From the Earth to the Moon, Jules Verne [online e book reading .TXT] 📗
- Author: Jules Verne
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“Enough! enough!” cried some.
“Drive the intruder off!” shouted others.
“Turn him out!” roared the exasperated crowd.
But he, holding firmly on to the platform, did not budge an inch, and let the storm pass on, which would soon have assumed formidable proportions, if Michel Ardan had not quieted it by a gesture. He was too chivalrous to abandon his opponent in an apparent extremity.
“You wished to say a few more words?” he asked, in a pleasant voice.
“Yes, a thousand; or rather, no, only one! If you persevere in your enterprise, you must be a–-”
“Very rash person! How can you treat me as such? me, who have demanded a cylindro-conical projectile, in order to prevent turning round and round on my way like a squirrel?”
“But, unhappy man, the dreadful recoil will smash you to pieces at your starting.”
“My dear contradictor, you have just put your finger upon the true and only difficulty; nevertheless, I have too good an opinion of the industrial genius of the Americans not to believe that they will succeed in overcoming it.”
“But the heat developed by the rapidity of the projectile in crossing the strata of air?”
“Oh! the walls are thick, and I shall soon have crossed the atmosphere.”
“But victuals and water?”
“I have calculated for a twelvemonth’s supply, and I shall be only four days on the journey.”
“But for air to breathe on the road?”
“I shall make it by a chemical process.”
“But your fall on the moon, supposing you ever reach it?”
“It will be six times less dangerous than a sudden fall upon the earth, because the weight will be only one-sixth as great on the surface of the moon.”
“Still it will be enough to smash you like glass!”
“What is to prevent my retarding the shock by means of rockets conveniently placed, and lighted at the right moment?”
“But after all, supposing all difficulties surmounted, all obstacles removed, supposing everything combined to favor you, and granting that you may arrive safe and sound in the moon, how will you come back?”
“I am not coming back!”
At this reply, almost sublime in its very simplicity, the assembly became silent. But its silence was more eloquent than could have been its cries of enthusiasm. The unknown profited by the opportunity and once more protested:
“You will inevitably kill yourself!” he cried; “and your death will be that of a madman, useless even to science!”
“Go on, my dear unknown, for truly your prophecies are most agreeable!”
“It really is too much!” cried Michel Ardan’s adversary. “I do not know why I should continue so frivolous a discussion! Please yourself about this insane expedition! We need not trouble ourselves about you!”
“Pray don’t stand upon ceremony!”
“No! another person is responsible for your act.”
“Who, may I ask?” demanded Michel Ardan in an imperious tone.
“The ignoramus who organized this equally absurd and impossible experiment!”
The attack was direct. Barbicane, ever since the interference of the unknown, had been making fearful efforts of self-control; now, however, seeing himself directly attacked, he could restrain himself no longer. He rose suddenly, and was rushing upon the enemy who thus braved him to the face, when all at once he found himself separated from him.
The platform was lifted by a hundred strong arms, and the president of the Gun Club shared with Michel Ardan triumphal honors. The shield was heavy, but the bearers came in continuous relays, disputing, struggling, even fighting among themselves in their eagerness to lend their shoulders to this demonstration.
However, the unknown had not profited by the tumult to quit his post. Besides he could not have done it in the midst of that compact crowd. There he held on in the front row with crossed arms, glaring at President Barbicane.
The shouts of the immense crowd continued at their highest pitch throughout this triumphant march. Michel Ardan took it all with evident pleasure. His face gleamed with delight. Several times the platform seemed seized with pitching and rolling like a weatherbeaten ship. But the two heros of the meeting had good sea-legs. They never stumbled; and their vessel arrived without dues at the port of Tampa Town.
Michel Ardan managed fortunately to escape from the last embraces of his vigorous admirers. He made for the Hotel Franklin, quickly gained his chamber, and slid under the bedclothes, while an army of a hundred thousand men kept watch under his windows.
During this time a scene, short, grave, and decisive, took place between the mysterious personage and the president of the Gun Club.
Barbicane, free at last, had gone straight at his adversary.
“Come!” he said shortly.
The other followed him on the quay; and the two presently found themselves alone at the entrance of an open wharf on Jones’ Fall.
The two enemies, still mutually unknown, gazed at each other.
“Who are you?” asked Barbicane.
“Captain Nicholl!”
“So I suspected. Hitherto chance has never thrown you in my way.”
“I am come for that purpose.”
“You have insulted me.”
“Publicly!”
“And you will answer to me for this insult?”
“At this very moment.”
“No! I desire that all that passes between us shall be secret. Their is a wood situated three miles from Tampa, the wood of Skersnaw. Do you know it?”
“I know it.”
“Will you be so good as to enter it tomorrow morning at five o’clock, on one side?”
“Yes! if you will enter at the other side at the same hour.”
“And you will not forget your rifle?” said Barbicane.
“No more than you will forget yours?” replied Nicholl.
