A High Old Time
:
All Around The Moon
A new phenomenon, therefore, strange but logical, startling but
admitting of easy explanation, was now presented to their view,
affording a fresh subject for lively discussion. Not that they disputed
much about it. They soon agreed on a principle from which they readily
deducted the following general law: Every object thrown out of the
Projectile should partake of the Projectile's motion: it should
therefore follow the
same path, and never cease to move until the
Projectile itself came to a stand-still.
But, in sober truth, they were at anything but a loss of subjects of
warm discussion. As the end of their journey began to approach, their
senses became keener and their sensations vivider. Steeled against
surprise, they looked for the unexpected, the strange, the startling;
and the only thing at which they would have wondered would be to be five
minutes without having something new to wonder at. Their excited
imaginations flew far ahead of the Projectile, whose velocity, by the
way, began to be retarded very decidedly by this time, though, of
course, the travellers had as yet no means to become aware of it. The
Moon's size on the sky was meantime getting larger and larger; her
apparent distance was growing shorter and shorter, until at last they
could almost imagine that by putting their hands out they could nearly
touch her.
Next morning, December 5th, all were up and dressed at a very early
hour. This was to be the last day of their journey, if all calculations
were correct. That very night, at 12 o'clock, within nineteen hours at
furthest, at the very moment of Full Moon, they were to reach her
resplendent surface. At that hour was to be completed the most
extraordinary journey ever undertaken by man in ancient or modern times.
Naturally enough, therefore, they found themselves unable to sleep after
four o'clock in the morning; peering upwards through the windows now
visibly glittering under the rays of the Moon, they spent some very
exciting hours in gazing at her slowly enlarging disc, and shouting at
her with confident and joyful hurrahs.
The majestic Queen of the Stars had now risen so high in the spangled
heavens that she could hardly rise higher. In a few degrees more she
would reach the exact point of space where her junction with the
Projectile was to be effected. According to his own observations,
Barbican calculated that they should strike her in the northern
hemisphere, where her plains, or seas as they are called, are immense,
and her mountains are comparatively rare. This, of course, would be so
much the more favorable, if, as was to be apprehended, the lunar
atmosphere was confined exclusively to the low lands.
"Besides," as Ardan observed, "a plain is a more suitable landing place
than a mountain. A Selenite deposited on the top of Mount Everest or
even on Mont Blanc, could hardly be considered, in strict language, to
have arrived on Earth."
"Not to talk," added M'Nicholl, "of the comfort of the thing! When you
land on a plain, there you are. When you land on a peak or on a steep
mountain side, where are you? Tumbling over an embankment with the train
going forty miles an hour, would be nothing to it."
"Therefore, Captain Barbican," cried the Frenchman, "as we should like
to appear before the Selenites in full skins, please land us in the snug
though unromantic North. We shall have time enough to break our necks in
the South."
Barbican made no reply to his companions, because a new reflection had
begun to trouble him, to talk about which would have done no good. There
was certainly something wrong. The Projectile was evidently heading
towards the northern hemisphere of the Moon. What did this prove?
Clearly, a deviation resulting from some cause. The bullet, lodged,
aimed, and fired with the most careful mathematical precision, had been
calculated to reach the very centre of the Moon's disc. Clearly it was
not going to the centre now. What could have produced the deviation?
This Barbican could not tell; nor could he even determine its extent,
having no points of sight by which to make his observations. For the
present he tried to console himself with the hope that the deviation of
the Projectile would be followed by no worse consequence than carrying
them towards the northern border of the Moon, where for several reasons
it would be comparatively easier to alight. Carefully avoiding,
therefore, the use of any expression which might needlessly alarm his
companions, he continued to observe the Moon as carefully as he could,
hoping every moment to find some grounds for believing that the
deviation from the centre was only a slight one. He almost shuddered at
the thought of what would be their situation, if the bullet, missing its
aim, should pass the Moon, and plunge into the interplanetary space
beyond it.
