“The air very likely, but their courage never,” said J.T.  Maston.

On the 28th, after two days’ search, all hope was lost.  This bullet was an atom in the immensity of the sea!  They must give up the hope of finding it.

Still J.T.  Maston would not hear about leaving.  He would not abandon the place without having at least found the tomb of his friends.  But Captain Blomsberry could not stay on obstinately, and notwithstanding the opposition of the worthy secretary, he was obliged to give orders to set sail.

On the 29th of December, at 9 a.m., the Susquehanna, heading north-east, began to return to the bay of San Francisco.

It was 10 a.m.  The corvette was leaving slowly and as if with regret the scene of the catastrophe, when the sailor at the masthead, who was on the look-out, called out all at once—­

“A buoy on the lee bow!”

The officers looked in the direction indicated.  They saw through their telescopes the object signalled, which did look like one of those buoys used for marking the openings of bays or rivers; but, unlike them, a flag floating in the wind surmounted a cone which emerged five or six feet.  This buoy shone in the sunshine as if made of plates of silver.

The commander, Blomsberry, J.T.  Maston, and the delegates of the Gun Club ascended the foot-bridge and examined the object thus drifting on the waves.

All looked with feverish anxiety, but in silence.  None of them dared utter the thought that came into all their minds.

The corvette approached to within two cables’ length of the object.

A shudder ran through the whole crew.

The flag was an American one!

At that moment a veritable roar was heard.  It was the worthy J.T.  Maston, who had fallen in a heap; forgetting on the one hand that he had only an iron hook for one arm, and on the other that a simple gutta-percha cap covered his cranium-box, he had given himself a formidable blow.

They rushed towards him and picked him up.  They recalled him to life.  And what were his first words?

“Ah! triple brutes! quadruple idiots! quintuple boobies that we are!”

“What is the matter?” every one round him exclaimed.

“What the matter is?”

“Speak, can’t you?”

“It is, imbeciles,” shouted the terrible secretary, “it is the bullet only weighs 19,250 lbs!”

“Well?”

“And it displaces 28 tons, or 56,000 lbs., consequently it floats!”

Ah! how that worthy man did underline the verb “to float!” And it was the truth!  All, yes! all these savants had forgotten this fundamental law, that in consequence of its specific lightness the projectile, after having been dragged by its fall to the greatest depths of the ocean, had naturally returned to the surface; and now it was floating tranquilly whichever way the wind carried them.

The boats had been lowered.  J.T.  Maston and his friends rushed into them.  The excitement was at its highest point.  All hearts palpitated whilst the boats rowed towards the projectile.  What did it contain—­the living or the dead?  The living.  Yes! unless death had struck down Barbicane and his companions since they had hoisted the flag!