Barbicane & Co.’s attempt had failed piteously! J. T. Maston’s calculations might as well be put in the waste-paper basket! The North Polar Practical Association had nothing now to do but go into another kind of liquidation!
Could it be possible that the secretary of the Gun Club had made a mistake?
“I would rather believe I am deceived in the affection with which he inspires me,” said Mrs. Evangelina Scorbitt.
And if there was a discomfited being on the face of the planet it was J. T. Maston. When he saw that nothing had changed in the conditions of the Earth’s movement, he was buoyed up with hope that some accident had retarded the work of Barbicane and Nicholl.
But since the Zanzibar telegram he had to admit that the experiment had failed.
Failed? And the equations, the formulæ from which he had deduced the success of the enterprise! Was the gun not long enough, the projectile not heavy enough, the explosive not strong enough? No! It was inadmissible!
J. T. Maston was in such a state of excitement that he declared he would leave his retreat. Mrs. Scorbitt tried in vain to prevent him. Not that she feared for his life, for the danger was over. But the pleasantries that would be showered on the unhappy calculator, the jokes that would rain on his work,—she would have spared him.
And, still more serious, what was the reception the Gun Club would give him? Would they retain him as their secretary after a failure that covered them with ridicule? Was not he, the author of the calculations, entirely responsible for the collapse?
He would listen to nothing. He would yield neither to the tears nor prayers of Mrs. Scorbitt. He came out of the house in which he was hidden. He appeared in the streets of Baltimore. He was recognized, and those whom he had menaced in their fortune and existence, whose anxiety he had prolonged by his obstinate silence, took vengeance on him by deriding him in every way.
The street boys shouted after him,—