The Moon-Voyage Page 10
CHAPTER X.
ONE ENEMY AGAINST TWENTY-FIVE MILLIONS OF FRIENDS.
The American public took great interest in the least details of the GunClub's enterprise. It followed the committee debates day by day. Themost simple preparations for this great experiment, the questions offigures it provoked, the mechanical difficulties to be solved, allexcited popular opinion to the highest pitch.
More than a year would elapse between the commencement of the work andits completion; but the interval would not be void of excitement. Theplace to be chosen for the boring, the casting the metal of theColumbiad, its perilous loading, all this was more than necessary toexcite public curiosity. The projectile, once fired, would be out ofsight in a few seconds; then what would become of it, how it wouldbehave in space, how it would reach the moon, none but a few privilegedpersons would see with their own eyes. Thus, then, the preparations forthe experiment and the precise details of its execution constituted thereal source of interest.
In the meantime the purely scientific attraction of the enterprise wasall at once heightened by an incident.
It is known what numerous legions of admirers and friends the Barbicaneproject had called round its author. But, notwithstanding the number andimportance of the majority, it was not destined to be unanimous. Oneman, one out of all the United States, protested against the Gun Club.He attacked it violently on every occasion, and--for human nature isthus constituted--Barbicane was more sensitive to this one man'sopposition than to the applause of all the others.
Nevertheless he well knew the motive of this antipathy, from whence camethis solitary enmity, why it was personal and of ancient date; lastly,in what rivalry it had taken root.
The president of the Gun Club had never seen this persevering enemy.Happily, for the meeting of the two men would certainly have haddisastrous consequences. This rival was a _savant_ like Barbicane, aproud, enterprising, determined, and violent character, a pure Yankee.His name was Captain Nicholl. He lived in Philadelphia.
No one is ignorant of the curious struggle which went on during theFederal war between the projectile and ironclad vessels, the formerdestined to pierce the latter, the latter determined not to be pierced.Thence came a radical transformation in the navies of the twocontinents. Cannon-balls and iron plates struggled for supremacy, theformer getting larger as the latter got thicker. Ships armed withformidable guns went into the fire under shelter of their invulnerablearmour. The Merrimac, Monitor, ram Tennessee, and Wechhausen shotenormous projectiles after having made themselves proof against theprojectiles of other ships. They did to others what they would not haveothers do to them, an immoral principle upon which the whole art of waris based.
Now Barbicane was a great caster of projectiles, and Nicholl was anequally great forger of plate-armour. The one cast night and day atBaltimore, the other forged day and night at Philadelphia. Each followedan essentially different current of ideas.
As soon as Barbicane had invented a new projectile, Nicholl invented anew plate armour. The president of the Gun Club passed his life inpiercing holes, the captain in preventing him doing it. Hence a constantrivalry which even touched their persons. Nicholl appeared inBarbicane's dreams as an impenetrable ironclad against which he split,and Barbicane in Nicholl's dreams appeared like a projectile whichripped him up.
Still, although they ran along two diverging lines, these _savants_would have ended by meeting each other in spite of all the axioms ingeometry; but then it would have been on a duel field. Happily for theseworthy citizens, so useful to their country, a distance of from fifty tosixty miles separated them, and their friends put such obstacles in theway that they never met.
At present it was not clearly known which of the two inventors held thepalm. The results obtained rendered a just decision difficult. Itseemed, however, that in the end armour-plate would have to give way toprojectiles. Nevertheless, competent men had their doubts. At the latestexperiments the cylindro-conical shots of Barbicane had no more effectthan pins upon Nicholl's armour-plate. That day the forger ofPhiladelphia believed himself victorious, and henceforth had nothing butdisdain for his rival. But when, later on, Barbicane substituted simplehowitzers of 600 lbs. for conical shots, the captain was obliged to godown in his own estimation. It fact, these projectiles, though ofmediocre velocity, drilled with holes and broke to pieces armour-plateof the best metal.
Things had reached this point and victory seemed to rest with theprojectile, when the war ended the very day that Nicholl terminated anew forged armour-plate. It was a masterpiece of its kind. It defied allthe projectiles in the world. The captain had it taken to the WashingtonPolygon and challenged the president of the Gun Club to pierce it.Barbicane, peace having been made, would not attempt the experiment.
Then Nicholl, in a rage, offered to expose his armour-plate to the shockof any kind of projectile, solid, hollow, round, or conical.
The president, who was determined not to compromise his last success,refused.
