The Moon-Voyage Page 2

  CHAPTER II.

  PRESIDENT BARBICANE'S COMMUNICATION.

  On the 5th of October, at 8 p.m., a dense crowd pressed into the saloonsof the Gun Club, 21, Union-square. All the members of the club residingat Baltimore had gone on the invitation of their president. The expressbrought corresponding members by hundreds, and if the meeting-hall hadnot been so large, the crowd of _savants_ could not have found room init; they overflowed into the neighbouring rooms, down the passages, andeven into the courtyards; there they ran against the populace who werepressing against the doors, each trying to get into the front rank, alleager to learn the important communication of President Barbicane, allpressing, squeezing, crushing with that liberty of action peculiar tothe masses brought up in the idea of self-government.

  That evening any stranger who might have chanced to be in Baltimorecould not have obtained a place at any price in the large hall; it wasexclusively reserved to residing or corresponding members; no one elsewas admitted; and the city magnates, common councillors, and select menwere compelled to mingle with their inferiors in order to catch straynews from the interior.

  The immense hall presented a curious spectacle; it was marvellouslyadapted to the purpose for which it was built. Lofty pillars formed ofcannon, superposed upon huge mortars as a base, supported the fineironwork of the arches--real cast-iron lacework.

  Trophies of blunderbusses, matchlocks, arquebuses, carbines, all sortsof ancient or modern firearms, were picturesquely enlaced against thewalls. The gas, in full flame, came out of a thousand revolvers groupedin the form of lustres, whilst candlesticks of pistols, and candelabramade of guns done up in sheaves, completed this display of light. Modelsof cannons, specimens of bronze, targets spotted with shot-marks,plaques broken by the shock of the Gun Club, balls, assortments oframmers and sponges, chaplets of shells, necklaces of projectiles,garlands of howitzers--in a word, all the tools of the artillerymansurprised the eyes by their wonderful arrangement, and induced a beliefthat their real purpose was more ornamental than deadly.

  In the place of honour was seen, covered by a splendid glass case, apiece of breech, broken and twisted under the effort of the powder--aprecious fragment of J.T. Maston's cannon.

  At the extremity of the hall the president, assisted by foursecretaries, occupied a wide platform. His chair, placed on a carvedgun-carriage, was modelled upon the powerful proportions of a 32-inchmortar; it was pointed at an angle of 90 degs., and hung upon trunnionsso that the president could use it as a rocking-chair, very agreeable ingreat heat. Upon the desk, a huge iron plate, supported upon sixcarronades, stood a very tasteful inkstand, made of a beautifully-chasedSpanish piece, and a report-bell, which, when required, went off like arevolver. During the vehement discussions this new sort of bell scarcelysufficed to cover the voices of this legion of excited artillerymen.

  In front of the desk, benches, arranged in zigzags, like thecircumvallations of intrenchment, formed a succession of bastions andcurtains where the members of the Gun Club took their seats; and thatevening, it may be said, there were plenty on the ramparts. Thepresident was sufficiently known for all to be assured that he would nothave called together his colleagues without a very great motive.

  Impey Barbicane was a man of forty, calm, cold, austere, of a singularlyserious and concentrated mind, as exact as a chronometer, of animperturbable temperament and immovable character; not very chivalrous,yet adventurous, and always bringing practical ideas to bear on thewildest enterprises; an essential New-Englander, a Northern colonist,the descendant of those Roundheads so fatal to the Stuarts, and theimplacable enemy of the Southern gentlemen, the ancient cavaliers of themother country--in a word, a Yankee cast in a single mould.

  Barbicane had made a great fortune as a timber-merchant; named directorof artillery during the war, he showed himself fertile in inventions;enterprising in his ideas, he contributed powerfully to the progress ofballistics, gave an immense impetus to experimental researches.

