public opinion assigned an influence as disastrous as that of the 1st of
January, 1000.
Twelve hours after the sun passed the meridian of Kilimanjaro, that is
to say, at midnight, the hand of Captain Nicholl would fire the terrible
mine.
From Kilimanjaro to Baltimore is one hundred and fourteen degrees, or a
difference in time of four hundred and fifty-six minutes. At the moment
of discharge it would be twenty-four minutes past five in the afternoon
in the great city of Maryland.
The weather was magnificent. The sun had just set on the plains of the
Wamasai behind a perfectly clear horizon. Barbicane & Co. could not have
wished for a better night, a calmer or a more star-lit one, in which to
hurl their projectile into space. There was not a cloud to mingle with
the artificial vapours developed by the deflagration of the
meli-melonite.
Who knows? Perhaps Barbicane and Nicholl were regretting that they could
not take their places inside the projectile? In the first second they
could have travelled over seventeen hundred miles! After having
penetrated the mysteries of the lunar world, they would have penetrated
those of the solar world, and under conditions differently interesting
from those of Hector Servadac on the comet Gallia!
The Sultan Bali-Bali, the great personages of his court; that is to say,
his minister of finance and his minister of works, and the staff of
black workmen, were gathered together to watch their final operation.
But, with commendable prudence, they had taken up their position three
miles away from the mouth of the mine, so as to suffer no inconvenience
from the disturbance of the atmosphere.
Around them were a few thousand natives from Kisongo and the villages in
the south of the province, who had been ordered by the Sultan to come
and admire the spectacle.
A wire connecting an electric battery with the detonator of the
fulminate in the tube lay ready to fire the meli-melonite.
As a prelude, an excellent repast had assembled at the same table the
Sultan, his American visitors, and the notabilities of the capital--the
whole at the cost of Bali-Bali, who did the thing all the better from
his knowing he would be reimbursed out of the ample purse of Barbicane &
Co.
It was eleven o’clock when the banquet, which had begun at half-past
seven, came to an end by a toast proposed by the Sultan in honour of the
engineers of the North Polar Practical Association and the success of
their undertaking.
In an hour the modification of the geographical and climatological
conditions of the Earth would be an accomplished fact.
Barbicane, his colleague, and the ten foremen began to take up their
places around the hut in which the electric battery was placed.
Barbicane, chronometer in hand, counted the minutes--and never did they
seem so long--those minutes which seemed not years, but centuries!
At ten minutes to twelve he and Captain Nicholl approached the apparatus
which put the wire in communication with the cannon of Kilimanjaro.
The Sultan, his court, the crowd of natives, formed an immense circle
round them.
It was essential that the discharge should take place at the precise
moment indicated in the calculations of J. T. Maston, that is at the
instant the sun touched the equinoctial line, which henceforth he would
never leave in his apparent orbit round the terrestrial spheroid.
Five minutes to twelve!
Four minutes to twelve!
Three minutes to twelve!
Two minutes to twelve!
One minute to twelve!
Barbicane followed the hand of the chronometer, which was lighted by a
lantern held by one of the foremen.
Captain Nicholl stood with his finger on the button of the apparatus
ready to close the circuit.
Twenty seconds to twelve!
Ten seconds!
There was not the suspicion of a shake in the hand of the impassible
Captain Nicholl. He and his friend were no more excited than when, shut
up in the projectile, they waited for the Columbiad to despatch them to
the Moon.
Five seconds!
One!
“FIRE!” said Barbicane.
And Nicholl’s finger pressed the button.
The noise was truly awful. The echoes rolled in thunders far beyond the
realm of the Wamasai. There was a shrill shriek of the projectile which
traversed the air under the impetus from milliards of milliards of
litres of gas developed by the instantaneous deflagration of two
thousand tons of meli-melonite. It seemed as though there had passed
over the surface of the Earth one of those storms in which are gathered
all the fury of Nature.
And the effect would have been no less terrible if all the guns of all
the artilleries of the world had been joined to the thunders of the sky
to give one long continuous roar together.
CHAPTER XIX.
J. T. MASTON REGRETS HE WAS NOT LYNCHED.
The capitals of the globe--and also the less important towns, and even
the humbler villages--were, as a rule, waiting for the result in a
paroxysm of terror. The newspapers took care that the exact moment
corresponding to midnight at Kilimanjaro should be thoroughly well
known.
