All Around the Moon Read online

  Produced by Afra Ullah, Taavi Kalju and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

  ALL

  AROUND THE MOON

  FROM THE FRENCH OF

  JULES VERNE

  AUTHOR OF "FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON", "TO THE SUN!" AND "OFF ON ACOMET!"

  BY

  EDWARD ROTH

  ILLUSTRATED

  PHILADELPHIADAVID MCKAY, PUBLISHER23 SOUTH NINTH STREET

  CONTENTS.

  PRELIMINARY

  I. FROM 10 P.M. TO 10. 46' 40''

  II. THE FIRST HALF HOUR

  III. THEY MAKE THEMSELVES AT HOME AND FEEL QUITE COMFORTABLE

  IV. FOR THE CORNELL GIRLS

  V. THE COLDS OF SPACE

  VI. INSTRUCTIVE CONVERSATION

  VII. A HIGH OLD TIME

  VIII. THE NEUTRAL POINT

  IX. A LITTLE OFF THE TRACK

  X. THE OBSERVERS OF THE MOON

  XI. FACT AND FANCY

  XII. A BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF THE LUNAR MOUNTAINS

  XIII. LUNAR LANDSCAPES

  XIV. A NIGHT OF FIFTEEN DAYS

  XV. GLIMPSES AT THE INVISIBLE

  XVI. THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE

  XVII. TYCHO

  XVIII. PUZZLING QUESTIONS

  XIX. IN EVERY FIGHT, THE IMPOSSIBLE WINS

  XX. OFF THE PACIFIC COAST

  XXI. NEWS FOR MARSTON!

  XXII. ON THE WINGS OF THE WIND

  XXIII. THE CLUB MEN GO A FISHING

  XXIV. FAREWELL TO THE BALTIMORE GUN CLUB

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

  1. HIS FIRST CARE WAS TO TURN ON THE GAS

  2. DIANA AND SATELLITE

  3. HE HELPED ARDAN TO LIFT BARBICAN

  4. MORE HUNGRY THAN EITHER

  5. THEY DRANK TO THE SPEEDY UNION OF THE EARTH AND HER SATELLITE

  6. DON'T I THOUGH? MY HEAD IS SPLITTING WITH IT!

  7. POOR SATELLITE WAS DROPPED OUT

  8. THE BODY OF THE DOG THROWN OUT YESTERDAY

  9. A DEMONIACAL HULLABALOO

  10. THE OXYGEN! HE CRIED

  11. A GROUP _a la Jardin Mabille_

  12. AN IMMENSE BATTLE-FIELD PILED WITH BLEACHING BONES

  13. NEVERTHELESS THE SOLUTION ESCAPED HIM

  14. IT'S COLD ENOUGH TO FREEZE A WHITE BEAR

  15. THEY COULD UTTER NO WORD, THEY COULD BREATHE NO PRAYER

  16. THEY SEEMED HALF ASLEEP IN HIS VITALIZING BEAMS

  17. THESE ARCHES EVIDENTLY ONCE BORE THE PIPES OF AN AQUEDUCT

  18. ARDAN GAZED AT THE PAIR FOR A FEW MINUTES

  19. OLD MAC DISCOVERED TAKING OBSERVATIONS

  20. FOR A SECOND ONLY DID THEY CATCH ITS FLASH

  21. HOW IS THAT FOR HIGH?

  22. EVERYWHERE THEIR DEPARTURE WAS ACCOMPANIED WITH THE MOST TOUCHING SYMPATHY

  PRELIMINARY CHAPTER,

  RESUMING THE FIRST PART OF THE WORK AND SERVING AS AN INTRODUCTION TOTHE SECOND.

  A few years ago the world was suddenly astounded by hearing of anexperiment of a most novel and daring nature, altogether unprecedentedin the annals of science. The BALTIMORE GUN CLUB, a society ofartillerymen started in America during the great Civil War, hadconceived the idea of nothing less than establishing directcommunication with the Moon by means of a projectile! PresidentBarbican, the originator of the enterprise, was strongly encouraged inits feasibility by the astronomers of Cambridge Observatory, and tookupon himself to provide all the means necessary to secure its success.Having realized by means of a public subscription the sum of nearly fiveand a half millions of dollars, he immediately set himself to work atthe necessary gigantic labors.

