The hauling in was begun at 6 p.m., and was not terminated before midnight.
“We will try again tomorrow,” said J. T. Maston as he stepped on to the deck of the corvette.
“Yes,” answered Captain Blomsberry.
“And in another place.”
“Yes.”
J. T. Maston did not yet doubt of his ultimate success, but his companions, who were no longer intoxicated with the animation of the first few hours, already took in all the difficulties of the enterprise. What seemed easy at San Francisco in open ocean appeared almost impossible. The chances of success diminished in a large proportion, and it was to chance alone that the finding of the projectile had to be left.
The next day, the 24th of December, notwithstanding the fatigues of the preceding day, operations were resumed. The corvette moved some minutes farther west, and the apparatus, provisioned with air again, took the same explorers to the depths of the ocean.
All that day was passed in a fruitless search. The bed of the sea was a desert. The day of the 25th brought no result, neither did that of the 26th.
It was disheartening. They thought of the unfortunate men shut up for twenty-six days in the projectile. Perhaps they were all feeling the first symptoms of suffocation, even if they had escaped the dangers of their fall. The air was getting exhausted, and doubtless with the air their courage and spirits.
“The air very likely, but their courage never,” said J. T. Maston.
On the 28th, after two days’ search, all hope was lost. This bullet was an atom in the immensity of the sea! They must give up the hope of finding it.
Still J. T. Maston would not hear about leaving. He would not abandon the place without having at least found the tomb of his friends. But Captain Blomsberry could not stay on obstinately, and notwithstanding the opposition of the worthy secretary, he was obliged to give orders to set sail.
On the 29th of December, at 9 a.m., the Susquehanna, heading northeast, began to return to the bay of San Francisco.
It was 10 a.m. The corvette was leaving slowly and as if with regret the scene of the catastrophe, when the sailor at the masthead, who was on the lookout, called out all at once—
“A buoy on the lee bow!”
The officers looked in the direction indicated. They saw through their telescopes the object signalled, which did look like one of those buoys used for marking the openings of bays or rivers; but, unlike them, a flag floating in the wind surmounted a cone which emerged five or six feet. This buoy shone in the sunshine as if made of plates of silver.
The commander, Blomsberry, J. T. Maston, and the delegates of the Gun Club ascended the footbridge and examined the object thus drifting on the waves.
All looked with feverish anxiety, but in silence. None of them dared utter the thought that came into all their minds.
The corvette approached to within two cables’ length of the object.
A shudder ran through the whole crew.
The flag was an American one!
At that moment a veritable roar was heard. It was the worthy J. T. Maston, who had fallen in a heap; forgetting on the one hand that he had only an iron hook for one arm, and on the other that a simple gutta-percha cap covered his cranium-box, he had given himself a formidable blow.
They rushed towards him and picked him up. They recalled him to life. And what were his first words?
“Ah! triple brutes! quadruple idiots! quintuple boobies that we are!”
“What is the matter?” everyone round him exclaimed.
“What the matter is?”
“Speak, can’t you?”
“It is, imbeciles,” shouted the terrible secretary, “it is the bullet only weighs 19,250 lbs.!”
“Well?”
“And it displaces 28 tons, or 56,000 lbs., consequently it floats!”
Ah! how that worthy man did underline the verb “to float!” And it was the truth! All, yes! all these savants had forgotten this fundamental law, that in consequence of its specific lightness the projectile, after having been dragged by its fall to the greatest depths of the ocean, had naturally returned to the surface; and now it was floating tranquilly whichever way the wind carried them.
The boats had been lowered. J. T. Maston and his friends rushed into them. The excitement was at its highest point. All hearts palpitated whilst the boats rowed towards the projectile. What did it contain—the living or the dead? The living. Yes! unless death had struck down Barbicane and his companions since they had hoisted the flag!
Profound silence reigned in the boats. All hearts stopped beating. Eyes no longer performed their office. One of the port-lights of the projectile was opened. Some pieces of glass remaining in the frame proved that it had been broken. This port-light was situated actually five feet above water.
A boat drew alongside—that of J. T. Maston. He rushed to the broken window.
At that moment the joyful and clear voice of Michel Ardan was heard exclaiming in the accents of victory—“Double blank, Barbicane, double blank!”
Barbicane, Michel Ardan, and Nicholl were playing at dominoes.
XXIII
The End
It will be remembered that immense sympathy accompanied the three travellers upon their departure. If the beginning of their enterprise had caused such excitement in the old and new world, what enthusiasm must welcome their return! Would not those millions of spectators who had invaded the Floridian peninsula rush to meet the sublime adventurers? Would those legions of foreigners from all points of the globe, now in America, leave the Union without seeing Barbicane, Nicholl, and Michel Ardan once more? No, and the ardent passion of the public would worthily respond to the grandeur of the enterprise. Human beings who had left the terrestrial spheroid, who had returned after their strange journey into celestial space, could not fail to be received like the prophet Elijah when he returned to the earth. To see them first, to hear them afterwards, was the general desire.
This desire was to be very
