The festival was animated, not to say somewhat noisy. Toasts flew backwards and forwards. They drank to the earth and to her satellite, to the Gun Club, the Union, the moon, Diana, Phœbe, Selene, the "peaceful courier of the night"! All the hurrahs, carried upwards upon the sonorous waves of the immense acoustic tube, arrived with the sound of thunder at its mouth; and the multitude ranged round Stones Hill heartily united their shouts with those of the ten revellers hidden from view at the bottom of the gigantic Columbiad. J. T. Maston was no longer master of himself. Whether he shouted or gesticulated, ate or drank most, would be a difficult matter to determine. At all events, he would not have given his place up for an empire, "not even if the cannon—loaded, primed, and fired at that very moment—were to blow him in pieces into the planetary world." Illustration: THE BANQUET IN THE COLUMBIAD. CHAPTER XVII. A TELEGRAPHIC DESPATCH. The great works undertaken by the Gun Club had now virtually come to an end; and two months still remained before the day for the discharge of the shot to the moon. To the general impatience these two months appeared as long as years! Hitherto the smallest details of the operation had been daily chronicled by the journals, which the public devoured with eager eyes. Just at this moment a circumstance, the most unexpected, the most extraordinary and incredible, occurred to rouse afresh their panting spirits, and to throw every mind into a state of the most violent excitement. One day, the 30th September, at 3.47 p.m., a telegram, transmitted by cable from Valentia (Ireland) to Newfoundland and the American mainland, arrived at the address of President Barbicane. The President tore open the envelope, read the despatch, and, despite his remarkable powers of self-control, his lips turned pale and his eyes grew dim, on reading the twenty words of this telegram. Here is the text of the despatch, which figures now in the archives of the Gun Club:— "France, Paris, "30 _September_, 4 _a.m._ "Barbicane, Tampa Town, Florida, United States. "Substitute for your spherical shell a cylindro-conical projectile. I shall go inside. Shall arrive by steamer 'Atlanta.' "Michel Ardan." CHAPTER XVIII. THE PASSENGER OF THE "ATLANTA." If this astounding news, instead of flying through the electric wires, had simply arrived by post in the ordinary sealed envelope, Barbicane would not have hesitated a moment. He would have held his tongue about it, both as a measure of prudence, and in order not to have to reconsider his plans. This telegram might be a cover for some jest, especially as it came from a Frenchman. What human being would ever have conceived the idea of such a journey? and, if such a person really existed, he must be an idiot, whom one would shut up in a lunatic ward, rather than within the walls of the projectile.