The Sun travels a degree in four minutes, and the times given by the
newspapers for some of the cities was as follows:--
Berlin11.20 a.m.
Constantinople 11.26 a.m.
London 9.30 a.m.
Madrid 9.15 a.m.
Paris 9.40 a.m.
St. Petersburg 11.31 a.m.
Rome 10.20 a.m.
Calcutta 3. 4 p.m.
Nanking5. 5 p.m.
At Baltimore, as we are aware, twelve hours after the passage of the Sun
on the meridian of Kilimanjaro, it would be 5.24 p.m.
We need not enlarge on the agony of these moments. The most powerful pen
of modern times would be helpless to describe them.
That the inhabitants of Baltimore ran no danger of being swept away by
the rising sea may be very true! That they would not see Chesapeake Bay
empty itself, and Cape Hatteras at the end become a mountain crest above
the dried Atlantic, is agreed! But the city, like many others not
menaced with emersion or immersion, might be shattered by the shock, its
monuments thrown down, and its streets engulphed in the abysses that
might open in the ground! And was there not a justification for fearing
for those other parts of the world which would never survive the
displacement of the waters?
Why, certainly!
And so every human being in that city felt a cold shiver in the spinal
marrow during that fatal minute. Yes! all trembled with terror--but one!
And that one was Sulphuric Alcide, who was quietly sipping a cup of hot
coffee as if he and the old world would last for ever.
5.24 p.m., answering to Kilimanjaro midnight, passed.
At Baltimore--nothing occurred!
At London, Berlin, Paris, Rome, Constantinople--nothing! Not the least
shock!
Professor Milne, in the coal-pit at Kagoshima, in Japan, gazed steadily
at the tromometer, and saw not the least abnormal movement in the crust
of the Earth in that part of the world.
At Baltimore there was no sign of any disturbance whatsoever. The sky
was cloudy, and when the night came it was impossible to see if the
apparent movement of the stars had changed--which would, of course, have
indicated a change in the Earth’s axis.
What a night did J. T. Maston pass in his retreat, unknown to all save
Mrs. Scorbitt! He raged! He raved! He could not keep still. Would that
he had been a few days older, to see if the curve of the Sun was
modified--an indisputable proof of the success of the operation. On the
23rd the change would not be noticeable, for on that day the Sun
invariably rises due east in every country of the globe.
In the morning the Sun rose just as usual.
Major Donellan and his friends were on the terrace of their hotel. They
had furnished themselves with instruments of extreme precision, which
would show if the Sun described its curve in the plane of the Equator.
There was nothing to show that it did; and a few minutes after it had
risen the radiant disc inclined towards the southern hemisphere.
There was no change in its apparent path.
The Major and his colleagues expressed their delight by giving three
cheers for the Sun.
The sky was superb, the horizon quite clear from the mists of the night,
and never did the glorious orb present himself under greater conditions
of splendour before a wondering people.
“And in the very place noted by the laws of astronomy!” said Baldenak.
“Of our old astronomy,” said Karkof, “which these madmen attempted to
annihilate!”
“To their cost and shame,” said Jansen.
“And the Arctic regions will remain under their eternal ice!” said
Professor Harald.
“Hurrah for the Sun!” shouted Donellan. “He is good enough for us as he
is!”
“Hurrah! hurrah!” said the others on the balcony.
Then it was that Todrin, who had said nothing, remarked judiciously,
“Perhaps they have not fired!”
“Not fired?” ejaculated the Major aghast.
And that, with a different intonation, was what J. T. Maston and Mrs.
Scorbitt said.
“Not fired?”
And that was what the wise and the foolish were asking; and it was what
Alcide Pierdeux said, adding,--
“Whether they fired or no, it does not matter! The Earth will still spin
on its old axis!”
No one knew what had passed at Kilimanjaro; but before the end of the
day an answer was given to the question that puzzled humanity.
There was a telegram from Zanzibar:--
“To John S. Wright, Washington, U.S.A.
“Zanzibar, 23rd September, 7.27 a.m., local time. Discharge took place
at midnight from cannon on southern side of Kilimanjaro. Projectile
travelled with fearful shriek. Awful explosion. Province devastated by a
tornado. Sea risen in the Mozambique Channel. Many ships damaged and
driven on shore. Towns and villages annihilated. All well, as
usual.--Richard W. Trust, U.S. Consul.”