  In accordance with the Cambridge men's note, the cannon intended todischarge the projectile was to be planted in some country not furtherthan 28 deg. north or south from the equator, so that it might be aimedvertically at the Moon in the zenith. The bullet was to be animated withan initial velocity of 12,000 yards to the second. It was to be firedoff on the night of December 1st, at thirteen minutes and twenty secondsbefore eleven o'clock, precisely. Four days afterwards it was to hit theMoon, at the very moment that she reached her _perigee_, that is to say,her nearest point to the Earth, about 228,000 miles distant.

  The leading members of the Club, namely President Barbican, SecretaryMarston, Major Elphinstone and General Morgan, forming the executivecommittee, held several meetings to discuss the shape and material ofthe bullet, the nature and position of the cannon, and the quantity andquality of the powder. The decision soon arrived at was as follows:1st--The bullet was to be a hollow aluminium shell, its diameter ninefeet, its walls a foot in thickness, and its weight 19,250 pounds;2nd--The cannon was to be a columbiad 900 feet in length, a well of thatdepth forming the vertical mould in which it was to be cast, and3rd--The powder was to be 400 thousand pounds of gun cotton, which, bydeveloping more than 200 thousand millions of cubic feet of gas underthe projectile, would easily send it as far as our satellite.

  These questions settled, Barbican, aided by Murphy, the Chief Engineerof the Cold Spring Iron Works, selected a spot in Florida, near the 27thdegree north latitude, called Stony Hill, where after the performance ofmany wonderful feats in mining engineering, the Columbiad wassuccessfully cast.

  Things had reached this state when an incident occurred which excitedthe general interest a hundred fold.

  A Frenchman from Paris, Michel Ardan by name, eccentric, but keen andshrewd as well as daring, demanded, by the Atlantic telegraph,permission to be enclosed in the bullet so that he might be carried tothe Moon, where he was curious to make certain investigations. Receivedin America with great enthusiasm, Ardan held a great meeting,triumphantly carried his point, reconciled Barbican to his mortal foe, acertain Captain M'Nicholl, and even, by way of clinching thereconciliation, induced both the newly made friends to join him in hiscontemplated trip to the Moon.

  The bullet, so modified as to become a hollow conical cylinder withplenty of room inside, was further provided with powerful water-springsand readily-ruptured partitions below the floor, intended to deaden thedreadful concussion sure to accompany the start. It was supplied withprovisions for a year, water for a few months, and gas for nearly twoweeks. A self-acting apparatus, of ingenious construction, kept theconfined atmosphere sweet and healthy by manufacturing pure oxygen andabsorbing carbonic acid. Finally, the Gun Club had constructed, atenormous expense, a gigantic telescope, which, from the summit of Long'sPeak, could pursue the Projectile as it winged its way through theregions of space. Everything at last was ready.

  On December 1st, at the appointed moment, in the midst of an immenseconcourse of spectators, the departure took place, and, for the firsttime in the world's history, three human beings quitted our terrestrialglobe with some possibility in their favor of finally reaching a pointof destination in the inter-planetary spaces. They expected toaccomplish their journey in 97 hours, 13 minutes and 20 seconds,consequently reaching the Lunar surface precisely at midnight onDecember 5-6, the exact moment when the Moon would be full.

  Unfortunately, the instantaneous explosion of such a vast quantity ofgun-cotton, by giving rise to a violent commotion in the atmosphere,generated so much vapor and mist as to render the Moon invisible forseveral nights to the innumerable watchers in the Western Hemisphere,who vainly tried to catch sight of her.

  In the meantime, J.T. Marston, the Secretary of the Gun Club, and a mostdevoted friend of Barbican's, had started for Long's Peak, Colorado, onthe summit of which the immense telescope, already alluded to, had beenerected; it was of the reflecting kind, and possessed power sufficientto bring the Moon within a distance of five miles. While Marston wasprosecuting his long journey with all possible speed, ProfessorBelfast, who ha
d charge of the telescope, was endeavoring to catch aglimpse of the Projectile, but for a long time with no success. Thehazy, cloudy weather lasted for more than a week, to the great disgustof the public at large. People even began to fear that furtherobservation would have to be deferred to the 3d of the following month,January, as during the latter half of December the waning Moon could notpossibly give light enough to render the Projectile visible.

