Off The Pacific Coast
:
All Around The Moon
"Well, Lieutenant, how goes the sounding?"
"Pretty lively, Captain; we're nearly through;" replied the Lieutenant.
"But it's a tremendous depth so near land. We can't be more than 250
miles from the California coast."
"The depression certainly is far deeper than I had expected," observed
Captain Bloomsbury. "We have probably lit on a submarine valley
channelled out by the Japanese Current."<
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"The Japanese Current, Captain?"
"Certainly; that branch of it which breaks on the western shores of
North America and then flows southeast towards the Isthmus of Panama."
"That may account for it, Captain," replied young Brownson; "at least, I
hope it does, for then we may expect the valley to get shallower as we
leave the land. So far, there's no sign of a Telegraphic Plateau in this
quarter of the globe."
"Probably not, Brownson. How is the line now?"
"We have paid out 3500 fathoms already, Captain, but, judging from the
rate the reel goes at, we are still some distance from bottom."
As he spoke, he pointed to a tall derrick temporarily rigged up at the
stern of the vessel for the purpose of working the sounding apparatus,
and surrounded by a group of busy men. Through a block pulley strongly
lashed to the derrick, a stout cord of the best Italian hemp, wound off
a large reel placed amidships, was now running rapidly and with a slight
whirring noise.
"I hope it's not the 'cup-lead' you are using, Brownson?" said the
Captain, after a few minutes observation.
"Oh no, Captain, certainly not," replied the Lieutenant. "It's only
Brooke's apparatus that is of any use in such depths."
"Clever fellow that Brooke," observed the Captain; "served with him
under Maury. His detachment of the weight is really the starting point
for every new improvement in sounding gear. The English, the French, and
even our own, are nothing but modifications of that fundamental
principle. Exceedingly clever fellow!"
"Bottom!" sang out one of the men standing near the derrick and watching
the operations.
The Captain and the Lieutenant immediately advanced to question him.
"What's the depth, Coleman?" asked the Lieutenant.
"21,762 feet," was the prompt reply, which Brownson immediately
inscribed in his note-book, handing a duplicate to the Captain.
"All right, Lieutenant," observed the Captain, after a moment's
inspection of the figures. "While I enter it in the log, you haul the
line aboard. To do so, I need hardly remind you, is a task involving
care and patience. In spite of all our gallant little donkey engine can
do, it's a six hours job at least. Meanwhile, the Chief Engineer had
better give orders for firing up, so that we may be ready to start as
soon as you're through. It's now close on to four bells, and with your
permission I shall turn in. Let me be called at three. Good night!"
"Goodnight, Captain!" replied Brownson, who spent the next two hours
pacing backward and forward on the quarter deck, watching the hauling in
of the sounding line, and occasionally casting a glance towards all
quarters of the sky.
It was a glorious night. The innumerable stars glittered with the
brilliancy of the purest gems. The ship, hove to in order to take the
soundings, swung gently on the faintly heaving ocean breast. You felt
you were in a tropical clime, for, though no breath fanned your cheek,
your senses easily detected the delicious odor of a distant garden of
sweet roses. The sea sparkled with phosphorescence. Not a sound was
heard except the panting of the hard-worked little donkey-engine and the
whirr of the line as it came up taut and dripping from the ocean depths.
The lamp, hanging from the mast, threw a bright glare on deck,
presenting the strongest contrast with the black shadows, firm and
motionless as marble. The 11th day of December was now near its last
hour.
The steamer was the Susquehanna, a screw, of the United States Navy,
4,000 in tonnage, and carrying 20 guns. She had been detached to take
soundings between the Pacific coast and the Sandwich Islands, the
initiatory movement towards laying down an Ocean Cable, which the
Pacific Cable Company contemplated finally extending to China. She lay
just now a few hundred miles directly south of San Diego, an old Spanish
town in southwestern California, and the point which is expected to be
the terminus of the great Texas and Pacific Railroad.
The Captain, John Bloomsbury by name, but better known as 'High-Low
Jack' from his great love of that game--the only one he was ever known
to play--was a near relation of our old friend Colonel Bloomsbury of the
Baltimore Gun Club. Of a good Kentucky family, and educated at
Annapolis, he had passed his meridian without ever being heard of, when
suddenly the news that he had run the gauntlet in a little gunboat past
the terrible batteries of Island Number Ten, amidst a perfect storm of
shell, grape and canister discharged at less than a hundred yards
distance, burst on the American nation on the sixth of April, 1862, and
inscribed his name at once in deep characters on the list of the giants
of the Great War. But war had never been his vocation. With the return
of peace, he had sought and obtained employment on the Western Coast
Survey, where every thing he did he looked on as a labor of love. The
Sounding Expedition he had particularly coveted, and, once entered upon
it, he discharged his duties with characteristic energy.
He could not have had more favorable weather than the present for a
successful performance of the nice and delicate investigations of
sounding. His vessel had even been fortunate enough to have lain
altogether out of the track of the terrible wind storm already alluded
to, which, starting from somewhere southwest of the Sierra Madre, had
swept away every vestige of mist from the summits of the Rocky Mountains
and, by revealing the Moon in all her splendor, had enabled Belfast to
send the famous despatch announcing that he had seen the Projectile.
