“It is evident,” said the major.
“Sixteen hundred thousand pounds of powder,” resumed the Secretary of Committee, “will occupy about a space of 22,000 cubic feet; now, as your cannon will only hold about 54,000 cubic feet, it will be half full, and the chamber will not be long enough to allow the explosion of the gas to give sufficient impulsion to your projectile.”
There was nothing to answer. J. T. Maston spoke the truth. They all looked at Barbicane.
“However,” resumed the president, “I hold to that quantity of powder. Think! 1,600,000 pounds of powder will give 6,000,000,000 litres of gas.”
“Then how is it to be done?” asked the general.
“It is very simple. We must reduce this enormous quantity of powder, keeping at the same time its mechanical power.”
“Good! By what means?”
“I will tell you,” answered Barbicane simply.
His interlocutors all looked at him.
“Nothing is easier, in fact,” he resumed, “than to bring that mass of powder to a volume four times less. You all know that curious cellular matter which constitutes the elementary tissues of vegetables?”
“Ah!” said the major, “I understand you, Barbicane.”
“This matter,” said the president, “is obtained in perfect purity in different things, especially in cotton, which is nothing but the skin of the seeds of the cotton plant. Now cotton, combined with cold nitric acid, is transformed into a substance eminently insoluble, eminently combustible, eminently explosive. Some years ago, in 1832, a French chemist, Braconnot, discovered this substance, which he called xyloidine. In 1838, another Frenchman, Pelouze, studied its different properties; and lastly, in 1846, Schonbein, professor of chemistry at Basle, proposed it as gunpowder. This powder is nitric cotton.”
“Or pyroxyle,” answered Elphinstone.
“Or fulminating cotton,” replied Morgan.
“Is there not an American name to put at the bottom of this discovery?” exclaimed J. T. Maston, animated by a lively sentiment of patriotism.
“Not one, unfortunately,” replied the major.
“Nevertheless, to satisfy Maston,” resumed the president, “I may tell him that one of our fellow-citizens may be annexed to the study of the celluosity, for collodion, which is one of the principal agents in photography, is simply pyroxyle dissolved in ether to which alcohol has been added, and it was discovered by Maynard, then a medical student.”
“Hurrah for Maynard and fulminating cotton!” cried the noisy secretary of the Gun Club.
“I return to pyroxyle,” resumed Barbicane. “You are acquainted with its properties which make it so precious to us. It is prepared with the greatest facility; cotton plunged in smoking nitric acid for fifteen minutes, then washed in water, then dried, and that is all.”
“Nothing is more simple, certainty,” said Morgan.
“What is more, pyroxyle is not damaged by moisture, a precious quality in our eyes, as it will take several days to load the cannon. Its inflammability takes place at 170° instead of at 240° and its deflagration is so immediate that it may be fired on ordinary gunpowder before the latter has time to catch fire too.”
“Perfect,” answered the major.
“Only it will cost more.”
“What does that matter?” said J. T. Maston.
“Lastly, it communicates to projectiles a speed four times greater than that of gunpowder. I may even add that if ⁸⁄₁₀ths of its weight of nitrate of potash is added its expansive force is still greatly augmented.”
“Will that be necessary?” asked the major.
“I do not think so,” answered Barbicane. “Thus instead of 1,600,000 lbs. of powder, we shall only have 400,000 lbs. of fulminating cotton, and as we can, without danger, compress 500 lbs. of cotton into 27 cubic feet, that quantity will not take up more than 180 feet in the chamber of the Columbiad. By these means the projectile will have more than 700 feet of chamber to traverse under a force of 6,000,000,000 of litres of gas before taking its flight over the Queen of Night.”
Here J. T. Maston could not contain his emotion. He threw himself into the arms of his friend with the violence of a projectile, and he would have been stove in had he not have been bombproof.
This incident ended the first sitting of the committee. Barbicane and his enterprising colleagues, to whom nothing seemed impossible, had just solved the complex question of the projectile, cannon, and powder. Their plan being made, there was nothing left but to put it into execution.
One Enemy Against Twenty-Five Millions of Friends
The American public took great interest in the least details of the Gun Club’s enterprise. It followed the committee debates day by day. The most simple preparations for this great experiment, the questions of figures it provoked, the mechanical difficulties to be solved, all excited popular opinion to the highest pitch.
More than a year would elapse between the commencement of the work and its completion; but the interval would not be void of excitement. The place to be chosen for the boring, the casting the metal of the Columbiad, its perilous loading, all this was more than necessary to excite public curiosity. The projectile, once fired, would be out of sight in a few seconds; then what would become of it, how it would behave in space, how it would reach the moon, none but a few privileged persons would see with their own eyes. Thus, then, the preparations for the experiment and the precise details of its execution constituted the real source of interest.
In the meantime the purely scientific attraction of the enterprise was all at once heightened by an incident.
It is known what numerous legions of admirers and friends the Barbicane project had called round its author. But, notwithstanding the number and importance of the majority, it was not destined to be unanimous. One man, one out of all the United States, protested against the Gun Club. He attacked it violently on every occasion, and—for human nature is thus constituted—Barbicane was more sensitive to this one man’s opposition than to the applause of all the others.
Nevertheless he well knew the motive of this antipathy, from whence came this solitary enmity, why it was personal and of ancient date; lastly, in
