But if their works were to require a foundry capable of casting a gun a million times larger than a four hundred pounder, and a projectile weighing one hundred and eighty thousand tons, they would want thousands of workmen; and where, oh! where could they be?
In what part of the old or new world had Barbicane & Co. installed themselves so secretly as to be invisible to the nations around? Had they gone to some desert island of the Pacific? But there are no desert islands now. That they had gone to the Arctic or Antarctic regions was extremely unlikely, for those were the very regions they intended to displace.
There was no need to look for them all over the world, for J. T. Maston’s note-book had revealed the fact that the shot must be fired from near the Equator. Along the equinoctial line, they might be in Brazil or Peru, or Sumatra, or Borneo, or Celebes, or New Guinea, but surely they would have been discovered by the people in the neighbourhood? All through Africa, too, they would be almost certain of discovery. There remained the Maldive Islands, the Admiralty, Gilbert, and Christmas Islands, the Galapagos and San Pedro Islands; but all these had been searched, and no trace of Barbicane & Co. had been found.
And what did Alcide Pierdeux think of all this? More “sulphuric” than ever, he knew no rest in considering the different consequences of the problem. That Captain Nicholl had invented an explosive of such power that its expansion was three or four thousand times greater than the most violent explosives used in modern war, and five thousand six hundred times stronger than “good old gunpowder,” was, he remarked, “étonnant, not to say détonnant!” but it was not impossible. No one knows what the future has in store for us in that kind of progress. In the shifting of the Earth’s axis by means of the recoil of a gun there was nothing to surprise him.
“It is evident,” he said to himself, “that every day the Earth receives the counter-shock from every shock produced on its surface! It is certain that when hundreds of thousands of men amuse themselves by sending thousands of projectiles weighing pounds, or millions weighing ounces, even when I walk or jump, or when I stretch out my arm, or when a blood corpuscle circulates in my veins, it must in some way influence the mass of our spheroid. But in the name of an integral will Barbicane’s jolt be sufficient to upset the Earth? If the equations of that brute Maston really demonstrate that, we must make up our minds to it!”
In truth, Alcide could not but admire the ingenious calculations of the secretary of the Gun Club, communicated by the Commission of Inquiry to the mathematicians who could understand them. And Alcide, who read algebra as if it were newspaper, found the study of them extremely interesting.
But if the upset did come, what a dreadful state of affairs there would be in the world! What cities thrown down, what mountains shaken, what people destroyed by millions, what waters hurled from their beds, what fearful terrors! It would be such an earthquake as had never quaked before!
“If Nicholl’s powder,” he said, “was not quite so strong, the projectile might return to give the Earth another shock either before or behind the firing-point, after making the turn of the globe, and then everything might soon be knocked back into place, after causing immense destruction, nevertheless! But they are going to throw it overboard! Thanks to their meli-melonite their shell will describe the half of a hyperbola and never come back to beg pardon for having given that kick to the terrestrial ball!”
And Alcide threw his arms about like the semaphore at Portsmouth Dockyard, at the risk of breaking everything within a radius of six feet of him.
“If the firing-point were known I could soon find the great circles in which the alteration will be zero, and the places where it will reach the maximum, so as to give folks notice to clear out and save themselves from being smashed by their houses tumbling about their ears! But how am I to know that firing-point?”