“To use whatever influence a boundless admiration may have on him who is
its object!”
“What!” exclaimed J. T. Maston, “you have consented to talk thus to me!
You have imagined that I would betray my colleagues?”
“Do you think so meanly of me? I to ask you to sacrifice your safety to
your honour? I to urge you to an act which would be the disgrace of a
life consecrated to the highest speculations of the higher mechanics?”
“Bravo, Mrs. Scorbitt! I recognize the worthy shareholder of our
Association! Never did I doubt your courage!”
“Thank you, dear Maston.”
“As for me, to divulge our work; to reveal at what spot on the surface
of the earth our effort is to be made; to sell the secret I fortunately
kept hidden within me; to permit these barbarians to launch off in
pursuit of our friends, to interrupt the labours they are engaged in for
our profit and our glory! I would rather die first!”
“Maston, you are sublime!” said Evangelina.
In truth, these two beings, so closely united in enthusiasm--and equally
mad--were born to understand each other.
“No!” continued Maston. “Never shall they know the name of the country
which my calculations have designated, and which will become immortal.
They may kill me if they will, but they shall never possess my secret.”
“And they may kill me with you,” said Mrs. Scorbitt; “for I also will be
dumb.”
“Fortunately, they do not know that you possess the secret.”
[Illustration:
Attempted to knock him down.
Page 97.
]
“Do you think I am capable of revealing it because I am only a woman? to
betray our colleagues and you? No, my friend; no! The Philistines may
raise the world against you to tear you from your cell, but I will be
with you, and we shall have at least the consolation of dying together!”
And that was the way the conversation ended every time the widow visited
the prisoner. And every time the Commissioners inquired as to the result
the answer was the same.
“Nothing yet; but in time I hope to obtain what you want!”
Oh, the astuteness of woman!
“In time!” she said. But time marched on; weeks went by like days, days
like hours, hours like minutes.
It was now May. Mrs. Scorbitt had obtained nothing; and if she had
failed, who could hope to succeed? Was the world to resign itself to
this terrible blow without a chance of hindering it?
Well, no! in such things resignation is unacceptable. Our friends the
delegates were unceasing in fomenting the excitement. Jansen overwhelmed
the Commissioners daily. Karkof picked a quarrel with the secretary.
Donellan, to make things worse, directed attention to another victim in
the shape of the codfish merchant, Forster, who had sunk into
insignificance after the auction sale, to bid at which he had been
engaged. And in order to bring the phlegmatic fishmonger prominently to
the front, the Canadian attempted to knock him down. To complicate
matters further, “the friendly Powers” began “to bring pressure to bear”
on the Washington Government, which had quite enough to do to withstand
the “pressure” of its own people. In reply the Washington Government
issued a circular authorizing the arrest of the two “malefactors” by any
power whatsoever. But none the less did it remain impossible to discover
where the malefactors had got to.
Then the Powers hinted that if J. T. Maston were properly dealt with, J.
T. Maston would reveal the secret. But the Government might as well have
tried to extract a word from Harpocrates, the god of silence, or from
the chief deaf-mute of the New York Institute.
And then the exasperation increased with the general anxiety, and a few
practical minds drew attention to the fact that the torture system of
the Middle Ages was not without some advantages. So it was proposed to
introduce, for the benefit of J. T. Maston, a few experiments with the
“boot,” the “scavenger’s daughter,” “molten lead,” “boiling oil,” “the
wooden horse,” the “bastinado,” &c., &c. But such things were impossible
in the century which invented the magazine rifle, roburite, bellite,
panclastite, and other “ites,” not to mention the far superior
meli-melonite.
J. T. Maston had, then, no fear of being put to the torture. All that
could be done with him was to hope that he would speak, or that chance
would speak for him.
CHAPTER XIII.
A TRULY EPIC REPLY.
Time advanced, and so probably did the works of Barbicane & Co., but
where was the mystery.
But if their works were to require a foundry capable of casting a gun a
million times larger than a four hundred pounder, and a projectile
weighing one hundred and eighty thousand tons, they would want thousands
of workmen; and where, oh! where could they be?
In what part of the old or new world had Barbicane & Co. installed
themselves so secretly as to be invisible to the nations around? Had
they gone to some desert island of the Pacific? But there are no desert
islands now. That they had gone to the Arctic or Antarctic regions was
extremely unlikely, for those were the very regions they intended to
displace.
There was no need to look for them all over the world, for J. T.
Maston’s note-book had revealed the fact that the shot must be fired
from near the Equator. Along the equinoctial line, they might be in
Brazil or Peru, or Sumatra, or Borneo, or Celebes, or New Guinea, but
surely they would have been discovered by the people in the
neighbourhood? All through Africa, too, they would be almost certain of
discovery. There remained the Maldive Islands, the Admiralty, Gilbert,
and Christmas Islands, the Galapagos and San Pedro Islands; but all
these had been searched, and no trace of Barbicane & Co. had been found.