Every feature of the expedition was, in fact, advancing so favorably
that the Captain expected to be able, in a month or two, to submit to
the P.C. Company a most satisfactory report of his labors.
Cyrus W. Field, the life and soul of the whole enterprise, flushed with
honors still in full bloom (the Atlantic Telegraph Cable having been
just laid), could congratulate himself with good reason on having found
a treasure in the Captain. High-Low Jack was the congenial spirit by
whose active and intelligent aid he promised himself the pleasure of
seeing before long the whole Pacific Ocean covered with a vast
reticulation of electric cables. The practical part, therefore, being in
such safe hands, Mr. Field could remain with a quiet conscience in
Washington, New York or London, seeing after the financial part of the
grand undertaking, worthy of the Nineteenth Century, worthy of the Great
Republic, and eminently worthy of the illustrious CYRUS W. himself!
As already mentioned, the Susquehanna lay a few hundred miles south
of San Diego, or, to be more accurate, in 27 deg. 7' North Latitude and 118 deg.
37' West Longitude (Greenwich).
It was now a little past midnight. The Moon, in her last quarter, was
just beginning to peep over the eastern horizon. Lieutenant Brownson,
leaving the quarter deck, had gone to the forecastle, where he found a
crowd of officers talking together earnestly and directing their glasses
towards her disc. Even here, out on the ocean, the Queen of the night,
was as great an object of attraction as on the North American Continent
generally, where, that very night and that very hour, at least 40
million pairs of eyes were anxiously gazing at her. Apparently forgetful
that even the very best of their glasses could no more see the
Projectile than angulate Sirius, the officers held them fast to their
eyes for five minutes at a time, and then took them away only to talk
with remarkable fluency on what they had not discovered.
"Any sign of them yet, gentlemen?" asked Brownson gaily as he joined the
group. "It's now pretty near time for them to put in an appearance.
They're gone ten days I should think."
"They're there, Lieutenant! not a doubt of it!" cried a young midshipman,
fresh from Annapolis, and of course "throughly posted" in the latest
revelations of Astronomy. "I feel as certain of their being there as I
am of our being here on the forecastle of the Susquehanna!"
"I must agree with you of course, Mr. Midshipman," replied Brownson
with a slight smile; "I have no grounds whatever for contradicting you."
"Neither have I," observed another officer, the surgeon of the vessel.
"The Projectile was to have reached the Moon when at her full, which was
at midnight on the 5th. To-day was the 11th. This gives them six days of
clear light--time enough in all conscience not only to land safely but
to install themselves quite comfortably in their new home. In fact, I
see them there already--"
"In my mind's eye, Horatio!" laughed one of the group. "Though the Doc
wears glasses, he can see more than any ten men on board."
--"Already"--pursued the Doctor, heedless of the interruption. "Scene,
a stony valley near a Selenite stream; the Projectile on the right, half
buried in volcanic scoriae, but apparently not much the worse for the
wear; ring mountains, craters, sharp peaks, etc. all around; old MAC
discovered taking observations with his levelling staff; BARBICAN
perched on the summit of a sharp pointed rock, writing up his note-book;
ARDAN, eye-glass on nose, hat under arm, legs apart, puffing at his
Imperador, like a--"
--"A locomotive!" interrupted the young Midshipman, his excitable
imagination so far getting the better of him as to make him forget his
manners. He had just finished Locke's famous MOON HOAX, and his brain
was still full of its pictures. "In the background," he went on, "can be
seen thousands of Vespertiliones-Homines or Man-Bats, in all the
various attitudes of curiosity, alarm, or consternation; some of them
peeping around the rocks, some fluttering from peak to peak, all
gibbering a language more or less resembling the notes of birds. Enter
LUNATICO, King of the Selenites--"
"Excuse us, Mr. Midshipman," interrupted Brownson with an easy smile,
"Locke's authority may have great weight among the young Middies at
Annapolis, but it does not rank very high at present in the estimation
of practical scientists." This rebuff administered to the conceited
little Midshipman, a rebuff which the Doctor particularly relished,
Brownson continued: "Gentlemen, we certainly know nothing whatever
regarding our friends' fate; guessing gives no information. How we ever
are to hear from the Moon until we are connected with it by a lunar
cable, I can't even imagine. The probability is that we shall never--"
"Excuse me, Lieutenant," interrupted the unrebuffed little Midshipman;
"Can't Barbican write?"
A shout of derisive comments greeted this question.
"Certainly he can write, and send his letter by the Pony Express!" cried
one.
"A Postal Card would be cheaper!" cried another.
"The New York Herald will send a reporter after it!" was the
exclamation of a third.
"Keep cool, just keep cool, gentlemen," persisted the little Midshipman,
not in the least abashed by the uproarious hilarity excited by his
remarks. "I asked if Barbican couldn't write. In that question I see
nothing whatever to laugh at. Can't a man write without being obliged to
send his letters?"
