“Halt!” cried Barbicane, stopping.  “Has this place any name?”

“It is called Stony Hill,” answered the Floridians.

Barbicane, without saying a word, dismounted, took his instruments, and began to fix his position with extreme precision.  The little troop drawn up around him watched him in profound silence.

At that moment the sun passed the meridian.  Barbicane, after an interval, rapidly noted the result of his observation, and said—­

“This place is situated 1,800 feet above the sea level in lat. 27 deg. 7’ and West long. 5 deg. 7’ by the Washington meridian.  It appears to me by its barren and rocky nature to offer every condition favourable to our enterprise; we will therefore raise our magazines, workshops, furnaces, and workmen’s huts here, and it is from this very spot,” said he, stamping upon it with his foot, “the summit of Stony Hill, that our projectile will start for the regions of the solar world!”

CHAPTER XIV.

PICKAXE AND TROWEL.

That same evening Barbicane and his companions returned to Tampa Town, and Murchison, the engineer, re-embarked on board the Tampico for New Orleans.  He was to engage an army of workmen to bring back the greater part of the working-stock.  The members of the Gun Club remained at Tampa Town in order to set on foot the preliminary work with the assistance of the inhabitants of the country.

Eight days after its departure the Tampico returned to the Espiritu-Santo Bay with a fleet of steamboats.  Murchison had succeeded in getting together 1,500 workmen.  In the evil days of slavery he would have lost his time and trouble; but since America, the land of liberty, has only contained freemen, they flock wherever they can get good pay.  Now money was not wanting to the Gun Club; it offered a high rate of wages with considerable and proportionate perquisites.  The workman enlisted for Florida could, once the work finished, depend upon a capital placed in his name in the bank of Baltimore.

Murchison had therefore only to pick and choose, and could be severe about the intelligence and skill of his workmen.  He enrolled in his working legion the pick of mechanics, stokers, iron-founders, lime-burners, miners, brickmakers, and artisans of every sort, white or black without distinction of colour.  Many of them brought their families with them.  It was quite an emigration.

On the 31st of October, at 10 a.m., this troop landed on the quays of Tampa Town.  The movement and activity which reigned in the little town that had thus doubled its population in a single day may be imagined.  In fact, Tampa Town was enormously benefited by this enterprise of the Gun Club, not by the number of workmen who were immediately drafted to Stony Hill, but by the influx of curious idlers who converged by degrees from all points of the globe towards the Floridian peninsula.