And what did Alcide Pierdeux think of all this? More “sulphuric” than
ever, he knew no rest in considering the different consequences of the
problem. That Captain Nicholl had invented an explosive of such power
that its expansion was three or four thousand times greater than the
most violent explosives used in modern war, and five thousand six
hundred times stronger than “good old gunpowder,” was, he remarked,
“étonnant, not to say détonnant!” but it was not impossible. No one
knows what the future has in store for us in that kind of progress. In
the shifting of the Earth’s axis by means of the recoil of a gun there
was nothing to surprise him.
“It is evident,” he said to himself, “that every day the Earth receives
the counter-shock from every shock produced on its surface! It is
certain that when hundreds of thousands of men amuse themselves by
sending thousands of projectiles weighing pounds, or millions weighing
ounces, even when I walk or jump, or when I stretch out my arm, or when
a blood corpuscle circulates in my veins, it must in some way influence
the mass of our spheroid. But in the name of an integral will
Barbicane’s jolt be sufficient to upset the Earth? If the equations of
that brute Maston really demonstrate that, we must make up our minds to
it!”
In truth, Alcide could not but admire the ingenious calculations of the
secretary of the Gun Club, communicated by the Commission of Inquiry to
the mathematicians who could understand them. And Alcide, who read
algebra as if it were newspaper, found the study of them extremely
interesting.
But if the upset did come, what a dreadful state of affairs there would
be in the world! What cities thrown down, what mountains shaken, what
people destroyed by millions, what waters hurled from their beds, what
fearful terrors! It would be such an earthquake as had never quaked
before!
“If Nicholl’s powder,” he said, “was not quite so strong, the projectile
might return to give the Earth another shock either before or behind the
firing-point, after making the turn of the globe, and then everything
might soon be knocked back into place, after causing immense
destruction, nevertheless! But they are going to throw it overboard!
Thanks to their meli-melonite their shell will describe the half of a
hyperbola and never come back to beg pardon for having given that kick
to the terrestrial ball!”
And Alcide threw his arms about like the semaphore at Portsmouth
Dockyard, at the risk of breaking everything within a radius of six feet
of him.
“If the firing-point were known I could soon find the great circles in
which the alteration will be zero, and the places where it will reach
the maximum, so as to give folks notice to clear out and save themselves
from being smashed by their houses tumbling about their ears! But how am
I to know that firing-point?”
And he ran his fingers through the very little hair that had been left
him.
“The results of the shock may be much more complicated than they
imagine! Why should not the volcanoes take the opportunity to favour us
with a few disorderly eruptions, and, like a first voyager, displace
some of the matter in their insides? Why should not the uplifted ocean
take a header into some of the craters? There’s a chance for you! That
would give an explosion that might send the whole tellurian box of
tricks sky high, or rather sky higher! What do you say to that, you
confounded Maston? you obstinate mute! What do you mean by juggling with
our poor Earth as if it were a ball on a billiard-table?”
These alarming hypotheses of Sulphuric Alcide were taken up and
discussed by the newspapers all over the world. The pyrotechnic display
organized by Barbicane and Co. would end in waterspouts, tidal waves,
deluges, would it? But such catastrophes would only be partial!
Thousands of people would disappear, and the rest would hardly notice
anything worth mentioning! As the fatal day approached, fear came over
the bravest. It might have been the dreadful year 1000 from the way in
which the people generally conducted themselves.
What happened in that year 1000 it may be interesting to recall. Owing
to a passage in the Apocalypse, the people of Europe were persuaded that
the Day of Judgment was nigh. They waited for the signs of wrath; the
son of Perdition, Antichrist, was to be revealed.
“In the last year of the tenth century,” relates H. Martin, “everything
was interrupted--pleasures, business, interest, even the work in the
fields. ‘Why,’ said the people, ‘should we provide for a future that
will never come? Let us think of eternity, which will begin to-morrow.’
They provided only for their immediate needs; they handed over their
lands and castles to the monasteries to obtain their protection in the
kingdom in the skies which was about to come to them. Many of the deeds
of gift to the churches begin with the words, ‘The end of the world
approaching, and its ruin being imminent.’ When the end of the fatal
term arrived the people kept within the basilicas, the chapels, the
edifices consecrated to God, and waited in agony for the seven trumpets
of the seven angels of judgment to sound in the sky.”
As we know, New Year’s Day, 1000, was reached without any disturbance in
the laws of Nature. But this time the expectation of the catastrophe was
not based on a doubtful interpretation of a text. It was a change to be
applied to the earth’s equilibrium based on indisputable calculations,
which the progress of the ballistic and mechanical sciences rendered
quite possible. This time it was not the sea that would give back the
dead, but the sea that would engulph millions of the living.
Under these circumstances, the position of J. T. Maston became daily
more critical. Mrs. Scorbitt trembled lest he should become the victim
of the general mania. Sometimes she thought of advising him to speak the
word which he so obstinately kept to himself. But she dared not, and she
did well. It would have been to expose herself to a categorical refusal.
The city of Baltimore was a prey to terror, and it became difficult to
restrain the populace, who were being excited even unto madness by the
newspapers, by the telegrams which they published from the four angles
of the earth, to use the apocalyptic language of St John the Evangelist
in the days of Domitian. Assuredly, if J. T. Maston had lived under that
persecuting emperor, his business would soon have been settled. He would
have been thrown to the beasts. But he would have contented himself with
replying,--
“I am there already!”
