At the further end of the saloon the president, assisted by four secretaries, occupied a large platform. His chair, supported by a carved gun-carriage, was modelled upon the ponderous proportions of a 32-inch mortar. It was pointed at an angle of ninety degrees, and suspended upon trunnions, so that the president could balance himself upon it as upon a rocking-chair, a very agreeable fact in the very hot weather. Upon the table (a huge iron plate supported upon six carronnades) stood an inkstand of exquisite elegance, made of a beautifully chased Spanish piece, and a sonnette, which, when required, could give forth a report equal to that of a revolver. During violent debates this novel kind of bell scarcely sufficed to drown the clamour of these excitable artillerists. In front of the table benches arranged in zigzag form, like the circumvallations of a retrenchment, formed a succession of bastions and curtains set apart for the use of the members of the club; and on this especial evening one might say, "All the world was on the ramparts." The president was sufficiently well known, however, for all to be assured that he would not put his colleagues to discomfort without some very strong motive. Impey Barbicane was a man of forty years of age, calm, cold, austere; of a singularly serious and self-contained demeanour, punctual as a chronometer, of imperturbable temper and immovable character; by no means chivalrous, yet adventurous withal, and always bringing practical ideas to bear upon the very rashest enterprises; an essentially New-Englander, a Northern colonist, a descendant of the old anti-Stuart Roundheads, and the implacable enemy of the gentlemen of the South, those ancient Cavaliers of the mother-country. In a word, he was a Yankee to the backbone. Barbicane had made a large fortune as a timber-merchant. Being nominated Director of Artillery during the war, he proved himself fertile in invention. Bold in his conceptions, he contributed powerfully to the progress of that arm and gave an immense impetus to experimental researches. He was a personage of the middle height, having, by a rare exception in the Gun Club, all his limbs complete. His strongly-marked features seemed drawn by square and rule; and if it be true that, in order to judge of a man's character one must look at his profile, Barbicane, so examined, exhibited the most certain indications of energy, audacity, and _sang-froid._ At this moment he was sitting in his armchair, silent, absorbed, lost in reflection, sheltered under his high-crowned hat—a kind of black silk cylinder which always seems firmly screwed upon the head of an American. Just when the deep-toned clock in the great hall struck eight, Barbicane, as if he had been set in motion by a spring, raised himself up. A profound silence ensued, and the speaker, in a somewhat emphatic tone of voice, commenced as follows:—