From the Earth to the Moon (4 page)

In front of the desk, benches arranged in zigzags like the circumvallations of a fortification, formed a series of bastions and curtains in which the members of the Gun Club took their places, and that evening it could have been truly said that the ramparts were manned. The members knew their president well enough to be sure that he would not have disturbed them without a reason of the greatest importance.

Impey Barbicane was a calm, cold, austere man of forty, with an eminently serious and concentrated mind; accurate as a chronometer, with a robust constitution and an unshakable character; adventurous though not chivalrous, bringing practical ideas into even his most daring ventures; a perfect example of the New Englander, the colonizing northerner, the descendant of the Roundheads who were so baneful to the Stuarts, the implacable enemy of the southern gentlemen, those American Cavaliers. In short, he was a dyed-in-the-wool Yankee.

He had made a fortune in the lumber business. When he was placed in charge of the artillery during the war, he showed himself to be fertile in inventions. Bold in his ideas, he made great contributions to progress in artillery, and gave a powerful impetus to experimental work.

He was a man of average size, but there was one thing about him that made him a rare exception in the Gun Club: all his limbs were intact. His strongly marked features seemed to have been drawn with a square and a scriber. If it is true that, to discern a man’s instincts, one must look at him from the side, Barbicane’s profile gave all the signs of determination, boldness, and coolheadedness.

He was now sitting motionless and silent in his chair,
thoughtful, apparently oblivious to everything around him, sheltered beneath his stovepipe hat, one of those black silk cylinders that seem to be screwed onto American skulls.

His colleagues were talking loudly around him without distracting him. They questioned one another, made suppositions, scrutinized their president, and vainly tried to solve the mystery of his imperturbable face.

When the detonating clock in the meeting hall struck eight, Barbicane suddenly stood up as though he were moved by a spring. A hush fell over the hall and he began speaking in a rather grandiloquent tone:

“Worthy colleagues, for too long now a sterile peace has kept the members of the Gun Club in deplorable idleness. After a period of several years that were filled with action, we had to abandon our work and stop short on the road to progress. I do not hesitate to say openly that any war which would bring our weapons back to us would be welcome.”

“Yes, war!” cried the impetuous J. T. Maston.

He was answered by shouts of “Hear, hear!” from all over the hall.

“But under present circumstances, war is impossible,” Barbicane went on, “and despite the hopes of my honorable interrupter, many long years will go by before our cannons again thunder on a battlefield. We must accept this fact and seek another outlet for our restless energy.”

His listeners sensed that he was approaching a crucial point. They redoubled their attention.

“For several months I have been wondering whether, without going outside our specialty, we might not undertake some great experiment worthy of the nineteenth century, and whether progress in ballistics might not enable us to bring it to a successful conclusion. I have reflected,
worked, and calculated, and my studies have convinced me that we must be successful in a project that would seem impractical in any other country. This carefully planned project is the subject of my address to you this evening. It is worthy of you and of the Gun Club’s past, and it cannot fail to make a great noise in the world.”

“A great noise?” asked an excited artilleryman.

“Yes, in the true sense of the word,” replied Barbicane.

“Don’t interrupt!” said several voices.

“Please give me your full attention,” said Barbicane.

A quiver ran through the whole audience. After quickly pulling down his hat more firmly, Barbicane continued his speech in a calm voice:

“There is not one of you, my friends, who has not seen the moon or at least heard of it. Do not be surprised that I should talk to you about the moon. It is perhaps reserved for us to be the Columbuses of that unknown world. If you will understand my plan and do everything in your power to help carry it out, I will lead you in the conquest of the moon, and its name will be added to those of the thirty-six states that form this great nation!”

“Hurrah for the moon!” the Gun Club shouted in a single voice.

“The moon has been intensely studied,” said Barbicane. “Its mass, density, weight, volume, composition, movements, distance, and role in the solar system have been accurately determined. Maps have been drawn of it with a precision that equals or surpasses that of maps of the earth. Beautiful photographs have been taken of it. In a word, we know everything about it that the mathematical sciences, astronomy, geology, and optics can teach us. But so far there has never been any direct communication with it.”

These words were greeted with a surge of interest and surprise.

“Allow me to remind you in a few words of how certain ardent minds set off on imaginary journeys and claimed to have discovered the secrets of our satellite. In the seventeenth century a man named David Fabricius boasted of having seen the inhabitants of the moon with his own eyes. In 1649, a Frenchman, Jean Baudoin, published his
Journey to the World of the Moon, by Domingo Gonzáles, Spanish Adventurer.
At about the same time, Cyrano de Bergerac wrote the account of a lunar expedition that became so popular in France. Later, Fontenelle, another Frenchman—the French are greatly concerned with the moon—wrote
The Plurality of Worlds,
a masterpiece in its time. But the march of science crushes even masterpieces! Some time around 1835, a pamphlet translated from the
New York American
appeared in France. It told how Sir John Herschel, having been sent to the Cape of Good Hope to make some astronomical studies, had brought the moon to an apparent distance of eighty yards with a telescope improved by internal lighting. He was said to have clearly seen caves with hippopotamuses living in them, green mountains fringed with gold lace, sheep with ivory horns, white deer, and inhabitants with membraneous wings like that of a bat. This pamphlet, the work of an American named Locke, caused a great commotion for a time, but it was soon recognized as a hoax, and the French were the first to laugh.”

“Laughing at an American!” cried J. T. Maston. “Why, that’s grounds for war!”