But no matter what happened, he refused to reveal the position of place
-x-, knowing well that if he divulged it Barbicane and Nicholl would be
prevented from continuing their work.
After all, there was something grand in this struggle between one man
and the entire world. J. T. Maston increased in grandeur in the mind of
Mrs. Scorbitt, and also in the opinion of his colleagues of the Gun
Club. These gallant fellows were as obstinate as retired artillerymen,
and never swerved from their support of Barbicane & Co. The secretary of
the Gun Club reached such a height of celebrity that a number of persons
even wrote to him, as they do to famous criminals, to obtain a few lines
from the hand of the man who was going to upset the globe.
This was all very fine, but it was more and more dangerous. The populace
thronged day and night round the gaol of Baltimore. There was great
shouting and much tumult. The mob would have lynched J. T. Maston there
and then if they could; and the police saw the time was coming when they
could no longer protect him.
Desirous of satisfying the American mob, as well as the mob of other
countries, the Washington Government decided to bring J. T. Maston to
trial.
With a jury selected from the terrified masses, “the affair would not
hang about long,” to quote the words of Alcide, who felt a kind of
sympathy for the calculator’s tenacity.
On the 5th of September, the President of the Commission visited the
prisoner in his cell.
Mrs. Scorbitt, at his urgent request, was allowed to accompany him.
Perhaps at the last attempt the influence of this amiable lady might be
successful. It would not do to neglect anything. All means were
legitimate that might secure the word of the enigma. If they did not
succeed, they would see!
“They will see!” said the knowing ones. “Suppose they hang J. T. Maston,
and the catastrophe takes place all the same?”
At eleven o’clock, then, Maston found himself in the presence of John
Prestice and Evangelina Scorbitt.
“For the last time,” said Prestice, “will you answer me?”
“What about?” said Maston.
“Where has your colleague, Barbicane, gone to?”
“I have already told you a hundred times.”
“Repeat it for the hundred and first.”
“He has gone where he will fire the cannon.”
“And where will he fire the cannon?”
“Where Barbicane is at this present moment.”
“Take care, Maston!”
“Of what?”
“Of the consequences of your refusal to reply. The result will be--”
“That you will not discover what you have no right to know.”
“What we have the right to know.”
“That is not my opinion.”
“We are going to put you on your trial.”
“You can put me on my trial.”
“And the jury will find you guilty.”
“Let them find me guilty.”
“And the sentence will immediately be given and immediately executed.”
“Very well.”
“Dear Maston!” said Evangelina, whose heart trembled at the prospect.
“Oh! Mrs. Scorbitt,” said J. T. Maston.
She bowed her head, and was silent.
“Would you like to know what the sentence will be?”
“Yes, if you like.”
“You will be hanged, as you deserve.”
“Really.”
“And you will be hanged, sir, as sure as two and two make four.”
“Then, sir, I shall have a chance,” said the phlegmatic Maston. “If you
were only the least bit of a mathematician you would not say as sure as
two and two make four. What is it that proves that all mathematicians up
to now have not been mad in asserting that the sum of two numbers is
equal to that of their parts, that two and two make exactly four?”
“Sir!” exclaimed the president, completely puzzled.
“Ah!” continued Maston. “If you had said as sure as one and one make
two, all right! That is absolutely evident, for it is no longer a
theorem, it is a definition.”
At this lesson in arithmetic, the president of the Commission retired,
while Mrs. Scorbitt’s eyes were ablaze with admiration for the
extraordinary abilities of her beloved calculator.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE GEOGRAPHICAL VALUE OF -x-.
Fortunately for J. T. Maston, the Federal Government unexpectedly
received the following telegram:--
“To John S. Wright, Washington, U.S.A.
“Zanzibar, 13th September, 5 a.m., local time. Great foundries have been
established among the Wamasai to the south of Kilimanjaro. For eight
months Impey Barbicane and Nicholl have been there, with hundreds of
black workmen under the authority of the Sultan Bali-Bali. Information
for Government purposes.--Richard W. Trust, U.S. Consul.”
And that is how the great secret was discovered. And that is why the
secretary of the Gun Club was not hanged.
But who can say that he did not live to regret that he was not removed
from mankind in all the plenitude of his glory?
Anyhow the fact of the discovery is so important in our history that we
shall only be treating it with due respect in giving it this chapter to
itself.
CHAPTER XV.
INTERESTING FOR THE INHABITANTS OF THE TERRESTRIAL SPHEROID.
And so the Washington Government knew where Barbicane & Co. had
commenced business. There could be no doubt as to the authenticity of
the telegram. The Consul of Zanzibar was too cautious a man for his
information to be doubted, and it was confirmed by subsequent telegrams.
The gigantic works of the North Polar Practical Association were in full
swing in the centre of the Kilimanjaro region, about three hundred miles
from the East Coast of Africa, a little below the equinoctial line.
