Barbicane paid no attention to these attacks, and
went on with his work.
Then Nicholl considered the question in its other
aspects. Without speaking of its uselessness
from all other points of view, he looked upon the
experiment as exceedingly dangerous, both for the citizens
who authorised so condemnable a spectacle by their
presence, and for the towns near the deplorable cannon.
He also remarked that if the projectile did not reach
its destination, a result absolutely impossible, it
was evident that it would fall on to the earth again,
and that the fall of such a mass multiplied by the
square of its velocity would singularly damage some
point on the globe. Therefore, in such a circumstance,
and without any restriction being put upon the rights
of free citizens, it was one of those cases in which
the intervention of government became necessary, and
the safety of all must not be endangered for the good
pleasure of a single individual.
It will be seen to what exaggeration Captain Nicholl
allowed himself to be carried. He was alone in
his opinion. Nobody took any notice of his Cassandra
prophecies. They let him exclaim as much as he
liked, till his throat was sore if he pleased.
He had constituted himself the defender of a cause
lost in advance. He was heard but not listened
to, and he did not carry off a single admirer from
the president of the Gun Club, who did not even take
the trouble to refute his rival’s arguments.
Nicholl, driven into his last intrenchments, and not
being able to fight for his opinion, resolved to pay
for it. He therefore proposed in the Richmond
Inquirer a series of bets conceived in these terms
and in an increasing proportion.
He bet that—
1. The funds necessary for the Gun Club’s
enterprise would not be forthcoming, 1,000 dols.
2. That the casting of a cannon of 900 feet was
impracticable and would not succeed, 2,000 dols.
3. That it would be impossible to load the Columbiad,
and that the pyroxyle would ignite spontaneously under
the weight of the projectile, 3,000 dols.
4. That the Columbiad would burst at the first
discharge, 4,000 dols.
5. That the projectile would not even go six
miles, and would fall a few seconds after its discharge,
5,000 dols.
It will be seen that the captain was risking an important
sum in his invincible obstinacy. No less than
15,000 dols. were at stake.
Notwithstanding the importance of the wager, he received
on the 19th of October a sealed packet of superb laconism,
couched in these terms:—
“Baltimore, October 18th.
“Done.
“BARBICANE.”
FLORIDA AND TEXAS.
There still remained one question to be decided—a
place favourable to the experiment had to be chosen.
According to the recommendation of the Cambridge Observatory
the gun must be aimed perpendicularly to the plane
of the horizon—that is to say, towards the
zenith. Now the moon only appears in the zenith
in the places situated between 0 deg. and 28 deg. of
latitude, or, in other terms, when her declination
is only 28 deg.. The question was, therefore,
to determine the exact point of the globe where the
immense Columbiad should be cast.
