“Besides,” answered Lieutenant Bronsfield, “we have our exact bearings: north lat. 27° 7′, and west long. 41° 7′.”
“Very well, Mr. Bronsfield,” answered the captain; “with your permission, have the line cut.”
A strong buoy, reinforced by a couple of spars, was thrown out on to the surface of the ocean. The end of the line was solidly struck beneath, and only submitted to the ebb and flow of the surges, so that it would not drift much.
At that moment the engineer came to warn the captain that he had put the pressure on, and they could start. The captain thanked him for his excellent communication. Then he gave N.N.E. as the route. The corvette was put about, and made for the bay of San Francisco with all steam on. It was then 3 a.m.
Two hundred leagues to get over was not much for a quick vessel like the Susquehanna. It got over that distance in thirty-six hours, and on the 14th of December, at 1:27 p.m., she would enter the bay of San Francisco.
At the sight of this vessel of the national navy arriving with all speed on, her bowsprit gone, and her mainmast propped up, public curiosity was singularly excited. A compact crowd was soon assembled on the quays awaiting the landing.
After weighing anchor Captain Blomsberry and Lieutenant Bronsfield got down into an eight-oared boat which carried them rapidly to the land.
They jumped out on the quay.
“The telegraph-office?” they asked, without answering one of the thousand questions that were showered upon them.
The port inspector guided them himself to the telegraph-office, amidst an immense crowd of curious people.
Blomsberry and Bronsfield went into the office whilst the crowd crushed against the door.
A few minutes later one message was sent in four different directions:—1st, to the Secretary of the Navy, Washington; 2nd, to the Vice-President of the Gun Club, Baltimore; 3rd, to the Honourable J. T. Maston, Long’s Peak, Rocky Mountains; 4th, to the Sub-Director of the Cambridge Observatory, Massachusetts.
It ran as follows:—
“In north lat. 20° 7′, and west long. 41° 7′, the projectile of the Columbiad fell into the Pacific, on December 12th, at 1:17 a.m. Send instructions.”
Five minutes afterwards the whole town of San Francisco knew the tidings. Before 6 p.m. the different States of the Union had intelligence of the supreme catastrophe. After midnight, through the cable, the whole of Europe knew the result of the great American enterprise.
It would be impossible to describe the effect produced throughout the world by the unexpected news.
On receipt of the telegram the Secretary of the Navy telegraphed to the Susquehanna to keep under fire, and wait in the bay of San Francisco. She was to be ready to set sail day or night.
The Observatory of Cambridge had an extraordinary meeting, and, with the serenity which distinguishes scientific bodies, it peacefully discussed the scientific part of the question.
At the Gun Club there was an explosion. All the artillerymen were assembled. The Vice-President, the Honourable Wilcome, was just reading the premature telegram by which Messrs. Maston and Belfast announced that the projectile had just been perceived in the gigantic reflector of Long’s Peak. This communication informed them also that the bullet, retained by the attraction of the moon, was playing the part of sub-satellite in the solar world.
The truth on this subject is now known.
However, upon the arrival of Blomsberry’s message, which so formally contradicted J. T. Maston’s telegram, two parties were formed in the bosom of the Gun Club. On the one side were members who admitted the fall of the projectile, and consequently the return of the travellers. On the other were those who, holding by the observations at Long’s Peak, concluded that the commander of the Susquehanna was mistaken. According to the latter, the pretended projectile was only a bolis, nothing but a bolis, a shooting star, which in its fall had fractured the corvette. Their argument could not very well be answered, because the velocity with which it was endowed had made its observation very difficult. The commander of the Susquehanna and his officers might certainly have been mistaken in good faith. One argument certainly was in their favour: if the projectile had fallen on the earth it must have touched the terrestrial spheroid upon the 27th degree of north latitude, and, taking into account the time that had elapsed, and the earth’s movement of rotation, between the 41st and 42nd degree of west longitude.
However that might be, it was unanimously decided in the Gun Club that Blomsberry’s brother Bilsby and Major Elphinstone should start at once for San Francisco and give their advice about the means of dragging up the projectile from the depths of the ocean.
These men started without losing an instant, and the railway which was soon to cross the whole of Central America took them to St. Louis, where rapid mail-coaches awaited them.
Almost at the same moment that the Secretary of the Navy, the Vice-President of the Gun Club, and the Sub-Director of the Observatory received the telegram from San Francisco, the Honourable J. T. Maston felt the most violent emotion of his whole existence—an emotion not even equalled by that he had experienced when his celebrated cannon was blown up, and which, like it, nearly cost him his life.
It will be remembered that the Secretary of the Gun Club had started some minutes after the projectile—and almost as quickly—for the station of Long’s Peak in the Rocky Mountains. The learned J. Belfast, Director of the Cambridge Observatory, accompanied him. Arrived at the station the two friends had summarily installed themselves, and no longer left the summit of their enormous telescope.
We know that this gigantic instrument had been set up on the reflecting system, called “front view” by the English. This arrangement only gave one reflection of objects, and consequently made the view much clearer. The result was that J. T. Maston and Belfast,
