up. They recalled him to life. And what were his first words?
"Ah! triple brutes! quadruple idiots! quintuple boobies that we are!"
"What is the matter?" every one round him exclaimed.
"What the matter is?"
"Speak, can't you?"
"It is, imbeciles," shouted the terrible secretary, "it is the bullet only weighs 19,250 lbs!"
"Well?"
"And it displaces 28 tons, or 56,000 lbs., consequently it floats!"
Ah! how that worthy man did underline the verb "to float!" And it was the truth! All, yes! all these savants had forgotten this fundamental law, that in consequence of its specific lightness the projectile, after having been dragged by its fall to the greatest depths of the ocean, had naturally returned to the surface; and now it was floating tranquilly whichever way the wind carried them.
The boats had been lowered. J.T. Maston and his friends rushed into them. The excitement was at its highest point. All hearts palpitated whilst the boats rowed towards the projectile. What did it contain--the living or the dead? The living. Yes! unless death had struck down Barbicane and his companions since they had hoisted the flag!
Profound silence reigned in the boats. All hearts stopped beating. Eyes no longer performed their office. One of the port-lights of the projectile was opened. Some pieces of glass remaining in the frame proved that it had been broken. This port-light was situated actually five feet above water.
A boat drew alongside--that of J.T. Maston. He rushed to the broken window.
At that moment the joyful and clear voice of Michel Ardan was heard exclaiming in the accents of victory--"Double blank, Barbicane, double blank!"
Barbicane, Michel Ardan, and Nicholl were playing at dominoes.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE END.
It will be remembered that immense sympath
y accompanied the three travellers upon their departure. If the beginning of their enterprise had caused such excitement in the old and new world, what enthusiasm must welcome their return! Would not those millions of spectators who had invaded the Floridian peninsula rush to meet the sublime adventurers? Would those legions of foreigners from all points of the globe, now in America, leave the Union without seeing Barbicane, Nicholl, and Michel Ardan once more? No, and the ardent passion of the public would worthily respond to the grandeur of the enterprise. Human beings who had left the terrestrial spheroid, who had returned after their strange journey into celestial space, could not fail to be received like the prophet Elijah when he returned to the earth. To see them first, to hear them afterwards, was the general desire.
This desire was to be very promptly realised by almost all the inhabitants of the Union.
Barbicane, Michel Ardan, Nicholl, and the delegates of the Gun Club returned without delay to Baltimore, and were there received with indescribable enthusiasm. The president's travelling notes were ready to be given up for publicity. The New York Herald bought this manuscript at a price which is not yet known, but which must have been enormous. In fact, during the publication of the Journey to the Moon they printed 5,000,000 copies of that newspaper. Three days after the travellers' return to the earth the least details of their expedition were known. The only thing remaining to be done was to see the heroes of this superhuman enterprise.
The exploration of Barbicane and his friends around the moon had allowed them to control the different theories about the terrestrial satellite. These savants had observed it de visu and under quite peculiar circumstances. It was now known which systems were to be rejected, which admitted, upon the formation of this orb, its origin, and its inhabitability. Its past, present, and future had given up their secrets. What could be objected to conscientious observations made at less than forty miles from that curious mountain of Tycho, the strangest mountain system of lunar orography? What answers could be made to savants who had looked into the dark depths of the amphitheatre of Pluto? Who could contradict these audacious men whom the hazards of their enterprise had carried over the invisible disc of the moon, which no human eye had ever seen before? It was now their prerogative to impose the limits of that selenographic science which had built up the lunar world like Cuvier did the skeleton of a fossil, and to say, "The moon was this, a world inhabitable and inhabited anterior to the earth! The moon is this, a world now uninhabitable and uninhabited!"
In order to welcome the return of the most illustrious of its members and his two companions, the Gun Club thought of giving them a banquet; but a banquet worthy of them, worthy of the American people, and under such circumstances that all the inhabitants of the Union could take a direct part in it.
All the termini of the railroads in the State were joined together by movable rails. Then, in all the stations hung with the same flags, decorated with the same ornaments, were spread tables uniformly dressed. At a certain time, severely calculated upon electric clocks which beat the seconds at the same instant, the inhabitants were invited to take their places at the same banquet.
During four days, from the 5th to the 9th of January, the trains were suspended like they are on Sundays upon the railways of the Union, and all the lines were free.
