Here J.T.  Maston could not contain his emotion.  He threw himself into the arms of his friend with the violence of a projectile, and he would have been stove in had he not have been bombproof.

This incident ended the first sitting of the committee.  Barbicane and his enterprising colleagues, to whom nothing seemed impossible, had just solved the complex question of the projectile, cannon, and powder.  Their plan being made, there was nothing left but to put it into execution.

CHAPTER X.

ONE ENEMY AGAINST TWENTY-FIVE MILLIONS OF FRIENDS.

The American public took great interest in the least details of the Gun Club’s enterprise.  It followed the committee debates day by day.  The most simple preparations for this great experiment, the questions of figures it provoked, the mechanical difficulties to be solved, all excited popular opinion to the highest pitch.

More than a year would elapse between the commencement of the work and its completion; but the interval would not be void of excitement.  The place to be chosen for the boring, the casting the metal of the Columbiad, its perilous loading, all this was more than necessary to excite public curiosity.  The projectile, once fired, would be out of sight in a few seconds; then what would become of it, how it would behave in space, how it would reach the moon, none but a few privileged persons would see with their own eyes.  Thus, then, the preparations for the experiment and the precise details of its execution constituted the real source of interest.

In the meantime the purely scientific attraction of the enterprise was all at once heightened by an incident.

It is known what numerous legions of admirers and friends the Barbicane project had called round its author.  But, notwithstanding the number and importance of the majority, it was not destined to be unanimous.  One man, one out of all the United States, protested against the Gun Club.  He attacked it violently on every occasion, and—­for human nature is thus constituted—­Barbicane was more sensitive to this one man’s opposition than to the applause of all the others.

Nevertheless he well knew the motive of this antipathy, from whence came this solitary enmity, why it was personal and of ancient date; lastly, in what rivalry it had taken root.

The president of the Gun Club had never seen this persevering enemy.  Happily, for the meeting of the two men would certainly have had disastrous consequences.  This rival was a savant like Barbicane, a proud, enterprising, determined, and violent character, a pure Yankee.  His name was Captain Nicholl.  He lived in Philadelphia.