The Sultan Bali-Bali, the great personages of his court; that is to say, his minister of finance and his minister of works, and the staff of black workmen, were gathered together to watch their final operation. But, with commendable prudence, they had taken up their position three miles away from the mouth of the mine, so as to suffer no inconvenience from the disturbance of the atmosphere.
Around them were a few thousand natives from Kisongo and the villages in the south of the province, who had been ordered by the Sultan to come and admire the spectacle.
A wire connecting an electric battery with the detonator of the fulminate in the tube lay ready to fire the meli-melonite.
As a prelude, an excellent repast had assembled at the same table the Sultan, his American visitors, and the notabilities of the capital—the whole at the cost of Bali-Bali, who did the thing all the better from his knowing he would be reimbursed out of the ample purse of Barbicane & Co.
It was eleven o’clock when the banquet, which had begun at half-past seven, came to an end by a toast proposed by the Sultan in honour of the engineers of the North Polar Practical Association and the success of their undertaking.
In an hour the modification of the geographical and climatological conditions of the Earth would be an accomplished fact.
Barbicane, his colleague, and the ten foremen began to take up their places around the hut in which the electric battery was placed.
Barbicane, chronometer in hand, counted the minutes—and never did they seem so long—those minutes which seemed not years, but centuries!
At ten minutes to twelve he and Captain Nicholl approached the apparatus which put the wire in communication with the cannon of Kilimanjaro.
The Sultan, his court, the crowd of natives, formed an immense circle round them.