“What luck,” said Nicholl, “that we should have at our disposal this admirable meli-melonite!”
“Which will make you illustrious, Nicholl!”
“Doubtless, Barbicane,” said the captain modestly. “But do you know how many galleries we should have had to drive in the flanks of Kilimanjaro to obtain the same result if we had only had fulmi-cotton like that which flung our projectile at the Moon?”
“Tell me.”
“One hundred and eighty, Barbicane!”
“Well, we would have driven them!”
“And a hundred and eighty projectiles of a hundred and eighty thousand tons!”
“We would have made them, Nicholl!”
There is no nonsense about men of this stamp. But when artillerists have made the round of the Moon, or what could they not be capable?