The Moon-Voyage by Jules Verne Read Free Book Online Page A

losing any time, nominated a working
committee in the heart of the Gun Club. This committee was in three
sittings to elucidate the three great questions of the cannon, the
projectile, and the powder. It was composed of four members very learned
upon these matters. Barbicane had the casting vote, and with him were
associated General Morgan, Major Elphinstone, and, lastly, the
inevitable J.T. Maston, to whom were confided the functions of
secretary.
    On the 8th of October the committee met at President Barbicane's house,
No. 3, Republican-street; as it was important that the stomach should
not trouble so important a debate, the four members of the Gun Club took
their seats at a table covered with sandwiches and teapots. J.T. Maston
immediately screwed his pen on to his steel hook and the business began.
    Barbicane opened the meeting as follows:—
    "Dear colleagues," said he, "we have to solve one of the more important
problems in ballistics—that greatest of sciences which treats of the
movement of projectiles—that is to say, of bodies hurled into space by
some power of impulsion and then left to themselves."
    "Oh, ballistics, ballistics!" cried J.T. Maston in a voice of emotion.
    "Perhaps," continued Barbicane, "the most logical thing would be to
consecrate this first meeting to discussing the engine."
    "Certainly," answered General Morgan.
    "Nevertheless," continued Barbicane, "after mature deliberation, it
seems to me that the question of the projectile ought to precede that of
the cannon, and that the dimensions of the latter ought to depend upon
the dimensions of the former."
    J.T. Maston here interrupted the president, and was heard with the
attention which his magnificent past career deserved.
    "My dear friends," said he in an inspired tone, "our president is right
to give the question of the projectile the precedence of every other;
the cannon-ball we mean to hurl at the moon will be our messenger, our
ambassador, and I ask your permission to regard it from an entirely
moral point of view."
    This new way of looking at a projectile excited the curiosity of the
members of the committee; they therefore listened attentively to the
words of J.T. Maston.
    "My dear colleagues," he continued, "I will be brief. I will lay aside
the material projectile—the projectile that kills—in order to take up
the mathematical projectile—the moral projectile. A cannon-ball is to
me the most brilliant manifestation of human power, and by creating it
man has approached nearest to the Creator!"
    "Hear, hear!" said Major Elphinstone.
    "In fact," cried the orator, "if God has made the stars and the planets,
man has made the cannon-ball—that criterion of terrestrial speed—that
reduction of bodies wandering in space which are really nothing but
projectiles. Let Providence claim the speed of electricity, light, the
stars, comets, planets, satellites, sound, and wind! But ours is the
speed of the cannon-ball—a hundred times greater than that of trains
and the fastest horses!"
    J.T. Maston was inspired; his accents became quite lyrical as he chanted
the hymn consecrated to the projectile.
    "Would you like figures?" continued he; "here are eloquent ones. Take
the simple 24 pounder; though it moves 80,000 times slower than
electricity, 64,000 times slower than light, 76 times slower than the
earth in her movement of translation round the sun, yet when it leaves
the cannon it goes quicker than sound; it goes at the rate of 14 miles a
minute, 840 miles an hour, 20,100 miles a day—that is to say, at the
speed of the points of the equator in the globe's movement of rotation,
7,336,500 miles a year. It would therefore take 11 days to get to the
moon, 12 years to get to the sun, 360 years to reach Neptune, at the
limits of the solar world. That is what this modest cannon-ball, the
work of our hands, can do! What will it be, therefore, when, with twenty
times that speed, we shall hurl it with a rapidity of seven miles a
second? Ah! splendid