No one is ignorant of the curious struggle which went on during the Federal war between the projectile and ironclad vessels, the former destined to pierce the latter, the latter determined not to be pierced.  Thence came a radical transformation in the navies of the two continents.  Cannon-balls and iron plates struggled for supremacy, the former getting larger as the latter got thicker.  Ships armed with formidable guns went into the fire under shelter of their invulnerable armour.  The Merrimac, Monitor, ram Tennessee, and Wechhausen shot enormous projectiles after having made themselves proof against the projectiles of other ships.  They did to others what they would not have others do to them, an immoral principle upon which the whole art of war is based.

Now Barbicane was a great caster of projectiles, and Nicholl was an equally great forger of plate-armour.  The one cast night and day at Baltimore, the other forged day and night at Philadelphia.  Each followed an essentially different current of ideas.

As soon as Barbicane had invented a new projectile, Nicholl invented a new plate armour.  The president of the Gun Club passed his life in piercing holes, the captain in preventing him doing it.  Hence a constant rivalry which even touched their persons.  Nicholl appeared in Barbicane’s dreams as an impenetrable ironclad against which he split, and Barbicane in Nicholl’s dreams appeared like a projectile which ripped him up.

Still, although they ran along two diverging lines, these savants would have ended by meeting each other in spite of all the axioms in geometry; but then it would have been on a duel field.  Happily for these worthy citizens, so useful to their country, a distance of from fifty to sixty miles separated them, and their friends put such obstacles in the way that they never met.

At present it was not clearly known which of the two inventors held the palm.  The results obtained rendered a just decision difficult.  It seemed, however, that in the end armour-plate would have to give way to projectiles.  Nevertheless, competent men had their doubts.  At the latest experiments the cylindro-conical shots of Barbicane had no more effect than pins upon Nicholl’s armour-plate.  That day the forger of Philadelphia believed himself victorious, and henceforth had nothing but disdain for his rival.  But when, later on, Barbicane substituted simple howitzers of 600 lbs. for conical shots, the captain was obliged to go down in his own estimation.  It fact, these projectiles, though of mediocre velocity, drilled with holes and broke to pieces armour-plate of the best metal.

Things had reached this point and victory seemed to rest with the projectile, when the war ended the very day that Nicholl terminated a new forged armour-plate.  It was a masterpiece of its kind.  It defied all the projectiles in the world.  The captain had it taken to the Washington Polygon and challenged the president of the Gun Club to pierce it.  Barbicane, peace having been made, would not attempt the experiment.