The Texican deputies were thunderstruck at this decision.  It put them into a terrible rage, and they sent nominal provocations to different members of the Gun Club.  There was only one course for the magistrates of Baltimore to take, and they took it.  They had the steam of a special train got up, packed the Texicans into it, whether they would or no, and sent them away from the town at a speed of thirty miles an hour.

But they were not carried off too quickly to hurl a last and threatening sarcasm at their adversaries.

Making allusion to the width of Florida, a simple peninsula between two seas, they pretended it would not resist the shock, and would be blown up the first time the cannon was fired.

“Very well! let it be blown up!” answered the Floridans with a laconism worthy of ancient times.

CHAPTER XII.

“URBI ET ORBI.”

The astronomical, mechanical, and topographical difficulties once removed, there remained the question of money.  An enormous sum was necessary for the execution of the project.  No private individual, no single state even, could have disposed of the necessary millions.

President Barbicane had resolved—­although the enterprise was American—­to make it a business of universal interest, and to ask every nation for its financial co-operation.  It was the bounded right and duty of all the earth to interfere in the business of the satellite.  The subscription opened at Baltimore, for this end extended thence to all the world—­urbi et orbi.

This subscription was destined to succeed beyond all hope; yet the money was to be given, not lent.  The operation was purely disinterested, in the literal meaning of the word, and offered no chance of gain.

But the effect of Barbicane’s communication had not stopped at the frontiers of the United States; it had crossed the Atlantic and Pacific, had invaded both Asia and Europe, both Africa and Oceania.  The observatories of the Union were immediately put into communication with the observatories of foreign countries; some—­those of Paris, St. Petersburg, the Cape, Berlin, Altona, Stockholm, Warsaw, Hamburg, Buda, Bologna, Malta, Lisbon, Benares, Madras, and Pekin—­sent their compliments to the Gun Club; the others prudently awaited the result.

As to the Greenwich Observatory, seconded by the twenty-two astronomical establishments of Great Britain, it made short work of it; it boldly denied the possibility of success, and took up Captain Nicholl’s theories.  Whilst the different scientific societies promised to send deputies to Tampa Town, the Greenwich staff met and contemptuously dismissed the Barbicane proposition.  This was pure English jealousy and nothing else.

Generally speaking, the effect upon the world of science was excellent, and from thence it passed to the masses, who, in general, were greatly interested in the question, a fact of great importance, seeing those masses were to be called upon to subscribe a considerable capital.