CHAPTER XII.
HEROIC SILENCE.
It was a cannon that hurled the projectile up to the Moon; it was to be a cannon that was to change the terrestrial axis! The cannon! Always the cannon! Barbicane and Co. evidently suffered from chronic attacks of aggravated “cannonism”! Was a cannon the ultima ratio of the world? was it to be the brutal sovereign of the universe? The canon rules theology, was the cannon to give the law to commerce and cosmology?
A cannon was the engine Barbicane & Co. were to bring into action. They had not devoted their lives to ballistics for nothing. After the Columbiad of Tampa Town there was to come the monster cannon of—of—the place x! And already there were people who could hear the sonorous command.
“No. 1! Aim at the Moon! Fire!”
“No. 2! Change the Earth’s axis! Fire!”
And then for the “general upset” predicted by Sulphuric Alcide!
The publication of the report of the Commission produced an effect of which it is impossible even to give an idea. There was nothing in it of a soothing tendency, it must be admitted. By J. T. Maston’s calculations, the problem had evidently been solved. The operation to be attempted by Barbicane & Co. would, it was only too clear, introduce a most regrettable modification in the diurnal movement. A new axis would be substituted for the old. And we know what would be the consequences of that substitution.
The enterprise of Barbicane & Co. was thus judged, cursed, and demitted to general reprobation. Barbicane and Co. were dangers to society. If they retained a few partisans in the United States, the partisans were few indeed.
From the point of view of their own personal safety, Impey Barbicane and Captain Nicholl had certainly done wisely to clear out. They would assuredly have come to grief if they had not done so. It was not with impunity that they could menace fourteen hundred millions of people, upset their habits and customs, and disturb their very existence by provoking a general catastrophe.
But how had these two men managed to disappear without leaving a trace? How could they have got away unperceived with the men and material necessary for their project? Hundreds of waggons, if they went by railway, and hundreds of ships, if they went by sea, would be required for the transport of the metal, the fuel, and the meli-melonite. It was quite incomprehensible how the departure could have taken place incognito. But it had taken place nevertheless.