The Hymn of the Cannonball
The Cambridge Observatory had, in its memorable letter of October 7th, treated the question from an astronomical point of view—the mechanical point had still to be treated. It was then that the practical difficulties would have seemed insurmountable to any other country but America; but there they were looked upon as play.
President Barbicane had, without losing any time, nominated a working committee in the heart of the Gun Club. This committee was in three sittings to elucidate the three great questions of the cannon, the projectile, and the powder. It was composed of four members very learned upon these matters. Barbicane had the casting vote, and with him were associated General Morgan, Major Elphinstone, and, lastly, the inevitable J. T. Maston, to whom were confided the functions of secretary.
On the 8th of October the committee met at President Barbicane’s house, No. 3, Republican-street; as it was important that the stomach should not trouble so important a debate, the four members of the Gun Club took their seats at a table covered with sandwiches and teapots. J. T. Maston immediately screwed his pen on to his steel hook and the business began.
Barbicane opened the meeting as follows:—
“Dear colleagues,” said he, “we have to solve one of the more important problems in ballistics—that greatest of sciences which treats of the movement of projectiles—that is to say, of bodies hurled into space by some power of impulsion and then left to themselves.”
“Oh, ballistics, ballistics!” cried J. T. Maston in a voice of emotion.
“Perhaps,” continued Barbicane, “the most logical thing would be to consecrate this first meeting to discussing the engine.”
“Certainly,” answered General Morgan.
“Nevertheless,” continued Barbicane, “after mature deliberation, it seems to me that the question of the projectile ought to precede that of the cannon, and that the dimensions of the latter ought to depend upon the dimensions of the former.”
J. T. Maston here interrupted the president, and was heard with the attention which his magnificent past career deserved.
“My dear friends,” said he in an inspired tone, “our president is right to give the question of the projectile the precedence of every other; the cannonball we mean to hurl at the moon will be our messenger, our ambassador, and I ask your permission to regard it from an entirely moral point of view.”
This new way of looking at a projectile excited the curiosity of the members of the committee; they therefore listened attentively to the words of J. T. Maston.
“My dear colleagues,” he continued, “I will be brief. I will lay aside the material projectile—the projectile that kills—in order to take up the mathematical projectile—the moral projectile. A cannonball is to me the most brilliant manifestation of human power, and by creating it man has approached nearest to the Creator!”
“Hear, hear!” said Major Elphinstone.
“In fact,” cried the orator, “if God has made the stars and the planets, man has made the cannonball—that criterion of terrestrial speed—that reduction of bodies wandering in space which are really nothing but projectiles. Let Providence claim the speed of electricity, light, the stars, comets, planets, satellites, sound, and wind! But ours is the speed of the cannonball—a hundred times greater than that of trains and the fastest horses!”
J. T. Maston was inspired; his accents became quite lyrical as he chanted the hymn consecrated to the projectile.
“Would you like figures?” continued he; “here are eloquent ones. Take the simple 24 pounder; though it moves 80,000 times slower than electricity, 64,000 times slower than light, 76 times slower than the earth in her movement of translation round the sun, yet when it leaves the cannon it goes quicker than sound; it goes at the rate of 14 miles a minute, 840 miles an hour, 20,100 miles a day—that is to say, at the speed of the points of the equator in the globe’s movement of rotation, 7,336,500 miles a year. It would therefore take 11 days to get to the moon, 12 years to get to the sun, 360 years to reach Neptune, at the limits of the solar world. That is what this modest cannonball, the work of our hands, can do! What will it be, therefore, when, with twenty times that speed, we shall hurl it with a rapidity of seven miles a second? Ah! splendid shot! superb projectile! I like to think you will be received up there with the honours due to a terrestrial ambassador!”
Cheers greeted this brilliant peroration, and J. T. Maston, overcome with emotion, sat down amidst the felicitations of his colleagues.
“And now,” said Barbicane, “that we have given some time to poetry, let us proceed to facts.”
“We are ready,” answered the members of the committee as they each demolished half-a-dozen sandwiches.
“You know what problem it is we have to solve,” continued the president; “it is that of endowing a projectile with a speed of 12,000 yards per second. I have every reason to believe that we shall succeed, but at present let us see what speeds we have already obtained; General Morgan can edify us upon that subject.”
“So much the more easily,” answered the general, “because during the war I was a member of the Experiment Commission. The 100-pound cannon of Dahlgren, with a range of 5,000 yards, gave their projectiles an initial speed of 500 yards a second.”
“Yes; and the Rodman Columbiad?” (the Americans gave the name of “Columbiad” to their enormous engines of destruction) asked the president.
“The Rodman Columbiad, tried at Fort Hamilton, near New York, hurled a projectile, weighing half a ton, a distance of six miles, with a speed of 800 yards a second, a result which neither Armstrong nor Palliser has obtained in England.”
“Englishmen are nowhere!” said J. T. Maston, pointing his formidable steel hook eastward.
“Then,” resumed Barbicane, “a speed of 800 yards is the maximum obtained at present.”
“Yes,” answered Morgan.
“I might add, however,” replied J. T. Maston, “that if my mortar had not been
