From the Earth to the Moon, Jules Verne [beach books .TXT] 📗

kind of work required great skill and constant attention on the part of the workmen; more than one digging under the wheel was dangerous, and some were even mortally wounded by the splinters of stone; but their energy did not slacken for a moment by day nor night; by day, when the sun’s rays sent the thermometer up to 99° on the calcined planes; by night, under the white waves of electric light, the noise of the pickaxe on the rock, the blasting and the machines, together with the wreaths of smoke scattered through the air, traced a circle of terror round Stony Hill, which the herds of buffaloes and the detachments of Seminoles never dared to pass.

In the meantime the work regularly advanced; steam-cranes speeded the carrying away of the rubbish; of unexpected obstacles there were none; all the difficulties had been foreseen and guarded against.

When the first month had gone by the well had attained the depth assigned for the time⁠—i.e., 112 feet. In December this depth was doubled, and tripled in January. During February the workmen had to contend against a sheet of water which sprang from the ground. They were obliged to employ powerful pumps and apparatus of compressed air to drain it off, so as to close up the orifice from which it issued, just as leaks are caulked on board ship. At last they got the better of these unwelcome springs, only in consequence of the loosening of the soil the wheel partially gave way, and there was a landslip. The frightful force of this bricked circle, more than 400 feet high, may be imagined! This accident cost the life of several workmen. Three weeks had to be taken up in propping the stone revetment and making the wheel solid again. But, thanks to the skill of the engineer and the power of the machines, it was all set right, and the boring continued.

No fresh incident henceforth stopped the progress of the work, and on the 10th of June, twenty days before the expiration of the delay fixed by Barbicane, the well, quite bricked round, had reached the depth of 900 feet. At the bottom the masonry rested upon a massive block, thirty feet thick, whilst at the top it was on a level with the soil.

President Barbicane and the members of the Gun Club warmly congratulated the engineer Murchison; his cyclopean work had been accomplished with extraordinary rapidity.

During these eight months Barbicane did not leave Stony Hill for a minute; whilst he narrowly watched over the boring operations, he took every precaution to insure the health and well-being of his workmen, and he was fortunate enough to avoid the epidemics common to large agglomerations of men, and so disastrous in those regions of the globe exposed to tropical influence.

It is true that several workmen paid with their lives for the carelessness engendered by these dangerous occupations; but such deplorable misfortunes cannot be avoided, and these are details that Americans pay very little attention to. They are more occupied with humanity in general than with individuals in particular. However, Barbicane professed the contrary principles, and applied them upon every occasion. Thanks to his care, to his intelligence and respectful intervention in difficult cases, to his prodigious and humane wisdom, the average of catastrophes did not exceed that of cities on the other side of the Atlantic, amongst others those of France, where they count about one accident upon every 200,000 francs of work.

The Ceremony of the Casting

During the eight months that were employed in the operation of boring the preparatory works of the casting had been conducted simultaneously with extreme rapidity; a stranger arriving at Stony Hill would have been much surprised at what he saw there.

Six hundred yards from the well, and standing in a circle round it as a central point, were 1,200 furnaces, each six feet wide and three yards apart. The line made by these 1,200 furnaces was two miles long. They were all built on the same model, with high quadrangular chimneys, and had a singular effect. J. T. Maston thought the architectural arrangement superb. It reminded him of the monuments at Washington. He thought there was nothing finer in the world, not even in Greece, where he acknowledged never to have been.

It will be remembered that at their third meeting the committee decided to use cast-iron for the Columbiad, and in particular the grey description. This metal is, in fact, the most tenacious, ductile, and malleable, suitable for all moulding operations, and when smelted with pit coal it is of superior quality for engine-cylinders, hydraulic presses, etc.

But cast-iron, if it has undergone a single fusion, is rarely homogeneous enough; and it is by means of a second fusion that it is purified, refined, and dispossessed of its last earthly deposits.

Before being forwarded to Tampa Town, the iron ore, smelted in the great furnaces of Goldspring, and put in contact with coal and silicium heated to a high temperature, was transformed into cast-iron. After this first operation the metal was taken to Stony Hill. But there were 136 millions of pounds of cast-iron, a bulk too expensive to be sent by railway; the price of transport would have doubled that of the raw material. It appeared preferable to freight vessels at New York and to load them with the iron in bars; no less than sixty-eight vessels of 1,000 tons were required, quite a fleet, which on May 3rd left New York, took the Ocean route, coasted the American shores, entered the Bahama Channel, doubled the point of Florida, and on the 10th of the same month entered the Bay of Espiritu-Santo and anchored safely in the port of Tampa Town. There the vessels were unloaded and their cargo carried by railway to Stony Hill, and about the middle of January the enormous mass of metal was delivered at its destination.

It will easily be understood that 1,200 furnaces were not too