Yes. All well as usual! Nothing changed in the state of affairs except
the disasters among the Wamasai caused by the artificial tornado and the
wrecks caused by the risen sea.
And had it not been the same when the famous Columbiad had sent its
projectile towards the Moon? The shock communicated to the soil of
Florida had only been experienced for a hundred miles round. But this
time the effect ought to have been a hundred times as great.
Under any circumstances the telegram informed the world of two matters
of interest:--
1. The enormous cannon had been made in the flank of Kilimanjaro.
2. It had been fired at the time stated.
And then the world gave a shout of satisfaction, which was followed by
an immense shout of laughter.
Barbicane & Co.’s attempt had failed piteously! J. T. Maston’s
calculations might as well be put in the waste-paper basket! The North
Polar Practical Association had nothing now to do but go into another
kind of liquidation!
Could it be possible that the secretary of the Gun Club had made a
mistake?
“I would rather believe I am deceived in the affection with which he
inspires me,” said Mrs. Evangelina Scorbitt.
And if there was a discomfited being on the face of the planet it was J.
T. Maston. When he saw that nothing had changed in the conditions of the
Earth’s movement, he was buoyed up with hope that some accident had
retarded the work of Barbicane and Nicholl.
But since the Zanzibar telegram he had to admit that the experiment had
failed.
Failed? And the equations, the formulæ from which he had deduced the
success of the enterprise! Was the gun not long enough, the projectile
not heavy enough, the explosive not strong enough? No! It was
inadmissible!
J. T. Maston was in such a state of excitement that he declared he would
leave his retreat. Mrs. Scorbitt tried in vain to prevent him. Not that
she feared for his life, for the danger was over. But the pleasantries
that would be showered on the unhappy calculator, the jokes that would
rain on his work,--she would have spared him.
And, still more serious, what was the reception the Gun Club would give
him? Would they retain him as their secretary after a failure that
covered them with ridicule? Was not he, the author of the calculations,
entirely responsible for the collapse?
He would listen to nothing. He would yield neither to the tears nor
prayers of Mrs. Scorbitt. He came out of the house in which he was
hidden. He appeared in the streets of Baltimore. He was recognized, and
those whom he had menaced in their fortune and existence, whose anxiety
he had prolonged by his obstinate silence, took vengeance on him by
deriding him in every way.
The street boys shouted after him,--
“Go along, old pole-shifter!”
“Hallo, old clock-jobber!”
“How’s the figuring tinker?”
And a mob gathered and began to hustle him, and he had to seek refuge in
the New Park mansion, where Mrs. Scorbitt did her best to console him.
It was in vain.
J. T. Maston--after the example of Niobe--would not be consoled. His gun
had produced no more effect on the terrestrial spheroid than an ordinary
petard.
A fortnight went by, and the world had already forgotten the North Polar
Practical Association.
A fortnight, and no news of Barbicane or Captain Nicholl! Had they
perished in the counter-shock of the explosion, victims to the ravages
produced among the Wamasai? Had they paid with their lives for the
biggest mystification of modern times?
No.
At the explosion Barbicane and Nicholl had been thrown down; so had the
Sultan, and several thousand natives; but they had all got up again safe
and sound.
“Is it a success?” asked Bali-Bali rubbing his shoulders.
“Can you doubt it?”
“I--doubt it! But when shall we know?”
“In a day or two!” said Barbicane.
Did he see that the attempt had failed?
Possibly. But he never would have admitted it to the monarch of the
Wamasai.
Two days afterwards Barbicane and Nicholl took their leave of Bali-Bali,
not without paying a good round sum for the destruction done to the
surface of his kingdom. And as the money went to his own private pocket,
and his subjects got not a dollar, he had no cause to regret so
lucrative an affair.
Then the two friends, followed by their foremen, reached Zanzibar, where
they found a vessel starting for Suez. There, under assumed names, they
took passage to Marseilles, whence by the P.L.M. and the Ouest they
reached Havre, where they went on board the -Bourgogne- and crossed the
Atlantic.
In twenty-two days after they left the Wamasai they were in New York.
On the 15th of October, at three o’clock in the afternoon, they knocked
at the door of the mansion in New Park.
A minute afterwards they were in the presence of Mrs. Scorbitt and J. T.
Maston.
CHAPTER XX.
THE END OF THIS REMARKABLE STORY.