As he continued to gaze, the Moon, instead of presenting the usual
flatness of her disc, began decidedly to show a surface somewhat convex.
Had the Sun been shining on her obliquely, the shadows would have
certainly thrown the great mountains into strong relief. The eye could
then bury itself deep in the yawning chasms of the craters, and easily
follow the cracks, streaks, and ridges which stripe, flecker, and bar
the immensity of her plains. But for the present all relief was lost in
the dazzling glare. The Captain could hardly distinguish even those dark
spots that impart to the full Moon some resemblance to the human face.
"Face!" cried Ardan: "well, a very fanciful eye may detect a face,
though, for the sake of Apollo's beauteous sister, I regret to say, a
terribly pockmarked one!"
The travellers, now evidently approaching the end of their journey,
observed the rapidly increasing world above them with newer and greater
curiosity every moment. Their fancies enkindled at the sight of the new
and strange scenes dimly presented to their view. In imagination they
climbed to the summit of this lofty peak. They let themselves down to
the abyss of that yawning crater. Here they imagined they saw vast seas
hardly kept in their basins by a rarefied atmosphere; there they thought
they could trace mighty rivers bearing to vast oceans the tribute of the
snowy mountains. In the first promptings of their eager curiosity, they
peered greedily into her cavernous depths, and almost expected, amidst
the deathlike hush of inaudible nature, to surprise some sound from the
mystic orb floating up there in eternal silence through a boundless
ocean of never ending vacuum.
This last day of their journey left their memories stored with thrilling
recollections. They took careful note of the slightest details. As they
neared their destination, they felt themselves invaded by a vague,
undefined restlessness. But this restlessness would have given way to
decided uneasiness, if they had known at what a slow rate they were
travelling. They would have surely concluded that their present velocity
would never be able to take them as far as the neutral point, not to
talk of passing it. The reason of such considerable retardation was,
that by this time the Projectile had reached such a great distance from
the Earth that it had hardly any weight. But even this weight, such as
it was, was to be diminished still further, and finally, to vanish
altogether as soon as the bullet reached the neutral point, where the
two attractions, terrestrial and lunar, should counteract each other
with new and surprising effects.
Notwithstanding the absorbing nature of his observations, Ardan never
forgot to prepare breakfast with his usual punctuality. It was eaten
readily and relished heartily. Nothing could be more exquisite than his
calf's foot jelly liquefied and prepared by gas heat, except perhaps his
meat biscuits of preserved Texas beef and Southdown mutton. A bottle of
Chateau Yquem and another of Clos de Vougeot, both of superlative
excellence in quality and flavor, crowned the repast. Their vicinity to
the Moon and their incessant glancing at her surface did not prevent the
travellers from touching each other's glasses merrily and often. Ardan
took occasion to remark that the lunar vineyards--if any existed--must
be magnificent, considering the intense solar heat they continually
experienced. Not that he counted on them too confidently, for he told
his friends that to provide for the worst he had supplied himself with a
few cases of the best vintages of Medoc and the Cote d'Or, of which the
bottles, then under discussion, might be taken as very favorable
specimens.
The Reiset and Regnault apparatus for purifying the air worked
splendidly, and maintained the atmosphere in a perfectly sanitary
condition. Not an atom of carbonic acid could resist the caustic potash;
and as for the oxygen, according to M'Nicholl's expression, "it was A
prime number one!"
The small quantity of watery vapor enclosed in the Projectile did no
more harm than serving to temper the dryness of the air: many a splendid
salon in New York, London, or Paris, and many an auditorium, even of
theatre, opera house or Academy of Music, could be considered its
inferior in what concerned its hygienic condition.
