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.”

CHAPTER XI.

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.