"This is all nonsense," said the Doctor. "What's the use of a man
writing to you if he can't send you what he writes?"
"What's the use of his sending it to you if he can have it read without
that trouble?" answered the little Midshipman in a confident tone. "Is
there not a telescope at Long's Peak? Doesn't it bring the Moon within a
few miles of the Rocky Mountains, and enable us to see on her surface,
objects as small as nine feet in diameter? Well! What's to prevent
Barbican and his friends from constructing a gigantic alphabet? If they
write words of even a few hundred yards and sentences a mile or two
long, what is to prevent us from reading them? Catch the idea now, eh?"
They did catch the idea, and heartily applauded the little Middy for his
smartness. Even the Doctor saw a certain kind of merit in it, and
Brownson acknowledged it to be quite feasible. In fact, expanding on it,
the Lieutenant assured his hearers that, by means of large parabolic
reflectors, luminous groups of rays could be dispatched from the Earth,
of sufficient brightness to establish direct communication even with
Venus or Mars, where these rays would be quite as visible as the planet
Neptune is from the Earth. He even added that those brilliant points of
light, which have been quite frequently observed in Mars and Venus, are
perhaps signals made to the Earth by the inhabitants of these planets.
He concluded, however, by observing that, though we might by these means
succeed in obtaining news from the Moon, we could not possibly send any
intelligence back in return, unless indeed the Selenites had at their
disposal optical instruments at least as good as ours.
All agreed that this was very true, and, as is generally the case when
one keeps all the talk to himself, the conversation now assumed so
serious a turn that for some time it was hardly worth recording.
At last the Chief Engineer, excited by some remark that had been made,
observed with much earnestness:
"You may say what you please, gentlemen, but I would willingly give my
last dollar to know what has become of those brave men! Have they done
anything? Have they seen anything? I hope they have. But I should dearly
like to know. Ever so little success would warrant a repetition of the
great experiment. The Columbiad is still to the good in Florida, as it
will be for many a long day. There are millions of men to day as curious
as I am upon the subject. Therefore it will be only a question of mere
powder and bullets if a cargo of visitors is not sent to the Moon every
time she passes our zenith.
"Marston would be one of the first of them," observed Brownson, lighting
his cigar.
"Oh, he would have plenty of company!" cried the Midshipman. "I should
be delighted to go if he'd only take me."
"No doubt you would, Mr. Midshipman," said Brownson, "the wise men, you
know, are not all dead yet."
"Nor the fools either, Lieutenant," growled old Frisby, the fourth
officer, getting tired of the conversation.
"There is no question at all about it," observed another; "every time a
Projectile started, it would take off as many as it could carry."
"I wish it would only start often enough to improve the breed!" growled
old Frisby.
"I have no doubt whatever," added the Chief Engineer, "that the thing
would get so fashionable at last that half the inhabitants of the Earth
would take a trip to the Moon."
"I should limit that privilege strictly to some of our friends in
Washington," said old Frisby, whose temper had been soured probably by a
neglect to recognize his long services; "and most of them I should by
all means insist on sending to the Moon. Every month I would ram a whole
raft of them into the Columbiad, with a charge under them strong enough
to blow them all to the--But--Hey!--what in creation's that?"
Whilst the officer was speaking, his companions had suddenly caught a
sound in the air which reminded them immediately of the whistling scream
of a Lancaster shell. At first they thought the steam was escaping
somewhere, but, looking upwards, they saw that the strange noise
proceeded from a ball of dazzling brightness, directly over their heads,
and evidently falling towards them with tremendous velocity. Too
frightened to say a word, they could only see that in its light the
whole ship blazed like fireworks, and the whole sea glittered like a
silver lake. Quicker than tongue can utter, or mind can conceive, it
flashed before their eyes for a second, an enormous bolide set on fire
by friction with the atmosphere, and gleaming in its white heat like a
stream of molten iron gushing straight from the furnace. For a second
only did they catch its flash before their eyes; then striking the
bowsprit of the vessel, which it shivered into a thousand pieces, it
vanished in the sea in an instant with a hiss, a scream, and a roar, all
equally indescribable. For some time the utmost confusion reigned on
deck. With eyes too dazzled to see, ears still ringing with the
frightful combination of unearthly sounds, faces splashed with floods of
sea water, and noses stifled with clouds of scalding steam, the crew of
the Susquehanna could hardly realize that their marvellous escape by a
few feet from instant and certain destruction was an accomplished fact,
not a frightful dream. They were still engaged in trying to open their
eyes and to get the hot water out of their ears, when they suddenly
heard the trumpet voice of Captain Bloomsbury crying, as he stood half
dressed on the head of the cabin stairs:
"What's up, gentlemen? In heaven's name, what's up?"
The little Midshipman had been knocked flat by the concussion and
stunned by the uproar. But before any body else could reply, his voice
was heard, clear and sharp, piercing the din like an arrow:
"It's THEY, Captain! Didn't I tell you so?"