How had they come to be installed so secretly in this lost country, at
the foot of the famous mountain discovered in 1848 by Krapf and Rebmann?
How had Barbicane & Co. been able to build their foundries and collect
their staff? By what means had they managed to enter into peaceful
relations with the savage tribes of the district, and their cruel and
grasping chiefs? Nobody knew. And as there were only a few days to run
before the 22nd, it was not unlikely that nobody would know.
When J. T. Maston learnt from Evangelina that the mystery of Kilimanjaro
had been cleared up by a telegram from Zanzibar,--
“Pshaw!” he said, making a wonderful zigzag in the air with his iron
hook. “They do not travel yet by telegraph or telephone; and in six
days--patarapatanboomboom--all will be ready!”
And any one who heard the secretary of the Gun Club deliver the sonorous
onomatope, like a roar from a Columbiad, would have wondered at the
amount of vital energy remaining in the old artilleryman.
But there was no doubt that he was right. There was no time to send
messengers to the Wamasai to arrest Impey Barbicane. Even if the
messengers started from Egypt, or Aden, or Massowah, or Zanzibar,
however quickly they might travel, they would have to contend with the
difficulties of the country, with the obstacles unavoidable on a road
through a mountainous region, and probably with followers acting under
the orders of a sultan as despotic as he was black.
All hope would have to be given up of stopping the operation or
arresting the operator.
But, if that was impossible, nothing was easier now than to know the
worst that could happen. The firing-point had been revealed, and it was
a simple matter of calculation--a complicated calculation evidently, but
not beyond the capacities of algebraists in particular and
mathematicians in general.
At first the Government kept the despatch secret, their object being to
be able to indicate when they published it what would be the results of
the displacement of the axis with regard to the alteration in the level
of the waters. The inhabitants of the world would then know the fate
that was in store for them, according to the segment of the spheroid on
which they resided.
On the 14th of September the telegram was sent to the Longitudes Office
at Washington, with instructions to work out the final consequences,
ballistic and geographical. The next day but one the information was
ready. It was cabled at once to all the Governments of the new and old
worlds, and having been printed in thousands of newspapers, it was cried
in all the great cities by all the newsboys of the globe, as--
“What is going to happen?”
Which was the question being asked in every language just then.
And this is the reply as given by the Longitudes Office.
“IMPORTANT NOTICE.
“The experiment to be attempted by Barbicane & Co. is as follows:--
“To produce a recoil on the 22nd of September at midnight, local time,
by means of a monster cannon throwing a projectile of one hundred and
eighty thousand tons.
“If this discharge is effected just below the Equator, near the
thirty-eighth meridian, at the base of the Kilimanjaro chain, and if it
is directed towards the south, the mechanical effect on the terrestrial
spheroid will be as follows:--
“At once, owing to the shock being combined with the diurnal movement, a
new axis will be formed, the old axis being 23° 28′, and the new one
being perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic.
“In the north the extremity of the new axis will be situated between
Greenland and Grinnell Land, on that part of Baffin Sea cut by the
Arctic Circle. In the south it will be on the Antarctic Circle to the
east of Adelaide Land.
“As an example of the new meridians, we may mention that passing through
Dublin in Ireland, Paris in France, Palermo in Sicily, Obeid in Darfur,
Kilimanjaro, Kerguelen Island, the new Antarctic Pole, the Society
Islands in the Pacific, Vancouver Island, and Melville Peninsula.
“The new Equator will pass through the Kilimanjaro country, the Indian
Ocean, Goa, a little below Calcutta, Mangala in Siam, Hong Kong, the
Marshall and Walker Islands in the Pacific, Rio Janeiro, Saint Helena,
and by St. Paul de Loanda across Africa to Kilimanjaro.
“The new Equator having been formed by the new axis, it is possible to
calculate the results on the ocean levels.
“It is worthy of note that Barbicane & Co., or rather the directors of
the North Polar Practical Association, have evidently been desirous of
doing as little damage as possible. Had the discharge been effected
towards the north, the consequences would have been disastrous for the
most civilized portions of the globe; but by firing towards the south
the consequences, so far as the submergence of the land is concerned,
will only affect the less peopled and wilder countries.
“The globe will, for the purposes of this inquiry, be divided by two
great circles, intersecting at right angles at Kilimanjaro and the
antipodes of that mountain, thus giving four segments, two in the
northern hemisphere, and two in the southern hemisphere, separated by
lines in which no alteration of level will occur.
“1. The northern hemisphere:--
“The first segment, to the west of Kilimanjaro, will comprise Africa
from the Congo to Egypt, Europe from Turkey to Greenland, America from
British Columbia to Peru and Brazil north of San Salvador--in fact the
whole of the North Atlantic and the greater part of the Equatorial
Atlantic.
“The second segment, to the east of Kilimanjaro, will comprise the
greater part of Europe from the Black Sea to Sweden, the Russian Empire,
Arabia, almost all India, Persia, Beloochistan, Afghanistan, Turkestan,
the Celestial Empire, Mongolia, Japan, Corea, the Northern Pacific and
Alaska--and also the Polar regions, so regrettably placed in the
possession of Barbicane & Co.
