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It was ten in the morning; the corvette was under half-steam, as it was
regretting to leave the spot where the catastrophe had taken place, when a
sailor, perched on the main-top-gallant crosstrees, watching the sea, cried
suddenly:
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"A buoy on the lee bow!"
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The officers looked in the direction indicated, and by the help of their
glasses saw that the object signalled had the appearance of one of those buoys
which are used to mark the passages of bays or rivers. But, singularly to
say, a flag floating on the wind surmounted its cone, which emerged five or
six feet out of water. This buoy shone under the rays of the sun as if it had
been made of plates of silver.
Commander Blomsberry, J. T. Maston, and the delegates of the Gun
Club were mounted on the bridge, examining this object straying at random on
the waves.
All looked with feverish anxiety, but in silence. None dared give expression
to the thoughts which came to the minds of all.
The corvette approached to within two cables' lengths of the object.
A shudder ran through the whole crew. That flag was the
American flag!
At this moment a perfect howling was heard; it was the brave J.
T. Maston who had just fallen all in a heap. Forgetting on the one hand that
his right arm had been replaced by an iron hook, and on the other that a
simple gutta-percha cap covered his brain-box, he had given himself a
formidable blow.
They hurried toward him, picked him up, restored him to life.
And what were his first words?
"Ah! trebly brutes! quadruply idiots! quintuply boobies that we are!"
"What is it?" exclaimed everyone around him.
"What is it?"
"Come, speak!"
"It is, simpletons," howled the terrible secretary, "it is that the projectile
only weighs 19,250 pounds!"
"Well?"
"And that it displaces twenty-eight tons, or in other words
56,000 pounds, and that consequently _it floats_!"
Ah! what stress the worthy man had laid on the verb "float!"
And it was true! All, yes! all these savants had forgotten this fundamental
law, namely, that on account of its specific lightness, the projectile, after
having been drawn by its fall to the greatest depths of the ocean, must
naturally return to the surface. And now it was floating quietly at the mercy
of the waves.
The boats were put to sea. J. T. Maston and his friends had rushed into them!
Excitement was at its height! Every heart beat loudly while they advanced to
the projectile. What did it contain? Living or dead?
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Living, yes! living, at least unless death had struck
Barbicane and his two friends since they had hoisted the flag.
Profound silence reigned on the boats. All were breathless.
Eyes no longer saw. One of the scuttles of the projectile was open.
Some pieces of glass remained in the frame, showing that it had been broken.
This scuttle was actually five feet above the water.
A boat came alongside, that of J. T. Maston, and J. T. Maston rushed to the
broken window.
At that moment they heard a clear and merry voice, the voice of
Michel Ardan, exclaiming in an accent of triumph:
"White all, Barbicane, white all!"
Barbicane, Michel Ardan, and Nicholl were playing at dominoes!
CHAPTER XXIII
THE END
We may remember the intense sympathy which had accompanied the travelers on
their departure. If at the beginning of the enterprise they had excited such
emotion both in the old and new world, with what enthusiasm would they be
received on their return! The millions of spectators which had beset the
peninsula of Florida, would they not rush to meet these sublime adventurers?
Those legions of strangers, hurrying from all parts of the globe toward the
American shores, would they leave the Union without having seen Barbicane,
Nicholl, and
Michel Ardan? No! and the ardent passion of the public was bound to respond
worthily to the greatness of the enterprise.
Human creatures who had left the terrestrial sphere, and returned after this
strange voyage into celestial space, could not fail to be received as the
prophet Elias would be if he came back to earth. To see them first, and then
to hear them, such was the universal longing.
Barbicane, Michel Ardan, Nicholl, and the delegates of the Gun
Club, returning without delay to Baltimore, were received with indescribable
enthusiasm. The notes of President Barbicane's voyage were ready to be given
to the public. The New York
_Herald_ bought the manuscript at a price not yet known, but which must have
been very high. Indeed, during the publication of "A Journey to the Moon,"
the sale of this paper amounted to five millions of copies. Three days after
the return of the travelers to the earth, the slightest detail of their
expedition was known. There remained nothing more but to see the heroes of
this superhuman enterprise.
The expedition of Barbicane and his friends round the moon had
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216
enabled them to correct the many admitted theories regarding the terrestrial
satellite. These savants had observed _de visu_, and under particular
circumstances. They knew what systems should be rejected, what retained with
regard to the formation of that orb, its origin, its habitability. Its past,
present, and future had even given up their last secrets. Who could advance
objections against conscientious observers, who at less than twenty-four miles
distance had marked that curious mountain of Tycho, the strangest system of
lunar orography? How answer those savants whose sight had penetrated the
abyss of
Pluto's circle? How contradict those bold ones whom the chances of their
enterprise had borne over that invisible face of the disc, which no human eye
until then had ever seen? It was now their turn to impose some limit on that
selenographic science, which had reconstructed the lunar world as Cuvier did
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