These words having been coldly spoken, the president of the Gun Club and the captain parted. Barbicane returned to his lodging; but instead of snatching a few hours of repose, he passed the night in endeavoring to discover a means of evading the recoil of the projectile, and resolving the difficult problem proposed by Michel Ardan during the discussion at the meeting.
HOW A FRENCHMAN MANAGES AN AFFAIR
While the contract of this duel was being discussed by the president and the captain— this dreadful, savage duel, in which each adversary became a man-hunter— Michel Ardan was resting from the fatigues of his triumph. Resting is hardly an appropriate expression, for American beds rival marble or granite tables for hardness.
Ardan was sleeping, then, badly enough, tossing about between the cloths which served him for sheets, and he was dreaming of making a more comfortable couch in his projectile when a frightful noise disturbed his dreams. Thundering blows shook his door. They seemed to be caused by some iron instrument. A great deal of loud talking was distinguishable in this racket, which was rather too early in the morning. “Open the door,” some one shrieked, “for heaven’s sake!” Ardan saw no reason for complying with a demand so roughly expressed. However, he got up and opened the door just as it was giving way before the blows of this determined visitor. The secretary of the Gun Club burst into the room. A bomb could not have made more noise or have entered the room with less ceremony.
“Last night,” cried J. T. Maston, ex abrupto, “our president was publicly insulted during the meeting. He provoked his adversary, who is none other than Captain Nicholl! They are fighting this morning in the wood of Skersnaw. I heard all the particulars from the mouth of Barbicane himself. If he is killed, then our scheme is at an end. We must prevent his duel; and one man alone has enough influence over Barbicane to stop him, and that man is Michel Ardan.”
While J. T. Maston was speaking, Michel Ardan, without interrupting him, had hastily put on his clothes; and, in less than two minutes, the two friends were making for the suburbs of Tampa Town with rapid strides.
It was during this walk that Maston told Ardan the state of the case. He told him the real causes of the hostility between Barbicane and Nicholl; how it was of old date, and why, thanks to unknown friends, the president and the captain had, as yet, never met face to face. He added that it arose simply from a rivalry between iron plates and shot, and, finally, that the scene at the meeting was only the long-wished-for opportunity for Nicholl to pay off an old grudge.
Nothing is more dreadful than private duels in America. The two adversaries attack each other like wild beasts. Then it is that they might well covet those wonderful properties of the Indians of the prairies— their quick intelligence, their ingenious cunning, their scent of the enemy. A single mistake, a moment’s hesitation, a single false step may cause death. On these occasions Yankees are often accompanied by their dogs, and keep up the struggle for hours.
“What demons you are!” cried Michel Ardan, when his companion had depicted this scene to him with much energy.
“Yes, we are,” replied J. T. modestly; “but we had better make haste.”
Though Michel Ardan and he had crossed the plains still wet with dew, and had taken the shortest route over creeks and ricefields, they could not reach Skersnaw in under five hours and a half.
Barbicane must have passed the border half an hour ago.
There was an old bushman working there, occupied in selling fagots from trees that had been leveled by his axe.
Maston ran toward him, saying, “Have you seen a man go into the wood, armed with a rifle? Barbicane, the president, my best friend?”
The worthy secretary of the Gun Club thought that his president must be known by all the world. But the bushman did not seem to understand him.
“A hunter?” said Ardan.
“A hunter? Yes,” replied the bushman.
“Long ago?”
“About an hour.”
“Too late!” cried Maston.
“Have you heard any gunshots?” asked Ardan.
“No!”
“Not one?”
“Not one! that hunter did not look as if he knew how to hunt!”
“What is to be done?” said Maston.
“We must go into the wood, at the risk of getting a ball which is not intended for us.”
“Ah!” cried Maston, in a tone which could not be mistaken, “I would rather have twenty balls in my own head than one in Barbicane’s.”
“Forward, then,” said Ardan, pressing his companion’s hand.
A few moments later the two friends had disappeared in the copse. It was a dense thicket, in which rose huge cypresses, sycamores, tulip-trees, olives, tamarinds, oaks, and magnolias. These different trees had interwoven their branches into an inextricable maze, through which the eye could not penetrate. Michel Ardan and Maston walked side by side in silence through the tall grass, cutting themselves a path through the strong creepers, casting curious glances on the bushes, and momentarily expecting to hear the sound of rifles. As for the traces which Barbicane ought to have left of his passage through the wood, there was not a vestige of them visible: so they followed the barely perceptible paths along which Indians had tracked some enemy, and which the dense foliage darkly overshadowed.
After an hour spent in vain pursuit the two stopped in intensified anxiety.
“It must be all over,” said Maston, discouraged. “A man like Barbicane would not dodge with his enemy, or ensnare him, would not even maneuver! He is too open, too brave. He has gone straight ahead, right into the danger, and doubtless far enough from the bushman for the wind to prevent his hearing the report of the rifles.”
“But surely,” replied Michel Ardan, “since we entered the wood we should have heard!”
“And what if we came too late?” cried Maston in tones of despair.
For once Ardan had no reply to make, he and Maston resuming their walk in silence. From time to time, indeed, they raised great shouts, calling alternately Barbicane and
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