  He was a person of average height, having, by a rare exception in theGun Club, all his limbs intact. His strongly-marked features seemed tobe drawn by square and rule, and if it be true that in order to guessthe instincts of a man one must look at his profile, Barbicane seenthus offered the most certain indications of energy, audacity, and_sang-froid_.

  At that moment he remained motionless in his chair, mute, absorbed, withan inward look sheltered under his tall hat, a cylinder of black silk,which seems screwed down upon the skull of American men.

  His colleagues talked noisily around him without disturbing him; theyquestioned one another, launched into the field of suppositions,examined their president, and tried, but in vain, to make out the _x_ ofhis imperturbable physiognomy.

  Just as eight o'clock struck from the fulminating clock of the largehall, Barbicane, as if moved by a spring, jumped up; a general silenceensued, and the orator, in a slightly emphatic tone, spoke as follows:--

  "Brave colleagues,--It is some time since an unfruitful peace plungedthe members of the Gun Club into deplorable inactivity. After a periodof some years, so full of incidents, we have been obliged to abandon ourworks and stop short on the road of progress. I do not fear to proclaimaloud that any war which would put arms in our hands again would bewelcome--"

  "Yes, war!" cried impetuous J.T. Maston.

  "Hear, hear!" was heard on every side.

  "But war," said Barbicane, "war is impossible under actualcircumstances, and, whatever my honourable interrupter may hope, longyears will elapse before our cannons thunder on a field of battle. Wemust, therefore, make up our minds to it, and seek in another order ofideas food for the activity by which we are devoured."

  The assembly felt that its president was coming to the delicate point;it redoubled its attention.

  "A few months ago, my brave colleagues," continued Barbicane, "I askedmyself if, whilst still remaining in our speciality, we could notundertake some grand experiment worthy of the nineteenth century, and ifthe progress of ballistics would not allow us to execute it withsuccess. I have therefore sought, worked, calculated, and the convictionhas resulted from my studies that we must succeed in an enterprise thatwould seem impracticable in any other country. This project, elaboratedat length, will form the subject of my communication; it is worthy ofyou, worthy of the Gun Club's past history, and cannot fail to make anoise in the world!"

  "Much noise?" cried a passionate artilleryman.

  "Much noise in the true sense of the word," answered Barbicane.

  "Don't interrupt!" repeated several voices.

  "I therefore beg of you, my brave colleagues," resumed the president,"to grant me all your attention."

  A shudder ran through the assembly. Barbicane, having with a rapidgesture firmly fixed his hat on his head, continued his speech in a calmtone:--

  "There is not one of you, brave colleagues, who has not seen the moon,or, at least, heard of It. Do not be astonished if I wish to speak toyou about the Queen of Night. It is, perhaps, our lot to be theColumbuses of this unknown world. Understand me, and second me as muchas you can, I will lead you to its conquest, and its name shall bejoined to those of the thirty-six States that form the grand country ofthe Union!"

  "Hurrah for the moon!" cried the Gun Club with one voice.

  "The moon has been much studied," resumed Barbicane; "its mass, density,weight, volume, constitution, movements, distance, the part it plays inthe solar world, are all perfectly determined; selenographic maps havebeen drawn with a perfection that equals, if it does not surpass, thoseof terrestrial maps; photography has given to our satellite proofs ofincomparable beauty--in a word, all that the sciences of mathematics,astronomy, geology, and optics can teach is known about the moon; butuntil now no direct communication with it has ever been established."

  A violent movement of interest and surprise welcomed this sentence ofthe orator.