To keep it in perfect working order, the apparatus should be carefully
attended to. This, Ardan looked on as his own peculiar occupation. He
was never tired regulating the tubes, trying the taps, and testing the
heat of the gas by the pyrometer. So far everything had worked
satisfactorily, and the travellers, following the example of their
friend Marston on a previous occasion, began to get so stout that their
own mothers would not know them in another month, should their
imprisonment last so long. Ardan said they all looked so sleek and
thriving that he was reminded forcibly of a nice lot of pigs fattening
in a pen for a country fair. But how long was this good fortune of
theirs going to last?
Whenever they took their eyes off the Moon, they could not help noticing
that they were still attended outside by the spectre of Satellite's
corpse and by the other refuse of the Projectile. An occasional
melancholy howl also attested Diana's recognition of her companion's
unhappy fate. The travellers saw with surprise that these waifs still
seemed perfectly motionless in space, and kept their respective
distances apart as mathematically as if they had been fastened with
nails to a stone wall.
"I tell you what, dear boys;" observed Ardan, commenting on this curious
phenomenon; "if the concussion had been a little too violent for one of
us that night, his survivors would have been seriously embarrassed in
trying to get rid of his remains. With no earth to cover him up, no sea
to plunge him into, his corpse would never disappear from view, but
would pursue us day and night, grim and ghastly like an avenging ghost!"
"Ugh!" said the Captain, shuddering at the idea.
"But, by the bye, Barbican!" cried the Frenchman, dropping the subject
with his usual abruptness; "you have forgotten something else! Why
didn't you bring a scaphander and an air pump? I could then venture out
of the Projectile as readily and as safely as the diver leaves his boat
and walks about on the bottom of the river! What fun to float in the
midst of that mysterious ether! to steep myself, aye, actually to revel
in the pure rays of the glorious sun! I should have ventured out on the
very point of the Projectile, and there I should have danced and
postured and kicked and bobbed and capered in a style that Taglioni
never dreamed of!"
"Shouldn't I like to see you!" cried the Captain grimly, smiling at the
idea.
"You would not see him long!" observed Barbican quietly. "The air
confined in his body, freed from external pressure, would burst him like
a shell, or like a balloon that suddenly rises to too great a height in
the air! A scaphander would have been a fatal gift. Don't regret its
absence, friend Michael; never forget this axiom: As long as we are
floating in empty space, the only spot where safety is possible is
inside the Projectile!"
The words "possible" and "impossible" always grated on Ardan's ears. If
he had been a lexicographer, he would have rigidly excluded them from
his dictionary, both as meaningless and useless. He was preparing an
answer for Barbican, when he was cut out by a sudden observation from
M'Nicholl.
"See here, friends!" cried the Captain; "this going to the Moon is all
very well, but how shall we get back?"
His listeners looked at each other with a surprised and perplexed air.
The question, though a very natural one, now appeared to have presented
itself to their consideration absolutely for the first time.
"What do you mean by such a question, Captain?" asked Barbican in a
grave judicial tone.
"Mac, my boy," said Ardan seriously, "don't it strike you as a little
out of order to ask how you are to return when you have not got there
yet?"
"I don't ask the question with any idea of backing out," observed the
Captain quietly; "as a matter of purely scientific inquiry, I repeat my
question: how are we to return?"
"I don't know," replied Barbican promptly.
"For my part," said Ardan; "if I had known how to get back, I should
have never come at all!"
"Well! of all the answers!" said the Captain, lifting his hands and
shaking his head.
"The best under the circumstances;" observed Barbican; "and I shall
further observe that such a question as yours at present is both useless
and uncalled for. On some future occasion, when we shall consider it
advisable to return, the question will be in order, and we shall discuss
it with all the attention it deserves. Though the Columbiad is at Stony
Hill, the Projectile will still be in the Moon."
"Much we shall gain by that! A bullet without a gun!"
"The gun we can make and the powder too!" replied Barbican confidently.
"Metal and sulphur and charcoal and saltpetre are likely enough to be
present in sufficient quantities beneath the Moon's surface. Besides, to
return is a problem of comparatively easy solution: we should have to
overcome the lunar attraction only--a slight matter--the rest of the
business would be readily done by gravity."