“Barbicane? Nicholl?”
“Maston!”
“You?”
“We!”
And in that pronoun, spoken simultaneously by the two in a singular
tone, there was everything that could be said in the way of irony and
reproach.
J. T. Maston passed his iron hook across his forehead. Then in a voice
that hissed between his lips he asked,--
“Your gallery at Kilimanjaro was two thousand feet long and ninety in
diameter?”
“Yes?”
“Your projectile weighed one hundred and eighty thousand tons?”
“Yes.”
“And you used two thousand tons of meli-melonite?”
“Yes.”
The three yes’s fell like blows of a sledge-hammer on J. T. Maston’s
occiput.
“Then I conclude--” he said.
“What?” asked Barbicane.
“--That, as the experiment failed, the explosive did not give the
projectile the necessary initial velocity!”
“Indeed!” said Captain Nicholl.
“And that your meli-melonite is only fit for pop-guns!”
Captain Nicholl started at the insult.
“Maston!” he exclaimed.
“Nicholl!”
“Will you fight me with meli-melonite?
“No; with fulmi-cotton. It is surer!”
Mrs. Scorbitt hastened to interfere.
“Gentlemen! Gentlemen!” she said. “Between friends!”
Then Impey Barbicane put in a word very quietly,--
“What is the use of abusing each other? It is certain that the
calculations of our friend Maston were correct, and it is certain that
the explosive of our friend Nicholl was sufficient! We followed exactly
the teachings of science! And we failed! For what reasons? Probably we
shall never know!”
“Well,” said the secretary of the Gun Club; “we will try it again!”
“And the money which has been lost?” observed Captain Nicholl.
“And public opinion, which will not permit you to again risk the fate of
the world?” added Mrs. Scorbitt.
“What will become of the North Pole?” asked Nicholl.
“What is the value of the shares in the North Polar Practical
Association?” asked Barbicane.
Oh, what a fall there had been thereof! The certificates could be bought
at waste-paper prices.
Such was the memorable fiasco of the gigantic project of Barbicane & Co.
If ever unfortunate engineers were overwhelmed with ridicule, if ever
there were amusing articles in the newspapers, caricatures, comic songs,
parodies--it was then. Barbicane, the director of the Association, the
members of the Gun Club, were literally covered with scorn. The storm of
contempt was so thoroughly American that it was untranslatable even in
Volapuk. And Europe joined in with such vigour that at last America was
scandalized. And then remembering that Barbicane, Nicholl, and Maston
were of American birth, and belonged to the famous club of Baltimore, a
reaction in their favour set in, which was almost strong enough to make
the United States declare war against the Old World.
But was it ever to be known why the enterprise failed? Did the failure
prove that the project was impossible, that the forces of which man
disposes will never be sufficient to bring about a change in the Earth’s
diurnal movement, that never would the Polar regions be displaced in
latitude to such an extent that their icy mantle will be melted by the
solar rays?
That this was the case appeared undoubted a few days after the return of
Barbicane and Nicholl to the United States.
A letter appeared in the Parisian -Temps- of the 17th of October, which
did mankind a service in confirming it in its feeling of security.
The letter was the following:--
“The abortive attempt to furnish the Earth with a new axis is now known.
Nevertheless, the calculations of J. T. Maston were correctly founded,
and would have produced the desired results if by some inexplicable
distraction they had not been nullified by an error at the outset.
“In fact, the celebrated secretary of the Gun Club took for his basis
the circumference of the terrestrial spheroid at forty thousand metres
instead of forty million metres--and that nullified the solution.
“How came he to make such an error? What could have caused it? How could
so remarkable a mathematician have made such a mistake? Conjecture is
vain.
“There is no doubt that the problem of the change of the terrestrial
axis was correctly stated, and it should have been correctly worked out.
But the initial error of three noughts produced an error of twelve
noughts in the final result.
“It is not a cannon a million times as large as a four hundred pounder,
but a million million million such cannons, hurling a million million
million projectiles of one hundred and eighty thousand tons, that would
displace the Pole 23° 28′, supposing that meli-melonite has the
expansive power attributed to it by Captain Nicholl.
“In short, the discharge of the projectile at Kilimanjaro has been to
displace the Pole three microns--that is, thousandths of a millimetre,
and the maximum effect on the level of the sea must have been just
nine-thousandths of a micron.