“Be calm, my good friend. Before they laughed, the French were completely taken in by our compatriot. To bring this quick historical sketch to an end, I shall add that Hans Pfaal of Rotterdam, traveling in a balloon filled with a gas drawn from nitrogen and thirty-seven times lighter than hydrogen, reached the moon in nineteen days.
This journey, like those I have previously mentioned, was purely imaginary, but it was the work of a strange, contemplative genius who was also a popular American writer. I am referring to Edgar Allan Poe!”

“Hurrah for Edgar Allan Poe!” shouted the assembly, electrified by his words.

“So much for those purely literary efforts, which are completely incapable of establishing any serious relations with the moon. I must add, however, that several practical minds have tried to enter into communication with it. A few years ago, for example, a German geometer proposed that a committee of scientists be sent to the Steppes of Siberia. There on a vast plain, by means of reflectors, they would lay out immense geometric figures, including the square of the hypotenuse. ‘Any intelligent being,’ said the geometer, ‘will understand the scientific purpose of that figure. The inhabitants of the moon, if there are any, will reply with a similar figure, and once communication has been established it will be easy to create an alphabet that will make it possible to converse with them.’ So said the German geometer, but his plan was not carried out, and so far there has never been a direct link between the earth and its satellite. The feat of creating such a link has been reserved for the practical genius of the American people. The means of accomplishing it is simple, easy, and certain, and it is the subject of the proposal I am about to make to you.”

There was a hubbub, a storm of exclamations. Every member of the audience was captivated and carried away by what Barbicane was saying.

“Listen! Silence!” they shouted from all over the hall.

When the agitation had died down, Barbicane resumed his interrupted speech in a deeper voice:

“You know the progress ballistics has made in recent
years, and how much more greatly firearms would have been perfected if the war had continued. You also know that, practically speaking, the strength of cannons and the expansive power of gunpowder are unlimited. Taking the fact as my starting point, I began to wonder whether, with a sufficiently large cannon, constructed in such a way as to assure the necessary resistance, it might not be possible to shoot a projectile to the moon.”

An “Oh!” of stupefaction burst from a thousand gasping breasts; then there was a moment of silence like the deep calm that precedes a thunderstorm. And there was indeed thunder, but it was a thunder of applause and shouts that shook the hall. Barbicane tried to speak; in vain. Ten minutes went by before he was again able to make himself heard.

“Let me finish,” he said calmly. “I have approached the problem with determination and considered it from every possible angle. From my incontestable calculations I have reached the conclusion that a correctly aimed projectile with an initial velocity of 36,000 feet per second is sure to reach the moon. And so, worthy colleagues, I respectfully propose that we undertake that little experiment!”

I
T WOULD
be impossible to depict the effect produced by these last words. What an uproar! What shouts of “Hurrah!” and “Hip, hip, hurray!” and all the other enthusiastic cheers that are so abundant in the American language! The disorder and commotion were indescribable. Mouths yelled, hands clapped, feet shook the floors of all the rooms. If all the cannons in that artillery museum had been fired at once, the din would not have been more violent. This is not surprising. There are gunners who are almost as noisy as their guns.

Barbicane remained calm in the midst of this wild acclaim. Perhaps he wanted to say a few more words to his colleagues, for his gestures demanded silence and his detonating bell exploded again and again. No one even heard it. He was soon lifted from his seat and carried off in triumph, and then from the hands of his faithful comrades he passed into the arms of an equally excited crowd.

Nothing can astonish an American. The French have often said that “the word ‘impossible’ is not French,” but they have obviously been referring to the wrong language. In America, everything is easy, everything is simple, and mechanical difficulties are dead before they are born. No true Yankee would have allowed himself to see
even the shadow of a difficulty between Barbicane’s plan and its realization. No sooner said than done.

Barbicane’s triumphal march continued into the night. It was a veritable torchlight parade. Irishmen, Germans, Frenchmen, Scotsmen, and all the other heterogeneous people who compose the population of Maryland shouted in their native languages. Hurrahs, vivats, and bravos were mingled in an ineffable burst of feeling.

Then, as though it had understood that all this tumult concerned it, the moon came out and began shining in serene splendor, eclipsing all the flames with its intense radiance. The Americans all looked up at its glowing disk. Some of them waved to it, some called it affectionate names, some sized it up, some shook their fists at it. Between eight o’clock and midnight an optician on Jones Street made a fortune selling telescopes. The crowd stared at the moon through telescopes as though they were staring at a great lady through opera glasses. They treated it casually as if they owned it. It seemed that blonde Phoebe belonged to those bold conquerors and was already part of the territory of the Union. And yet they were planning only to send a projectile to the moon. This is a rather brusque way of establishing relations, even with a satellite, but it is in very common use by civilized nations.

Even at midnight the general enthusiasm had still not begun to wane. It was maintained at an equal level in all classes of the population: politicians, scientists, businessmen, shopkeepers, laborers, intelligent people, and simpletons all felt stirred to their innermost depths. This was to be a national undertaking, so all parts of the city, and even the ships imprisoned in their basins, were overflowing with crowds drunk with joy, gin, and whiskey.
Everyone was conversing, holding forth, discussing, arguing, approving, and applauding, from the gentlemen lolling on the soft benches of barrooms with mugs of sherry cobbler,
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to the boatmen getting drunk on knock-me-downs
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in the dark taverns of Fell’s Point.

Toward two o’clock in the morning the excitement finally died down. Barbicane succeeded in getting home, bruised, battered, and exhausted. Hercules himself would not have been able to withstand such enthusiasm. The crowd gradually deserted the streets and parks. The four railroads that converge at Baltimore scattered the multitude to the four corners of the United States and the city settled down to relative calm.