"Enough said on the subject!" exclaimed Ardan curtly; "how to get back
is indefinitely postponed! How to communicate with our friends on the
Earth, is another matter, and, as it seems to me, an extremely easy
one."
"Let us hear the very easy means by which you propose to communicate
with our friends on Earth," asked the Captain, with a sneer, for he was
by this time a little out of humor.
"By means of bolides ejected from the lunar volcanoes," replied the
Frenchman without an instant's hesitation.
"Well said, friend Ardan," exclaimed Barbican. "I am quite disposed to
acknowledge the feasibility of your plan. Laplace has calculated that a
force five times greater than that of an ordinary cannon would be
sufficient to send a bolide from the Moon to the Earth. Now there is no
cannon that can vie in force with even the smallest volcano."
"Hurrah!" cried Ardan, delighted at his success; "just imagine the
pleasure of sending our letters postage free! But--oh! what a splendid
idea!--Dolts that we were for not thinking of it sooner!"
"Let us have the splendid idea!" cried the Captain, with some of his old
acrimony.
"Why didn't we fasten a wire to the Projectile?" asked Ardan,
triumphantly, "It would have enabled us to exchange telegrams with the
Earth!"
"Ho! ho! ho!" roared the Captain, rapidly recovering his good humor;
"decidedly the best joke of the season! Ha! ha! ha! Of course you have
calculated the weight of a wire 240 thousand miles long?"
"No matter about its weight!" cried the Frenchman impetuously; "we
should have laughed at its weight! We could have tripled the charge of
the Columbiad; we could have quadrupled it!--aye, quintupled it, if
necessary!" he added in tones evidently increasing in loudness and
violence.
"Yes, friend Michael," observed Barbican; "but there is a slight and
unfortunately a fatal defect in your project. The Earth, by its
rotation, would have wrapped our wire around herself, like thread around
a spool, and dragged us back almost with the speed of lightning!"
"By the Nine gods of Porsena!" cried Ardan, "something is wrong with my
head to-day! My brain is out of joint, and I am making as nice a mess of
things as my friend Marston was ever capable of! By the bye--talking of
Marston--if we never return to the Earth, what is to prevent him from
following us to the Moon?"
"Nothing!" replied Barbican; "he is a faithful friend and a reliable
comrade. Besides, what is easier? Is not the Columbiad still at Stony
Hill? Cannot gun-cotton be readily manufactured on any occasion? Will
not the Moon again pass through the zenith of Florida? Eighteen years
from now, will she not occupy exactly the same spot that she does
to-day?"
"Certainly!" cried Ardan, with increasing enthusiasm, "Marston will
come! and Elphinstone of the torpedo! and the gallant Bloomsbury, and
Billsby the brave, and all our friends of the Baltimore Gun Club! And we
shall receive them with all the honors! And then we shall establish
projectile trains between the Earth and the Moon! Hurrah for J.T.
Marston!"
"Hurrah for Secretary Marston!" cried the Captain, with an enthusiasm
almost equal to Ardan's.
"Hurrah for my dear friend Marston!" cried Barbican, hardly less
excited than his comrades.
Our old acquaintance, Marston, of course could not have heard the joyous
acclamations that welcomed his name, but at that moment he certainly
must have felt his ears most unaccountably tingling. What was he doing
at the time? He was rattling along the banks of the Kansas River, as
fast as an express train could take him, on the road to Long's Peak,
where, by means of the great Telescope, he expected to find some traces
of the Projectile that contained his friends. He never forgot them for a
moment, but of course he little dreamed that his name at that very time
was exciting their vividest recollections and their warmest applause.
