While the boring went on in the flank of Kilimanjaro, the workmen were busy at the second foundry. While the tube was being built the enormous projectile was in process of manufacture.
All it consisted of was a mass of cast iron, cylindro-conical in form, weighing one hundred and eighty thousand tons. It had never been intended to make such a casting in one piece, but to provide one hundred and eighty masses, each of a thousand tons, which could be hoisted into the tube and arranged in front of the meli-melonite so as to form a compact charge.
It thus became necessary to furnish the second foundry with four hundred thousand tons of ore, seventy thousand tons of flux, and four hundred thousand tons of good coal, which at the outset was transformed into two hundred and eighty thousand tons of coke. As the deposits were all in the vicinity, this was only a matter of transport.
The greatest difficulty was the construction of the blast furnaces for dealing with the ore; but nevertheless, before a month was out ten furnaces were at work, capable, each, of an output of one hundred and eighty tons a day. This gave eighteen hundred tons in the twenty-four hours, and a hundred and eighty thousand tons in ten working days.
In the meli-melonite factory the work went on easily, and so secretly that the composition of the explosive was never discovered.
All went well; and there was hardly an accident to mar the progress.
The Sultan was delighted. He followed the operations with indefatigable assiduity, and it may be imagined how his Majesty’s presence stimulated the zeal of his faithful subjects.
When he asked what it all meant, Barbicane would reply enigmatically,—
“It is a work which will change the face of the world!”
“A work,” Captain Nicholl would add, “that will confer on the Sultan Bali-Bali a glory that will never fade among the monarchs of Eastern Africa!”