Science fiction, French -- Translations into English
But it must not be forgotten that if the purchase cost $800,000 and more,
that it was Mrs. Evangelina Scorbitt who had put the necessary amount into
this affair. Thanks to this generous woman Europe had been conquered by
America. Since their return President Barbicane and Capt. Nicholl had
enjoyed a supreme celebrity. But there was another man who deserved credit
in the matter. It is easy to guess that J.T. Maston was the man of whom we
speak, the temporary Secretary of the Gun Club. Did we not owe to this
brilliant calculator all the mathematical formulae which enabled us to
tell the story of the voyage to the moon? If he did not accompany his two
associates on their terrible journey it was not fear which kept him back.
No, indeed, it was only the injuries he had received during the war. For
really it would have made a bad impression on the inhabitants on the moon
to see him in his disabled condition as a representative of our people,
and the moon only our humble satellite. To his extreme regret, Mr. Maston
was compelled to stay at home. Nevertheless he had not been idle. After
having constructed an immense telescope, which was put on the mountain of
Long's Peak, one of the highest mountains of the Rocky range, he went up
there personally, and after he had received the signal that the
cannon-ball had been fired he did not once leave his post. From his place
of observation he essayed the task of following his friends firing across
the vast space. One might readily believe that his friends would be lost
to the world; that it was very easily possible that this projectile could
be compelled by the attraction of the moon to become a sub-satellite. A
deviation which one might call providential had changed the direction of
the projectile, and after having made one trip around the moon, in place
of touching it, it was carried away in a terrible fall and returned to us
with a speed of 576,000 miles a minute to the moment when it was swallowed
up by the ocean. Happy it was that the great liquid mass had deadened the
fall, and that the American frigate Susquehanna was present at the fall.
As soon as the news reached Mr. Maston, the Secretary of the Gun Club, he
rushed with all possible haste from his observation point at Long's Peak
to begin operations to save his friends. Divers were sent to the place
where the projectile had fallen. And Mr. Maston even did not hesitate to
put on a cork jacket to save and find his friends again. It was
unnecessary to go to so much trouble. The projectile was found floating on
the surface of the Pacific Ocean after having made its beautiful fall. And
President Barbicane with Capt. Nicholl and Michel Ardan were found playing
dominoes in their floating prison on the surface of the ocean.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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