In fact, their recollections were rather too vivid, and their applause
decidedly too warm. Was not the animation that prevailed among the
guests of the Projectile of a very unusual character, and was it not
becoming more and more violent every moment? Could the wine have caused
it? No; though not teetotallers, they never drank to excess. Could the
Moon's proximity, shedding her subtle, mysterious influence over their
nervous systems, have stimulated them to a degree that was threatening
to border on frenzy? Their faces were as red as if they were standing
before a hot fire; their breathing was loud, and their lungs heaved like
a smith's bellows; their eyes blazed like burning coals; their voices
sounded as loud and harsh as that of a stump speaker trying to make
himself heard by an inattentive or hostile crowd; their words popped
from their lips like corks from Champagne bottles; their gesticulating
became wilder and in fact more alarming--considering the little room
left in the Projectile for muscular displays of any kind.
But the most extraordinary part of the whole phenomenon was that neither
of them, not even Barbican, had the slightest consciousness of any
strange or unusual ebullition of spirits either on his own part or on
that of the others.
"See here, gentlemen!" said the Captain in a quick imperious manner--the
roughness of his old life on the Mississippi would still break out--"See
here, gentlemen! It seems I'm not to know if we are to return from the
Moon. Well!--Pass that for the present! But there is one thing I must
know!"
"Hear! hear the Captain!" cried Barbican, stamping with his foot, like
an excited fencing master. "There is one thing he must know!"
"I want to know what we're going to do when we get there!"
"He wants to know what we're going to do when we get there! A sensible
question! Answer it, Ardan!"
"Answer it yourself, Barbican! You know more about the Moon than I do!
You know more about it than all the Nasmyths that ever lived!"
"I'm blessed if I know anything at all about it!" cried Barbican, with a
joyous laugh. "Ha, ha, ha! The first eastern shore Marylander or any
other simpleton you meet in Baltimore, knows as much about the Moon as
I do! Why we're going there, I can't tell! What we're going to do when
we get there, can't tell either! Ardan knows all about it! He can tell!
He's taking us there!"
"Certainly I can tell! should I have offered to take you there without a
good object in view?" cried Ardan, husky with continual roaring. "Answer
me that!"
"No conundrums!" cried the Captain, in a voice sourer and rougher than
ever; "tell us if you can in plain English, what the demon we have come
here for!"
"I'll tell you if I feel like it," cried Ardan, folding his arms with an
aspect of great dignity; "and I'll not tell you if I don't feel like
it!"
"What's that?" cried Barbican. "You'll not give us an answer when we ask
you a reasonable question?"
"Never!" cried Ardan, with great determination. "I'll never answer a
question reasonable or unreasonable, unless it is asked in a proper
manner!"
"None of your French airs here!" exclaimed M'Nicholl, by this time
almost completely out of himself between anger and excitement. "I don't
know where I am; I don't know where I'm going; I don't know why I'm
going; you know all about it, Ardan, or at least you think you do!
Well then, give me a plain answer to a plain question, or by the
Thirty-eight States of our glorious Union, I shall know what for!"
"Listen, Ardan!" cried Barbican, grappling with the Frenchman, and with
some difficulty restraining him from flying at M'Nicholl's throat; "You
ought to tell him! It is only your duty! One day you found us both in
St. Helena woods, where we had no more idea of going to the Moon than of
sailing to the South Pole! There you twisted us both around your finger,
and induced us to follow you blindly on the most formidable journey ever
undertaken by man! And now you refuse to tell us what it was all for!"
"I don't refuse, dear old Barbican! To you, at least, I can't refuse
anything!" cried Ardan, seizing his friend's hands and wringing them
violently. Then letting them go and suddenly starting back, "you wish to
know," he continued in resounding tones, "why we have followed out the
grandest idea that ever set a human brain on fire! Why we have
undertaken a journey that for length, danger, and novelty, for
fascinating, soul-stirring and delirious sensations, for all that can
attract man's burning heart, and satisfy the intensest cravings of his
intellect, far surpasses the vividest realities of Dante's passionate
dream! Well, I will tell you! It is to annex another World to the New
One! It is to take possession of the Moon in the name of the United
States of America! It is to add a thirty-ninth State to the glorious
Union! It is to colonize the lunar regions, to cultivate them, to people
them, to transport to them some of our wonders of art, science, and
industry! It is to civilize the Selenites, unless they are more
civilized already than we are ourselves! It is to make them all good
Republicans, if they are not so already!"