Nicholl, excited by this unqualified obstinacy, tried to tempt Barbicaneby leaving him every advantage. He proposed to put his plate 200 yardsfrom the gun. Barbicane still refused. At 100 yards? Not even at 75.
"At 50, then," cried the captain, through the newspapers, "at 25 yardsfrom my plate, and I will be behind it."
Barbicane answered that even if Captain Nicholl would be in front of ithe would not fire any more.
On this reply, Nicholl could no longer contain himself. He had recourseto personalities; he insinuated cowardice--that the man who refuses tofire a shot from a cannon is very nearly being afraid of it; that, inshort, the artillerymen who fight now at six miles distance haveprudently substituted mathematical formulae for individual courage, andthat there is as much bravery required to quietly wait for a cannon-ballbehind armour-plate as to send it according to all the rules of science.
To these insinuations Barbicane answered nothing. Perhaps he never knewabout them, for the calculations of his great enterprise absorbed himentirely.
When he made his famous communication to the Gun Club, the anger ofCaptain Nicholl reached its maximum. Mixed with it was supreme jealousyand a sentiment of absolute powerlessness. How could he invent anythingbetter than a Columbiad 900 feet long? What armour-plate could everresist a projectile of 30,000 lbs.? Nicholl was at first crushed by thiscannon-ball, then he recovered and resolved to crush the proposition bythe weight of his best arguments.
He therefore violently attacked the labours of the Gun Club. He sent anumber of letters to the newspapers, which they did not refuse topublish. He tried to demolish Barbicane's work scientifically. Once thewar begun, he called reasons of every kind to his aid, reasons it mustbe acknowledged often specious and of bad metal.
Firstly, Barbicane was violently attacked about his figures. Nicholltried to prove by A + B the falseness of his formulae, and he accusedhim of being ignorant of the rudimentary principles of ballistics.Amongst other errors, and according to Nicholl's own calculations, itwas impossible to give any body a velocity of 12,000 yards a second. Hesustained, algebra in hand, that even with that velocity a projectilethus heavy would never pass the limits of the terrestrial atmosphere. Itwould not even go eight leagues! Better still. Granted the velocity, andtaking it as sufficient, the shot would not resist the pressure of thegas developed by the combustion of 1,600,000 pounds of powder, and evenif it did resist that pressure, it at least would not support such atemperature; it would melt as it issued from the Columbiad, and wouldfall in red-hot rain on the heads of the imprudent spectators.
Barbicane paid no attention to these attacks, and went on with his work.
Then Nicholl considered the question in its other aspects. Withoutspeaking of its uselessness from all other points of view, he lookedupon the experiment as exceedingly dangerous, both for the citizens whoauthorised so condemnable a spectacle by their presence, and for thetowns near the deplorable cannon. He also remarked that if theprojectile did not reach its destination, a result absolutelyim
possible, it was evident that it would fall on to the earth again, andthat the fall of such a mass multiplied by the square of its velocitywould singularly damage some point on the globe. Therefore, in such acircumstance, and without any restriction being put upon the rights offree citizens, it was one of those cases in which the intervention ofgovernment became necessary, and the safety of all must not beendangered for the good pleasure of a single individual.
It will be seen to what exaggeration Captain Nicholl allowed himself tobe carried. He was alone in his opinion. Nobody took any notice of hisCassandra prophecies. They let him exclaim as much as he liked, till histhroat was sore if he pleased. He had constituted himself the defenderof a cause lost in advance. He was heard but not listened to, and he didnot carry off a single admirer from the president of the Gun Club, whodid not even take the trouble to refute his rival's arguments.
Nicholl, driven into his last intrenchments, and not being able to fightfor his opinion, resolved to pay for it. He therefore proposed in the_Richmond Inquirer_ a series of bets conceived in these terms and in anincreasing proportion.
He bet that--
1. The funds necessary for the Gun Club's enterprise would not beforthcoming, 1,000 dols.
2. That the casting of a cannon of 900 feet was impracticable and wouldnot succeed, 2,000 dols.
3. That it would be impossible to load the Columbiad, and that thepyroxyle would ignite spontaneously under the weight of the projectile,3,000 dols.
4. That the Columbiad would burst at the first discharge, 4,000 dols.
5. That the projectile would not even go six miles, and would fall a fewseconds after its discharge, 5,000 dols.
It will be seen that the captain was risking an important sum in hisinvincible obstinacy. No less than 15,000 dols. were at stake.
Notwithstanding the importance of the wager, he received on the 19th ofOctober a sealed packet of superb laconism, couched in these terms:--
"Baltimore, October 18th.
"Done.
"BARBICANE."