  "Allow me," he resumed, "to recall to you in few words how certainardent minds, embarked upon imaginary journeys, pretended
to havepenetrated the secrets of our satellite. In the seventeenth century acertain David Fabricius boasted of having seen the inhabitants of themoon with his own eyes. In 1649 a Frenchman, Jean Baudoin, published his_Journey to the Moon by Dominique Gonzales, Spanish Adventurer_. At thesame epoch Cyrano de Bergerac published the celebrated expedition thathad so much success in France. Later on, another Frenchman (that nationtook a great deal of notice of the moon), named Fontenelle, wrote his_Plurality of Worlds_, a masterpiece of his time; but science in itsprogress crushes even masterpieces! About 1835, a pamphlet, translatedfrom the _New York American_, related that Sir John Herschel, sent tothe Cape of Good Hope, there to make astronomical observations, had, bymeans of a telescope, perfected by interior lighting, brought the moonto within a distance of eighty yards. Then he distinctly perceivedcaverns in which lived hippopotami, green mountains with golden borders,sheep with ivory horns, white deer, and inhabitants with membraneouswings like those of bats. This treatise, the work of an American namedLocke, had a very great success. But it was soon found out that it was ascientific mystification, and Frenchmen were the first to laugh at it."

  "Laugh at an American!" cried J.T. Maston; "but that's a _casus belli_!"

  "Be comforted, my worthy friend; before Frenchmen laughed they werecompletely taken in by our countryman. To terminate this rapid history,I may add that a certain Hans Pfaal, of Rotterdam, went up in a balloonfilled with a gas made from azote, thirty-seven times lighter thanhydrogen, and reached the moon after a journey of nineteen days. Thisjourney, like the preceding attempts, was purely imaginary, but it wasthe work of a popular American writer of a strange and contemplativegenius. I have named Edgar Poe!"

  "Hurrah for Edgar Poe!" cried the assembly, electrified by the words ofthe president.

  "I have now come to an end of these attempts which I may call purelyliterary, and quite insufficient to establish any serious communicationswith the Queen of Night. However, I ought to add that some practicalminds tried to put themselves into serious communication with her. Someyears ago a German mathematician proposed to send a commission of_savants_ to the steppes of Siberia. There, on the vast plains, immensegeometrical figures were to be traced by means of luminous reflectors;amongst others, the square of the hypothenuse, vulgarly called the'Ass's Bridge.' 'Any intelligent being,' said the mathematician, 'oughtto understand the scientific destination of that figure. The Selenites(inhabitants of the moon), if they exist, will answer by a similarfigure, and, communication once established, it will be easy to createan alphabet that will allow us to hold converse with the inhabitants ofthe moon.' Thus spoke the German mathematician, but his project was notput into execution, and until now no direct communication has existedbetween the earth and her satellite. But it was reserved to thepractical genius of Americans to put itself into communication with thesidereal world. The means of doing so are simple, easy, certain,unfailing, and will make the subject of my proposition."

  A hubbub and tempest of exclamations welcomed these words. There was notone of the audience who was not dominated and carried away by the wordsof the orator.

  "Hear, hear! Silence!" was heard on all sides.

  When the agitation was calmed down Barbicane resumed, in a graver tone,his interrupted speech.

  "You know," said he, "what progress the science of ballistics has madeduring the last few years, and to what degree of perfection firearmswould have been brought if the war had gone on. You are not ignorant ingeneral that the power of resistance of cannons and the expansive forceof powder are unlimited. Well, starting from that principle, I askedmyself if, by means of sufficient apparatus, established underdetermined conditions of resistance, it would not be possible to send acannon-ball to the moon!"

  At these words an "Oh!" of stupefaction escaped from a thousand pantingbreasts; then occurred a moment of silence, like the profound calm thatprecedes thunder. In fact, the thunder came, but a thunder of applause,cries, and clamour which made the meeting-hall shake again. Thepresident tried to speak; he could not. It was only at the end of tenminutes that he succeeded in making himself heard.

  "Let me finish," he resumed coldly. "I have looked at the question inall its aspects, and from my indisputable calculations it results thatany projectile, hurled at an initial speed of twelve thousand yards asecond, and directed at the moon, must necessarily reach her. I have,therefore, the honour of proposing to you, my worthy colleagues, theattempting of this little experiment."