One locomotive alone, a very fast engine, dragging a state saloon, had the right of circulating, during these four days, upon the railways of the United States.
This locomotive, conducted by a stoker and a mechanic, carried, by a great favour, the Honourable J.T. Maston, Secretary of the Gun Club.
The saloon was reserved for President Barbicane, Captain Nicholl, and Michel Ardan.
The train left the station of Baltimore upon the whistle of the engine-driver amidst the hurrahs and all the admiring interjections of the American language. It went at the speed of eighty leagues an hour. But what was that speed compared to the one with which the three heroes had left the Columbiad?
Thus they went from one town to another, finding the population in crowds upon their passage saluting them with the same acclamations, and showering upon them the same "bravoes." They thus travelled over the east of the Union through Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine, and New Brunswick; north and west through New York, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin; south through Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, and Louisiana; south-east through Alabama and Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas; they visited the centre through Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, and Indiana; then after the station of Washington they re-entered Baltimore, and during four days they could imagine that the United States of America, seated at one immense banquet, saluted them simultaneously with the same hurrahs.
This apotheosis was worthy of these heroes, whom fable would have placed in the ranks of demigods.
And now would this attempt, without precedent in the annals of travels, have any practical result? Would direct communication ever be established with the moon? Would a service of navigation ever be founded across space for the solar world? Will people ever go from planet to planet, from Jupiter to Mercury, and later on from one star to another, from the Polar star to Sirius, would a method of locomotion allow of visiting the suns which swarm in the firmament?
No answer can be given to these questions, but knowing the audacious ingenuity of the Anglo-Saxon race, no one will be astonished that the Americans tried to turn President Barbicane's experiment to account.
Thus some time after the return of the travellers the public received with marked favour the advertisement of a Joint-Stock Company (Limited), with a capital of a hundred million dollars, divided into a hundred thousand shares of a thousand dollars each, under the name of National Company for Interstellar Communication--President, Barbicane; Vice-President, Captain Nicholl; Secretary, J.T. Maston; Director, Michel Ardan--and as it is customary in America to foresee everything in business, even bankruptcy, the Honourable Harry Trollope, Commissary Judge, and Francis Dayton were appointed beforehand assignees.
* * *
Contents
OFF ON A COMET
By Jules Verne
BOOK I.
CHAPTER I. A CHALLENGE
"Nothing, sir, can induce me to surrender my claim."
"I am sorry, count, but in such a matter your views cannot modify mine."
"But allow me to point out that my seniority unquestionably gives me a prior right."
"Mere seniority, I assert, in an affair of this kind, cannot possibly entitle you to any prior claim whatever."
"Then, captain, no alternative is left but for me to compel you to yield at the sword's point."
"As you please, count; but neither sword nor pistol can force me to forego my pretensions. Here is my card."
"And mine."
This rapid altercation was thus brought to an end by the formal interchange of the names of the disputants. On one of the cards was inscribed:
Captain Hector Servadac, Staff Officer, Mostaganem.
On the other was the title:
Count Wassili Timascheff, On board the Schooner "Dobryna."
It did not take long to arrange that seconds should be appointed, who would meet in Mostaganem at two o'clock that day; and the captain and the count were on the point of parting from each other, with a salute of punctilious courtesy, when Timascheff, as if struck by a sudden thought, said abruptly: "Perhaps it would be better, captain, not to allow the real cause of this to transpire?"
"Far better," replied Servadac; "it is undesirable in every way for any names to be mentioned."
"In that case, however," continued the count, "it will be necessary to assign an ostensible pretext of some kind. Shall we allege a musical dispute? a contention in which I feel bound to defend Wagner, while you are the zealous champion of Rossini?"
"I am quite content," answered Servadac, with a smile; and with another low bow they parted.
The scene, as here depicted, took place upon the extremity of a little cape on the Algerian coast,
between Mostaganem and Tenes, about two miles from the mouth of the Shelif. The headland rose more than sixty feet above the sea-level, and the azure waters of the Mediterranean, as they softly kissed the strand, were tinged with the reddish hue of the ferriferous rocks that formed its base. It was the 31st of December. The noontide sun, which usually illuminated the various projections of the coast with a dazzling brightness, was hidden by a dense mass of cloud, and the fog, which for some unaccountable cause, had hung for the last two months over nearly every region in the world, causing serious interruption to traffic between continent and continent, spread its dreary veil across land and sea.