“2. The southern hemisphere:--
“The third segment, to the east of Kilimanjaro, will comprise
Madagascar, Kerguelen Island, Mauritius, and all the islands of the
Indian Ocean, the Antarctic Ocean to the New Pole, the Malay Peninsula,
Java, Sumatra, Borneo, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, and all
the southern Pacific up to the meridian of the Society Islands.
“The fourth segment, to the west of Kilimanjaro, will include Africa
south of the Congo and the Mozambique Channel, the Cape of Good Hope,
the South Atlantic, South America below Pernambuco and Lima, Bolivia,
Brazil, Uruguay, the Argentine Confederation, Tierra del Fuego, the
Sandwich and South Shetland Islands, and a portion of the South Pacific.
“Such will be the four segments of the globe divided by lines of no
alteration in level.
“In each of these four segments there will be a central point where the
effect will attain its maximum, either of increase or decrease.
“This maximum will approach 25,000 feet at each point and at the point
the consequences will be most serious.
“In two of the segments situated opposite each other in the northern and
southern hemispheres, the sea will retire to flow into the two other
segments.
“In the first segment the Atlantic Ocean will almost entirely empty
itself, the point of maximum being about the Bermudas, where the bottom
will become visible if the depth of the sea in that locality be less
than 25,000 feet. Consequently, between America and Europe, vast
territories will be revealed, which the United States, Great Britain,
France, Spain and Portugal can annex -pro rata- to their Atlantic
coast-lines, or otherwise, as they may think fit. But it must be
remembered that as the waters are lowered, so will the air be. The coast
of Europe and America will be lifted to such an extent, that towns
placed twenty or even thirty degrees from the point of maximum, will
have no more air than is now available at three miles from the surface
of the sea. New York, Philadelphia, Charlestown, Panama, Lisbon, Madrid,
Paris, London, Edinburgh, Dublin will be thus elevated, but Cairo,
Constantinople, Dantzic, Stockholm on one side, and the western coast
towns of America on the other, will retain their present level. The
Bermudas will be in such rarefied air as has hitherto been only
experienced by aeronauts, and will become as uninhabitable as the upper
peaks of the mountains of Tibet.
“Similar effects will be experienced in the opposite southern segment
comprising the Indian Ocean, Australia, and the Pacific. At Adelaide and
Melbourne the level of the sea will sink 25,000 feet below them, and the
air will become so pure and rarefied as to be unbreathable.
“Such are the two segments from which the waters will retire. In the sea
that will be left there will probably be many new islands, formed by the
summits of submarine mountain-chains.
“In the other segments the waters will rise to a corresponding height.
“In the segment north-east of Kilimanjaro the maximum will be at Yakutsk
in Siberia. This town will be submersed under 25,000 feet of water--less
its actual altitude--and thence thinning out on all sides the flood will
spread out over Asiatic Russia, India, China, Japan, and Alaska. The
Ural Mountains may possibly appear above the waters as islands. St.
Petersburg and Moscow on one side, Calcutta, Bangkok, Saigon, Pekin,
Hong Kong, and Tokyo, on the other, will disappear beneath the waves at
variable depths, but at depths quite sufficient to drown such of the
Russians, Hindoos, Siamese, Cochinchinese, Chinese, and Japanese who
have not left the country before the catastrophe.
“In the segment south-west of Kilimanjaro the disasters will not be of
such magnitude, as the segment is in a great measure covered by the
Atlantic and Pacific, the level of which will rise 25,000 feet above the
Falkland Islands. But nevertheless much territory will disappear, among
others all South Africa from the Gulf of Guinea and Kilimanjaro to the
Cape of Good Hope, all South America south of Central Brazil and Peru,
including Chili, the Argentine Republic down to Tierra del Fuego. The
Patagonians, however tall they may be, will not escape destruction, as
they will not even have the resource of escaping to the Cordilleras, not
one of whose summits will in those parts rise above sea-level.
“Such will be the results produced by the changes of the level of the
waters. And such are the eventualities for which those interested must
prepare, unless something happens to prevent the dastardly enterprise of
Barbicane & Co.”
CHAPTER XVI.
THE CHORUS OF TERROR.
According to the “important notice,” the dangers of the position could
be avoided, or rather fled from, by hurrying off to the neutral zones.
The people in peril could be divided into two classes, the asphyxiated
and the drowned.
The effect of the communication was to give rise to very different
opinions, which soon developed into the most violent protestations.
On the side of the asphyxiated were the Americans of the United States,
the Europeans of the United Kingdom, and France, Spain, &c. The prospect
of being able to annex territories from the ocean-bed was not attractive
enough to persuade them to accept the change.
On the side of the drowned were the inhabitants of South America, and
the Hindoos, Russians, and Chinese. But Great Britain was not likely to
allow Barbicane & Co. to deprive her of her southern colonies; and the
other nations decidedly objected to being so summarily disposed of.
