At ten minutes to twelve he and Captain Nicholl approached the apparatus which put the wire in communication with the cannon of Kilimanjaro. The Sultan, his court, the crowd of natives, formed an immense circle round them. It was essential that the discharge should take place at the precise moment indicated in the calculations of J. T. Maston, that is at the instant the sun touched the equinoctial line, which henceforth he would never leave in his apparent orbit round the terrestrial spheroid. Five minutes to twelve! Four minutes to twelve! Three minutes to twelve! Two minutes to twelve! One minute to twelve! Barbicane followed the hand of the chronometer, which was lighted by a lantern held by one of the foremen. Captain Nicholl stood with his finger on the button of the apparatus ready to close the circuit. Twenty seconds to twelve! Ten seconds! There was not the suspicion of a shake in the hand of the impassible Captain Nicholl. He and his friend were no more excited than when, shut up in the projectile, they waited for the Columbiad to despatch them to the Moon. Five seconds! One! “FIRE!” said Barbicane. And Nicholl’s finger pressed the button. The noise was truly awful. The echoes rolled in thunders far beyond the realm of the Wamasai. There was a shrill shriek of the projectile which traversed the air under the impetus from milliards of milliards of litres of gas developed by the instantaneous deflagration of two thousand tons of meli-melonite. It seemed as though there had passed over the surface of the Earth one of those storms in which are gathered all the fury of Nature. And the effect would have been no less terrible if all the guns of all the artilleries of the world had been joined to the thunders of the sky to give one long continuous roar together. CHAPTER XIX. J. T. MASTON REGRETS HE WAS NOT LYNCHED. The capitals of the globe—and also the less important towns, and even the humbler villages—were, as a rule, waiting for the result in a paroxysm of terror. The newspapers took care that the exact moment corresponding to midnight at Kilimanjaro should be thoroughly well known. The Sun travels a degree in four minutes, and the times given by the newspapers for some of the cities was as follows:— Berlin 11.20 a.m. Constantinople 11.26 a.m. London 9.30 a.m. Madrid 9.15 a.m. Paris 9.40 a.m. St. Petersburg 11.31 a.m. Rome 10.20 a.m. Calcutta 3. 4 p.m. Nanking 5. 5 p.m. At Baltimore, as we are aware, twelve hours after the passage of the Sun on the meridian of Kilimanjaro, it would be 5.24 p.m.