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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.”
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