Evidently the Gulf of Mexico would be emptied to form a huge territory
of the Antilles, which the Mexicans and Americans might claim in
accordance with the Monroe doctrine. Evidently the left of the
Philippines and Celebes would bring up an immense region which the
British and Spanish might share. But vain such compensation! It would
never balance the loss due to the terrible inundation.
If the new seas were only to rise over the Samoyeds, Laps, Fuegians,
Patagonians, Tartars even, Chinese, Japanese, or even Argentines, the
world might have borne the bereavement. But the catastrophe affected too
many of the great Powers for them to bear it quietly.
Although the central part would remain much as it is, Europe would be
lifted in the west and lowered in the east, that is to say half
asphyxiated on one side and half drowned on the other.
Such a state of affairs was unacceptable. Besides, the Mediterranean
would be nearly drained dry, and that neither French, Italians,
Spaniards, Greeks, Turks, nor Egyptians cared for, as their position on
its coast gave them indisputable rights over the sea. And what would be
the use of the Suez Canal, which would escape, owing to its position on
the neutral line? What was to be done with that when there was no
Mediterranean at one end and very little Red Sea at the other--unless it
was lengthened by several hundred miles?
Great Britain had no desire to see Gibraltar, Malta, and Cyprus
transformed into mountain-tops which ironclads would try to anchor near
in vain. And the British Government declined to entertain in any form
the suggested compensation from the risen bed of the Atlantic.
In short, all the world was in arms against Barbicane & Co. Even the
people on the neutral lines were urgent in their protests. And so it
soon came about that Barbicane, Nicholl, and J. T. Maston were put under
the ban of humanity.
But how the newspapers prospered! What a rush there was for copies! What
editions after editions! For the first time in the history of the
newspaper press all the papers of every country in the world were agreed
upon one matter. And the effect of that is more easily imagined than
described!
J. T. Maston might well believe that his last hour was come.
In fact, a frantic mob broke into his prison on the evening of the 17th
of September with the intention of lynching him, and it is well to say,
the police made no objection.
The cell was empty! With the worthy calculator’s weight in gold, Mrs.
Scorbitt had managed his escape. The gaoler was the more ready to be
bribed by a fortune as he had hopes of enjoying it for some years. In
fact, Baltimore, like Washington, New York, and the other chief cities
of the American seaboard, was in the list of towns to be reasonably
elevated, and in which there would remain enough air for the daily
consumption of their inhabitants.
J. T. Maston had gained some mysterious retreat where he was safe from
the fury of popular wrath. Thus was the life of the great world-troubler
saved by a woman’s devotion.
And now only four days remained before Barbicane & Co. did their awful
deed. The important notice had been generally understood. If there had
been a few sceptics before, there were none now. The Governments issued
proclamations to such of their peoples as were to be sent up into the
rarefied air, and to the greater number that were to be dropped into
deep water.
The result was such a migration as had never been seen, not even when
the Aryan families began to remove. An exodus took place comprising
every branch of the Hottentots, Melanesians, Negroes, Red Men, Yellow
Men, Brown Men, White Men.
Unfortunately the time was too short. It could be reckoned in hours.
Given a few months, the Chinese might abandon China, the Australians
Australia, the Patagonians Patagonia, the Siberians Siberia.
But time! Time! The time! How was it possible?
Migration was useless.
There was only one chance!
Suppose that Barbicane & Co. were to fail?
CHAPTER XVII.
THE WORKS AT KILIMANJARO.
The country of the Wamasai is situated in the east of Central Africa,
between Zanzibar and the great lakes. Our knowledge of it is due chiefly
to Thomson, Johnston, Count Tekeli and Doctor Meyer. It is a mountainous
district under the sovereignty of the Sultan Bali-Bali, whose people are
negroes, and number from thirty to forty thousand.
Three degrees south of the Equator rises the chain of Kilimanjaro, which
lifts its highest summit over 18,000 feet above the sea, and commands
northwards, southwards, and westwards, the vast and fertile plains of
the Wamasai.
A few miles below the first slopes of the mountain lies the town of
Kisongo, where the Sultan resides. The capital is, truth to tell, but a
large village. It is occupied by a population, highly gifted and
intelligent, and working hard as much by itself as by its slaves under
the iron yoke of Bali-Bali, who is justly considered to be one of the
most remarkable sovereigns of Central Africa.
Impey Barbicane and Captain Nicholl, accompanied by ten foremen devoted
to the enterprise, had arrived at Kisongo in the first week of January.
The fact of their departure had only been communicated to J. T. Maston
and Mrs. Scorbitt. They had embarked at New York for the Cape of Good
Hope; thence they had gone to Zanzibar; and a barque, secretly
chartered, had taken them to Mombasa on the other side of the channel.
An escort from the Sultan had met them at this port, and after a
difficult journey of about 300 miles across this harassed region,
obstructed by forests, cut up by streams, and chequered with marshes,
they had reached the royal residence.
