But the circle of these devastations extended farther still, and beyond the limits of the United States.  The recoil, aided by the westerly winds, was felt on the Atlantic at more than 300 miles from the American shores.  An unexpected tempest, which even Admiral Fitzroy could not have foreseen, broke upon the ships with unheard-of violence.  Several vessels, seized by a sort of whirlwind before they had time to furl their sails, were sunk, amongst others the Childe Harold, of Liverpool, a regrettable catastrophe which was the object of lively recriminations.

Lastly—­although the fact is not warranted except by the affirmation of a few natives—­half-an-hour after the departure of the projectile the inhabitants of Sierra-Leone pretended that they heard a dull noise, the last displacement of the sonorous waves, which, after crossing the Atlantic, died away on the African coast.

But to return to Florida.  The tumult once lessened, the wounded and deaf—­in short, all the crowd—­rose and shouted in a sort of frenzy, “Hurrah for Ardan!  Hurrah for Barbicane!  Hurrah for Nicholl!” Several millions of men, nose in air, armed with telescopes and every species of field-glass, looked into space, forgetting contusions and feelings, in order to look at the projectile.  But they sought in vain; it was not to be seen, and they resolved to await the telegrams from Long’s Peak.  The director of the Cambridge Observatory, M. Belfast, was at his post in the Rocky Mountains, and it was to this skilful and persevering astronomer that the observations had been entrusted.

But an unforeseen phenomenon, against which nothing could be done, soon came to put public impatience to a rude test.

The weather, so fine before, suddenly changed; the sky became covered with clouds.  It could not be otherwise after so great a displacement of the atmospheric strata and the dispersion of the enormous quantity of gases from the combustion of 200,000 lbs. of pyroxyle.  All natural order had been disturbed.  There is nothing astonishing in that, for in sea-fights it has been noticed that the state of the atmosphere has been suddenly changed by the artillery discharge.

The next day the sun rose upon an horizon covered with thick clouds, a heavy and an impenetrable curtain hung between earth and sky, and which unfortunately extended as far as the regions of the Rocky Mountains.  It was a fatality.  A concert of complaints rose from all parts of the globe.  But Nature took no notice, and as men had chosen to disturb the atmosphere with their gun, they must submit to the consequences.

During this first day every one tried to pierce the thick veil of clouds, but no one was rewarded for the trouble; besides, they were all mistaken in supposing they could see it by looking up at the sky, for on account of the diurnal movement of the globe the projectile was then, of course, shooting past the line of the antipodes.