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CHAPTER XXI.: J. T. MASTON RECALLED “It is ‘they’ come back again!” the young midshipman had said, and every one had understood him. No one doubted but that the meteor was the projectile of the Gun Club. As to the travelers which it enclosed, opinions were divided regarding their fate. “They are dead!” said one.
“They are alive!” said another; “the crater is deep, and the shock was deadened.” “But they must have wanted air,” continued a third speaker; “they must have died of suffocation.” “Burned!” replied a fourth; “the projectile was nothing but an incandescent mass as it crossed the atmosphere.” “What does it matter!” they exclaimed unanimously; “living or dead, we must pull them out!” But Captain Blomsberry had assembled his officers, and “with their permission,” was holding a council.
They must decide upon something to be done immediately. The more hasty ones were for fishing up the projectile. A difficult operation, though not an impossible one. But the corvette had no proper machinery, which must be both fixed and powerful; so it was resolved that they should put in at the nearest port, and give information to the Gun Club of the projectile’s fall. This determination was unanimous. The choice of the port had to be discussed. The neighboring coast had no anchorage on 27° latitude.
Higher up, above the peninsula of Monterey, stands the important town from which it takes its name; but, seated on the borders of a perfect desert, it was not connected with the interior by a network of telegraphic wires, and electricity alone could spread these important news fast enough. Some degrees above opened the bay of San Francisco. Through the capital of the gold country communication would be easy with the heart of the Union.
And in less than two days the Susquehanna, by putting on high pressure, could arrive in that port. She must therefore start at once. The fires were made up; they could set off immediately. Two thousand fathoms of line were still out, which Captain Blomsberry, not wishing to lose precious time in hauling in, resolved to cut.
“we will fasten the end to a buoy,” said he, “and that buoy will show us the exact spot where the projectile fell.” “Besides,” replied Lieutenant Bronsfield, “we have our situation exact—27° 7′ north latitude and 41° 37′ west longitude.” “Well, Mr. Bronsfield,” replied the captain, “now, with your permission, we will have the line cut.” A strong buoy, strengthened by a couple of spars, was thrown into the ocean.
The end of the rope was carefully lashed to it; and, left solely to the rise and fall of the billows, the buoy would not sensibly deviate from the spot. At this moment the engineer sent to inform the captain that steam was up and they could start, for which agreeable communication the captain thanked him. The course was then given north-northeast, and the corvette, wearing, steered at full steam direct for San Francisco. It was three in the morning.
Four hundred and fifty miles to cross; it was nothing for a good vessel like the Susquehanna. In thirty-six hours she had covered that distance; and on the 14th of December, at twenty-seven minutes past one at night, she entered the bay of San Francisco. At the sight of a ship of the national navy arriving at full speed, with her bowsprit broken, public curiosity was greatly roused. A dense crowd soon assembled on the quay, waiting for them to disembark.
After casting anchor, Captain Blomsberry and Lieutenant Bronsfield entered an eight-pared cutter, which soon brought them to land. They jumped on to the quay. “The telegraph?” they asked, without answering one of the thousand questions addressed to them. The officer of the port conducted them to the telegraph office through a concourse of spectators. Blomsberry and Bronsfield entered, while the crowd crushed each other at the door.
Some minutes later a fourfold telegram was sent out—the first to the Naval Secretary at Washington; the second to the vice-president of the Gun Club, Baltimore; the third to the Hon. J. T. Maston, Long’s Peak, Rocky Mountains; and the fourth to the sub-director of the Cambridge Observatory, Massachusetts. It was worded as follows: In 20° 7′ north latitude, and 41° 37′ west longitude, on the 12th of December, at seventeen minutes past one in the morning, the projectile of the Columbiad fell into the Pacific.
Send instructions.—BLOMSBERRY, Commander Susquehanna. Five minutes afterward the whole town of San Francisco learned the news. Before six in the evening the different States of the Union had heard the great catastrophe; and after midnight, by the cable, the whole of Europe knew the result of the great American experiment. We will not attempt to picture the effect produced on the entire world by that unexpected denouement.
On receipt of the telegram the Naval Secretary telegraphed to the Susquehanna to wait in the bay of San Francisco without extinguishing her fires. Day and night she must be ready to put to sea. The Cambridge observatory called a special meeting; and, with that composure which distinguishes learned bodies in general, peacefully discussed the scientific bearings of the question. At the Gun Club there was an explosion. All the gunners were assembled. Vice-President the Hon.
Wilcome was in the act of reading the premature dispatch, in which J. T. Maston and Belfast announced that the projectile had just been seen in the gigantic reflector of Long’s Peak, and also that it was held by lunar attraction, and was playing the part of under satellite to the lunar world. We know the truth on that point. But on the arrival of Blomsberry’s dispatch, so decidely contradicting J. T. Maston’s telegram, two parties were formed in the bosom of the Gun Club.
On one side were those who admitted the fall of the projectile, and consequently the return of the travelers; on the other, those who believed in the observations of Long’s Peak, concluded that the commander of the Susquehanna had made a mistake. To the latter the pretended projectile was nothing but a meteor! nothing but a meteor, a shooting globe, which in its fall had smashed the bows of the corvette.