As soon as he had obtained J. T. Maston’s calculations, Barbicane had
put himself in communication with Bali-Bali through a Swedish explorer
who intended to spend a few years in this part of Africa. The Sultan had
become one of the warmest admirers of the audacious Yankee after the
celebrated Moon Voyage, the fame of which had spread even to this
distant country. Without disclosing his object Barbicane had obtained
from the Wamasai the needful authority to open important works at the
southern base of Kilimanjaro. For the very considerable sum of three
hundred thousand dollars Bali-Bali had engaged to furnish him with the
labour he required to do what he liked with Kilimanjaro. He could take
it down if he liked, or carry it away if he could; and he became as much
the owner of the mountain as he was of the North Pole.
Barbicane and his colleague were cordially welcomed at Kisongo.
Bali-Bali felt an admiration bordering on adoration for the two
illustrious voyagers who had launched out into space to attain the
circumlunar regions, and sympathized enthusiastically with the
projectors of the mysterious works they wished to establish in his
kingdom. He undertook that the enterprise should be kept secret, both by
himself and his subjects, for all of whom he could answer, as not one of
the negroes engaged had the right to leave the works for a day under
penalty of the most dreadful punishments.
On this account the operation was enveloped in a mystery that the
cleverest detectives of America and Europe failed to penetrate, and if
it was discovered at last it was because the Sultan had relaxed his
severity after the completion of the works, and that there are traitors
or chatterers even among negroes. It was in this way that Richard W.
Trust, the consul at Zanzibar, got wind of what was happening at
Kilimanjaro. But at that date, the 13th of September, it was too late to
stop Barbicane in the accomplishment of his plans.
The reason that Barbicane & Co. had chosen the country of the Wamasai as
the scene of their operations was that, in the first place, it was
little known and rarely visited by travellers, and, secondly, that the
mass of Kilimanjaro offered all the qualities of solidity and position
necessary for their work. Besides, the country was rich in all the
materials they required, and these were found under conditions that made
them easily workable.
A few months before leaving the United States, Barbicane had learnt from
the Swedish explorer that iron and coal were abundant in the Kilimanjaro
chain. There were no mines to be opened, and no shafts to be driven
thousands of feet into the crust of the earth. The minerals were on the
surface, and had only to be picked up from the ground. And in addition
to these, there were large deposits of nitrate of soda and iron pyrites,
such as were required for the manufacture of the meli-melonite.
Barbicane and Nicholl had brought no staff of workmen with them except
the ten foremen, on whom they could depend. These could take command of
the ten thousand negroes placed at their disposal by Bali-Bali, to whom
was entrusted the task of making the monster cannon and its no less
monster projectile.
A fortnight after the arrival of Barbicane and his colleague among the
Wamasai, three large workshops had been erected on the south of the
mountain; one as the foundry for the gun, one as the foundry for the
shot, and one as the factory for the meli-melonite.
And how did Barbicane & Co. intend to cast a cannon of such colossal
dimensions? The only chance for the inhabitants of the world was, as we
have seen, in the difficulty of dealing with such a huge undertaking.
To cast a cannon a million times larger than a four hundred pounder
would have been beyond the power of man. To make a four hundred pounder
is difficult enough, but a four hundred million pounder! Barbicane and
Co. did not attempt to do so. It was not a cannon, nor even a mortar,
that they had in their minds. They simply intended to drive a gallery
into the mountain.
Evidently this enormous mine would have the same effect as a gigantic
Columbiad, the manufacture of which would have been as costly as it was
difficult, owing to the thickness it would have to be to avoid the risk
of bursting. Barbicane & Co. had always intended to act in this way, and
if J. T. Maston’s note-book spoke of a cannon, it was the four hundred
pounder he had taken as the basis of his calculations.
Consequently, a spot was chosen a hundred feet up the southern side of
the chain, from the base of which the plains extended for miles and
miles, so that nothing would be in the way of the projectile when it was
hurled from the long tube in the mass of Kilimanjaro.
With great precision and much labour Barbicane carried on the driving of
his tunnel. Easy to him was the construction of boring machines worked
with air compressed by the power of the large waterfalls in the
district. The holes bored by the machines were charged with
meli-melonite, and the blasting of the rock was easy, it being a kind of
syenite composed of orthoclastic felspar and amphibolic hornblende. It
was a favourable circumstance that a rock so constituted would strongly
resist the frightful pressure developed by the expansion of the gas; but
the height and thickness of the mountain afforded ample security against
any exterior splitting or cracking.
The thousands of workmen under the guidance of the ten foremen,
superintended by Barbicane, progressed with such zeal and intelligence
that in less than six months the tunnel was finished. It measured nearly
ninety feet in diameter and two thousand feet long. As it was important
that the projectile should glide along a perfectly smooth surface
without losing any of the gas of deflagration, the interior was lined
with a smooth tube of cast iron. This was a much larger affair than the
celebrated Columbiad of Tampa Town, which had sent the aluminium
projectile round the Moon. But what is there that is impossible to the
engineers of the modern world?
While the boring went on in the flank of Kilimanjaro, the workmen were
busy at the second foundry. While the tube was being built the enormous
projectile was in process of manufacture.
All it consisted of was a mass of cast iron, cylindro-conical in form,
weighing one hundred and eighty thousand tons. It had never been
intended to make such a casting in one piece, but to provide one hundred
and eighty masses, each of a thousand tons, which could be hoisted into
the tube and arranged in front of the meli-melonite so as to form a
compact charge.