“The projectile has become a small planet, and henceforth belongs to our
system, in which it is retained by the solar attraction.
“ALCIDE PIERDEUX.”
So it was some distraction of J. T. Maston’s, an error of three noughts
at the beginning of his calculations, that had brought this humiliating
disaster on Barbicane & Co.
The members of the Gun Club were furious, but among the general public a
reaction arose in favour of the poor fellow. After all, it was this
mistake which had caused all the evil--or rather all the good, for it
saved the world from ruin.
And so compliments came in from all parts, and letters arrived in
millions congratulating J. T. Maston on having forgotten his three
noughts!
But that extraordinary man, more deeply disgusted than ever, would not
listen to the congratulatory world. Barbicane, Nicholl, Tom Hunter with
the wooden leg, Colonel Bloomsberry, the brisk Bilsby, and their
friends, would never forgive him.
But at least there remained Mrs. Scorbitt!
At first J. T. Maston refused to admit that he had made a mistake; and
set to work to check his calculations.
Sulphuric Alcide was, however, accurate. And that was why, when he found
the error at the last moment, and had no time to reassure his
fellow-men, he so calmly sipped his pleasant hot coffee while the spinal
marrow was so unpleasantly cool in his fellow-men’s backs.
There was no disguising the fact. Three noughts had slipped out of the
terrestrial waist!
Then it was that J. T. Maston remembered! It was at the beginning of his
labours when he had shut himself up in Ballistic Cottage. He had written
the number 40,000,000 on the blackboard.
At that moment came a hurried tinkle from the telephone. He had gone to
the instrument. He had exchanged a few words with Mrs. Scorbitt. There
was a flash of lightning that upset him and his blackboard. He picked
himself and his blackboard up. He began to write in the figures half
rubbed out by the fall. He had just written 40,000--when the bell rang a
second time. And when he returned to work he had forgotten the three
last noughts in the measure of the Earth’s equator!
Now all that was the fault of Mrs. Scorbitt. If she had not bothered him
he would never have been knocked down by the return shock of that
electrical discharge.
And so the unhappy woman also received a shock when J. T. Maston told
her how the mistake had been made. Yes! She was the cause of the
disaster! It was her doing that J. T. Maston was now dishonoured for the
many years he had to live, for it was the general custom to die as
centenarians in the Gun Club.
And after the interview J. T. Maston fled from the house in New Park. He
went back to Ballistic Cottage. He strode about his workroom saying to
himself,--
“Now I am good for nothing in the world!”
“Not even if you were to marry?” said a voice which emotion made
heartrending.
It was Mrs. Scorbitt.
Tearful and distracted she had followed J. T. Maston.
“Dear Maston!” said she.
“Well! Yes!” said he; “on one condition--that I never again touch
mathematics.”
“I abominate them!” said the widow.
And thus it was that Mrs. Scorbitt became Mrs. J. T. Maston.
As to Alcide Pierdeux, what honour, what celebrity that letter brought
both him and his old school! Translated into all languages, copied into
all newspapers, it made his name known throughout the world.
It happened, therefore, that the father of the pretty Provençale, who
had refused him his daughter’s hand because he was too learned, came to
read the famous letter in the -Petit Marseillais-. Without any
assistance he managed to make out its meaning. And then he was seized
with remorse, and, as a preliminary measure, sent Sulphuric Alcide an
invitation to dinner.
And so the world was left as it was.
No attempt was made by Barbicane & Co. to resume business. Any attempt
would have been futile. Alcide’s contention was indisputable. It could
be shown by mechanics that to effect a displacement of 23° 28′, even
with meli-melonite, so many Kilimanjaro guns or mines would be required,
that the surface of the spheroid could not hold them.
The world’s inhabitants could thus sleep in peace. To modify the
conditions of the Earth’s movement is beyond the powers of man. It is
not given to mankind to change the order established by the Creator in
the system of the Universe.
THE END.
BOURNEMOUTH:
PRINTED BY W. MATE & SONS (1919) LTD.,
58 COMMERCIAL ROAD.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
2. Retained anachronistic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as
printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in -underscores-.
4. Superscripts are denoted by a caret before a single superscript
character or a series of superscripted characters enclosed in
curly braces, e.g. M^r. or M^{ister}.
5. Subscripts are denoted by an underscore before a series of
subscripted characters enclosed in curly braces, e.g. H-{2}O.
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