“Barbicane? Nicholl?”
“Maston!”
“You?”
“We!”
And in that pronoun, spoken simultaneously1 by the two in a singular tone, there was everything that could be said in the way of irony2 and reproach.
J. T. Maston passed his iron hook across his forehead. Then in a voice that hissed3 between his lips he asked,—
“Your gallery at Kilimanjaro was two thousand feet long and ninety in diameter?”
“Yes?”
“Your projectile4 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 velocity5!”
“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 interfere6.
“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 memorable7 fiasco of the gigantic project of Barbicane & Co.
If ever unfortunate engineers were overwhelmed with ridicule8, 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 literally9 covered with scorn. The storm of contempt was so thoroughly10 American that it was untranslatable even in Volapuk. And Europe joined in with such vigour11 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 diurnal12 movement, that never would the Polar regions be displaced in latitude13 to such an extent that their icy mantle14 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 abortive15 attempt to furnish the Earth with a new axis16 is now known. Nevertheless, the calculations of J. T. Maston were correctly founded, and would have produced the desired results if by some inexplicable17 distraction18 they had not been nullified by an error at the outset.
“In fact, the celebrated19 secretary of the Gun Club took for his basis the circumference20 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 remarkable21 a mathematician22 have made such a mistake? Conjecture23 is vain.
............