  At last, however, to the unbounded satisfaction of all, a violenttempest suddenly cleared the sky, and on the 13th of December, shortlyafter midnight, the Moon, verging towards her last quarter, revealedherself sharp and bright on the dark background of the starry firmament.

  That same morning, a few hours before Marston's arrival at the summit ofLong's Peak, a very remarkable telegram had been dispatched by ProfessorBelfast to the Smithsonian Institute, Washington. It announced:

  That on December 13th, at 2 o'clock in the morning, the Projectile shotfrom Stony Hill had been perceived by Professor Belfast and hisassistants; that, deflected a little from its course by some unknowncause, it had not reached its mark, though it had approached near enoughto be affected by the Lunar attraction; and that, its rectilineal motionhaving become circular, it should henceforth continue to describe aregular orbit around the Moon, of which in fact it had become theSatellite. The dispatch went on further to state:

  That the _elements_ of the new heavenly body had not yet beencalculated, as at least three different observations, taken at differenttimes, were necessary to determine them. The distance of the Projectilefrom the Lunar surface, however, might be set down roughly at roughly2833 miles.

  The dispatch concluded with the following hypotheses, positivelypronounced to be the only two possible: Either, 1, The Lunar attractionwould finally prevail, in which case the travellers would reach theirdestination; or 2, The Projectile, kept whirling forever in an immutableorbit, would go on revolving around the Moon till time should be nomore.

  In either alternative, what should be the lot of the daring adventurers?They had, it is true, abundant provisions to last them for some time,but even supposing that they did reach the Moon and thereby completelyestablish the practicability of their daring enterprise, how were theyever to get back? _Could_ they ever get back? or ever even be heardfrom? Questions of this nature, freely discussed by the ablest pens ofthe day, kept the public mind in a very restless and excited condition.

  We must be pardoned here for making a little remark which, however,astronomers and other scientific men of sanguine temperament would dowell to ponder over. An observer cannot be too cautious in announcing tothe public his discovery when it is of a nature purely speculative.Nobody is obliged to discover a planet, or a comet, or even a satellite,but, before announcing to the world that you have made such a discovery,first make sure that such is really the fact. Because, you know, shouldit afterwards come out that you have done nothing of the kind, you makeyourself a butt for the stupid jokes of the lowest newspaper scribblers.Belfast had never thought of this. Impelled by his irrepressible ragefor discovery--the _furor inveniendi_ ascribed to all astronomers byAurelius Priscus--he had therefore been guilty of an indiscretion highlyun-scientific when his famous telegram, launched to the world at largefrom the summit of the Rocky Mountains, pronounced so dogmatically onthe only possible issues of the great enterprise.

  The truth was that his telegram contained _two_ very important errors:1. Error of _observation_, as facts afterwards proved; the Projectile_was_ not seen on the 13th and _could_ not have been on that day, sothat the little black spot which Belfast professed to have seen was mostcertainly not the Projectile; 2. Error of _theory_ regarding the finalfate of the Projectile, since to make it become the Moon's satellite wasflying in the face of one of the great fundamental laws of TheoreticalMechanics.

  Only one, therefore, the first, of the hypotheses so positivelyannounced, was capable of realization. The travellers--that is to say ifthey still lived--might so combine and unite their own efforts withthose of the Lunar attraction as actually to succeed at last in reachingthe Moon's surface.

  Now the travellers, those daring but cool-headed men who knew very wellwhat they were about, _did_ still live, they _had_ survived thefrightful concussion of the start, and it is to the faithful record oftheir wonderful trip in the bullet-car, with all its singular anddramatic details, that the present volume is devoted. The story maydestroy many illusions, prejudices and conjectures; but it will at leastgive correct ideas of the strange incidents to which such an enterpriseis exposed, and it will certainly bring out in strong colors the effectsof Barbican's scientific conceptions, M'Nicholl's mechanical resources,and Ardan's daring, eccentric, but brilliant and effective combinations.

  Besides, it will show that J.T. Marston, their faithful friend and a manevery way worthy of the friendship of such men, was only losing his timewhile mirroring the Moon in the speculum of the gigantic telescope onthat lofty peak of the mountains.