It thus became necessary to furnish the second foundry with four hundred
thousand tons of ore, seventy thousand tons of flux, and four hundred
thousand tons of good coal, which at the outset was transformed into two
hundred and eighty thousand tons of coke. As the deposits were all in
the vicinity, this was only a matter of transport.
The greatest difficulty was the construction of the blast furnaces for
dealing with the ore; but nevertheless, before a month was out ten
furnaces were at work, capable, each, of an output of one hundred and
eighty tons a day. This gave eighteen hundred tons in the twenty-four
hours, and a hundred and eighty thousand tons in ten working days.
In the meli-melonite factory the work went on easily, and so secretly
that the composition of the explosive was never discovered.
All went well; and there was hardly an accident to mar the progress.
The Sultan was delighted. He followed the operations with indefatigable
assiduity, and it may be imagined how his Majesty’s presence stimulated
the zeal of his faithful subjects.
When he asked what it all meant, Barbicane would reply enigmatically,--
“It is a work which will change the face of the world!”
“A work,” Captain Nicholl would add, “that will confer on the Sultan
Bali-Bali a glory that will never fade among the monarchs of Eastern
Africa!”
And that the Sultan of the Wamasai felt proud there is no need for us to
insist!
On the 29th of August the works were completed. The tunnel was lined
with the smooth iron tube built up within it. At the end lay stored two
thousand tons of meli-melonite in communication with the box of
fulminate. Then came the projectile three hundred and forty-five feet
long. In front of the projectile was a space of fourteen hundred and
fifty feet in which effect would be given to the impulse due to the
expansion of the gas.
That being the case, there remained the question--a question of pure
ballistics--would the projectile have the trajectory assigned to it by J.
T. Maston? The calculations were correct. They indicated in what measure
the projectile would deviate to the east of the meridian of Kilimanjaro
in virtue of the earth’s rotation, and what would be the form of the
hyperbolic curve which it described in virtue of its enormous initial
velocity.
Second question: Would it be visible during its flight? No, for when it
left the tube plunged in the darkness of the earth, it could not be
seen, and besides owing to its moderate height it would have a very
considerable angular velocity. Once it entered the zone of light, the
smallness of its volume would conceal it from the most powerful glasses,
and for a stronger reason it would, when free from the influence of
terrestrial attraction, gravitate for ever round the Sun.
Assuredly Barbicane & Co. might be proud of the work they were about to
complete. Why was not J. T. Maston there to admire the admirable
execution of the works which was worthy of the precision of the
calculations that had inspired them? And above all things why was he far
away when the formidable detonation would awake the echoes of the most
distant horizons of Africa?
In thinking of him his colleagues had no notion that he had had to leave
Ballistic Cottage after escaping from Baltimore Gaol, and was now in
hiding to save his precious life. They knew not to what a degree public
opinion had risen against the North Polar Practical Association. They
knew not what would be the massacres, quarterings, and roastings if the
people happened to lay hold of them. Indeed they were fortunate that
when the mine was fired they could only be saluted by the shouts of the
Wamasai.
“At last!” said Captain Nicholl, when on the evening of the 22nd of
September they were strolling about at the mouth of the mine.
“Yes! At last! And also--Ha!” and Barbicane gave a sigh of relief.
“If you had to begin again?”
“Bah! We should begin again!”
“What luck,” said Nicholl, “that we should have at our disposal this
admirable meli-melonite!”
“Which will make you illustrious, Nicholl!”
“Doubtless, Barbicane,” said the captain modestly. “But do you know how
many galleries we should have had to drive in the flanks of Kilimanjaro
to obtain the same result if we had only had fulmi-cotton like that
which flung our projectile at the Moon?”
“Tell me.”
“One hundred and eighty, Barbicane!”
“Well, we would have driven them!”
“And a hundred and eighty projectiles of a hundred and eighty thousand
tons!”
“We would have made them, Nicholl!”
There is no nonsense about men of this stamp. But when artillerists have
made the round of the Moon, or what could they not be capable?
* * * * *
And that very evening, an hour or two only before the discharge was to
take place, and while Barbicane and Nicholl were thus congratulating
themselves, Alcide Pierdeux, shut up in his room at Baltimore, jumped to
his feet and whooped like a Redskin.
“Whoooop! Mr. J. T. Maston! You brute, you shall swallow your problem,
you shall! And why didn’t I see that before! In the name of a cosine! If
I knew where you were I would ask you to supper, and we would have a
glass of champagne together at the very moment your gun is to go off!”
And he capered round the room and whirled his arms about like a railway
signal gone mad.
“Whoooop, you old plum-tree! You must have had a big bang when you
calculated the cannon of Kilimanjaro! Hurrah for the cannon of
Kilimanjaro; and how many more would you like? That is not only the
-sine quâ non-, my boy, but the -sine cannon-! Whoooop!”
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE WAMASAI WAIT FOR THE WORD TO FIRE.
It was the evening of the 22nd of September--that memorable date to which
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*
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995
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1000