It was difficult to answer this argument, for the speed with which it was animated must have made observation very difficult.
The commander of the Susquehanna and her officers might have made a mistake in all good faith; one argument however, was in their favor, namely, that if the projectile had fallen on the earth, its place of meeting with the terrestrial globe could only take place on this 27° north latitude, and (taking into consideration the time that had elapsed, and the rotary motion of the earth) between the 41° and the 42° of west longitude.
In any case, it was decided in the Gun Club that Blomsberry brothers, Bilsby, and Major Elphinstone should go straight to San Francisco, and consult as to the means of raising the projectile from the depths of the ocean. These devoted men set off at once; and the railroad, which will soon cross the whole of Central America, took them as far as St. Louis, where the swift mail-coaches awaited them.
Almost at the same moment in which the Secretary of Marine, the vice-president of the Gun Club, and the sub-director of the Observatory received the dispatch from San Francisco, the Honorable J. T. Maston was undergoing the greatest excitement he had ever experienced in his life, an excitement which even the bursting of his pet gun, which had more than once nearly cost him his life, had not caused him.
We may remember that the secretary of the Gun Club had started soon after the projectile (and almost as quickly) for the station on Long’s Peak, in the Rocky Mountains, J. Belfast, director of the Cambridge Observatory, accompanying him. Arrived there, the two friends had installed themselves at once, never quitting the summit of their enormous telescope.
We know that this gigantic instrument had been set up according to the reflecting system, called by the English “front view.” This arrangement subjected all objects to but one reflection, making the view consequently much clearer; the result was that, when they were taking observation, J. T.
Maston and Belfast were placed in the upper part of the instrument and not in the lower, which they reached by a circular staircase, a masterpiece of lightness, while below them opened a metal well terminated by the metallic mirror, which measured two hundred and eighty feet in depth. It was on a narrow platform placed above the telescope that the two savants passed their existence, execrating the day which hid the moon from their eyes, and the clouds which obstinately veiled her during the night.
What, then, was their delight when, after some days of waiting, on the night of the 5th of December, they saw the vehicle which was bearing their friends into space! To this delight succeeded a great deception, when, trusting to a cursory observation, they launched their first telegram to the world, erroneously affirming that the projectile had become a satellite of the moon, gravitating in an immutable orbit.
From that moment it had never shown itself to their eyes—a disappearance all the more easily explained, as it was then passing behind the moon’s invisible disc; but when it was time for it to reappear on the visible disc, one may imagine the impatience of the fuming J. T. Maston and his not less impatient companion. Each minute of the night they thought they saw the projectile once more, and they did not see it.
Hence constant discussions and violent disputes between them, Belfast affirming that the projectile could not be seen, J. T. Maston maintaining that “it had put his eyes out.” “It is the projectile!” repeated J. T. Maston. “No,” answered Belfast; “it is an avalanche detached from a lunar mountain.” “Well, we shall see it to-morrow.” “No, we shall not see it any more.
It is carried into space.” “Yes!” “No!” And at these moments, when contradictions rained like hail, the well-known irritability of the secretary of the Gun Club constituted a permanent danger for the Honorable Belfast. The existence of these two together would soon have become impossible; but an unforseen event cut short their everlasting discussions. During the night, from the 14th to the 15th of December, the two irreconcilable friends were busy observing the lunar disc, J. T.
Maston abusing the learned Belfast as usual, who was by his side; the secretary of the Gun Club maintaining for the thousandth time that he had just seen the projectile, and adding that he could see Michel Ardan’s face looking through one of the scuttles, at the same time enforcing his argument by a series of gestures which his formidable hook rendered very unpleasant. At this moment Belfast’s servant appeared on the platform (it was ten at night) and gave him a dispatch.
It was the commander of the Susquehanna’s telegram. Belfast tore the envelope and read, and uttered a cry. “What!” said J. T. Maston. “The projectile!” “Well!” “Has fallen to the earth!” Another cry, this time a perfect howl, answered him. He turned toward J. T. Maston. The unfortunate man, imprudently leaning over the metal tube, had disappeared in the immense telescope. A fall of two hundred and eighty feet! Belfast, dismayed, rushed to the orifice of the reflector. He breathed. J. T.
Maston, caught by his metal hook, was holding on by one of the rings which bound the telescope together, uttering fearful cries. Belfast called. Help was brought, tackle was let down, and they hoisted up, not without some trouble, the imprudent secretary of the Gun Club. He reappeared at the upper orifice without hurt. “Ah!” said he, “if I had broken the mirror?” “You would have paid for it,” replied Belfast severely. “And that cursed projectile has fallen?” asked J. T. Maston.
“Into the Pacific!” “Let us go!” A quarter of an hour after the two savants were descending the declivity of the Rocky Mountains; and two days after, at the same time as their friends of the Gun Club, they arrived at San Francisco, having killed five horses on the road. Elphinstone, the brothers Blomsberry, and Bilsby rushed toward them on their arrival. “What shall we do?” they exclaimed. “Fish up the projectile,” replied J. T. Maston, “and the sooner the better.”