"Provided, of course, that there are Selenites in existence!" sneered
the Captain, now sourer than ever, and in his unaccountable excitement
doubly irritating.
"Who says there are no Selenites?" cried Ardan fiercely, with fists
clenched and brows contracted.
"I do!" cried M'Nicholl stoutly; "I deny the existence of anything of
the kind, and I denounce every one that maintains any such whim as a
visionary, if not a fool!"
Ardan's reply to this taunt was a desperate facer, which, however,
Barbican managed to stop while on its way towards the Captain's nose.
M'Nicholl, seeing himself struck at, immediately assumed such a posture
of defence as showed him to be no novice at the business. A battle
seemed unavoidable; but even at this trying moment Barbican showed
himself equal to the emergency.
"Stop, you crazy fellows! you ninnyhammers! you overgrown babies!" he
exclaimed, seizing his companions by the collar, and violently swinging
them around with his vast strength until they stood back to back; "what
are you going to fight about? Suppose there are Lunarians in the Moon!
Is that a reason why there should be Lunatics in the Projectile! But,
Ardan, why do you insist on Lunarians? Are we so shiftless that we can't
do without them when we get to the Moon?"
"I don't insist on them!" cried Ardan, who submitted to Barbican like a
child. "Hang the Lunarians! Certainly, we can do without them! What do I
care for them? Down with them!"
"Yes, down with the Lunarians!" cried M'Nicholl as spitefully as if he
had even the slightest belief in their existence.
"We shall take possession of the Moon ourselves!" cried Ardan.
"Lunarians or no Lunarians!"
"We three shall constitute a Republic!" cried M'Nicholl.
"I shall be the House!" cried Ardan.
"And I the Senate!" answered the Captain.
"And Barbican our first President!" shrieked the Frenchman.
"Our first and last!" roared M'Nicholl.
"No objections to a third term!" yelled Ardan.
"He's welcome to any number of terms he pleases!" vociferated M'Nicholl.
"Hurrah for President Barbican of the Lunatic--I mean of the Lunar
Republic!" screamed Ardan.
"Long may he wave, and may his shadow never grow less!" shouted Captain
M'Nicholl, his eyes almost out of their sockets.
Then with voices reminding you of sand fiercely blown against the window
panes, the President and the Senate chanted the immortal Yankee
Doodle, whilst the House delivered itself of the Marseillaise, in a
style which even the wildest Jacobins in Robespierre's day could hardly
have surpassed.
But long before either song was ended, all three broke out into a
dance, wild, insensate, furious, delirious, paroxysmatical. No Orphic
festivals on Mount Cithaeron ever raged more wildly. No Bacchic revels
on Mount Parnassus were ever more corybantic. Diana, demented by the
maddening example, joined in the orgie, howling and barking frantically
in her turn, and wildly jumping as high as the ceiling of the
Projectile. Then came new accessions to the infernal din. Wings suddenly
began to flutter, cocks to crow, hens to cluck; and five or six
chickens, managing to escape out of their coop, flew backwards and
forwards blindly, with frightened screams, dashing against each other
and against the walls of the Projectile, and altogether getting up as
demoniacal a hullabaloo as could be made by ten thousand bats that you
suddenly disturbed in a cavern where they had slept through the winter.
Then the three companions, no longer able to withstand the overpowering
influence of the mysterious force that mastered them, intoxicated, more
than drunk, burned by the air that scorched their organs of respiration,
dropped at last, and lay flat, motionless, senseless as dabs of clay, on
the floor of the Projectile.