Is it necessary to formally introduce Impey Barbicane, the president of the Gun Club, and Captain Nicholl, and J. T. Maston, and Tom Hunter with the wooden legs, and the brisk Bilsby, and Colonel Bloomsberry and their colleagues? No! Although twenty years had elapsed since the attention of the world was concentrated on these remarkable1 personages, they had remained much as they were, just as incomplete corporeally2, and just as obstreperous3, just as daring, just as wrapped up in themselves as when they had embarked4 in their extraordinary adventure. Time had made no impression on the Gun Club; it respected them as people respect the obsolete5 cannon6 that are found in the museums of old arsenals7.
If the Gun Club comprised 1833 members at its foundation—that is persons and not limbs, for a number of these were missing—if 30,575 correspondents were proud of their connection with the club, the number had in no way decreased. On the contrary, thanks to the unprecedented8 attempt they had made to open communication with the Moon, as related in the Moon Voyage, its celebrity9 had increased enormously.
It will be remembered that a few years after the War of Secession certain members of the Gun Club, tired of doing nothing, had proposed to send a projectile10 to the Moon by means of a monster Columbiad. A gun nine hundred feet 35long had been solemnly cast at Tampa Town, in the Floridan peninsula, and loaded with 400,000 lbs. of fulminating cotton. Shot out by this gun, a cylindro-conical shell of aluminium11 had been sent flying among the stars of the night under a pressure of six million millions of litres of gas. Owing to a deviation12 of the trajectory13, the projectile had gone round the Moon and fallen back to the earth, dropping into the Pacific Ocean in lat. 27° 7′ N., long. 141° 37′ west; when the frigate14 Susquehanna had secured it, to the great satisfaction of its passengers.
Of its passengers, two members of the Gun Club, the president, Impey Barbicane, and Captain Nicholl, with a hare-brained Frenchman, had taken passage in the projectile and had all returned from the voyage safe and sound. But if the two Americans were then present ready to risk their lives in some new adventure, it was not so with Michel Ardan. He had returned to Europe, and made a fortune, and was now planting cabbages in his retirement15, if the best-informed reporters were to be believed.
Barbicane and Nicholl had also retired16, comparatively speaking, but they had retired only to dream of some new enterprise of a similar character. They were in no want of money. From their last undertaking17 there remained nearly two hundred thousand dollars out of the five millions and a half yielded by the public subscriptions18 of the old and new worlds; and by exhibiting themselves in their aluminium projectile throughout the United States they had realized enough wealth and glory to satisfy the most exacting19 of human ambitions. They would have been content if idleness had not been wearisome to them; and it was probably in order to find something to do that they had now bought the Arctic regions.
36But it should not be forgotten that if they had paid for their purchase eight hundred thousand dollars and more, it was because Evangelina Scorbitt had advanced the balance they required.
Although Barbicane and Nicholl enjoyed incomparable celebrity, there was one who shared it with them. This was J. T. Maston, the impetuous secretary of the Gun Club. Was it not this able mathematician20 who had made the calculations which had enabled the great experiment to be made? If he had not accompanied his two colleagues on their extraordinary voyage, it was not from fear; certainly not! But the worthy21 gunner wanted a right arm, and had a gutta-percha cranium, owing to one of those accidents so common in warfare22; and if he had shown himself to the Selenites it might have given them an erroneous idea of the inhabitants of the Earth, of which the Moon after all is but the humble23 satellite.
To his profound regret J. T. Maston had had to resign himself to staying at home. But he was not idle. After the construction of the immense telescope on the summit of Long’s Peak, one of the highest of the Rocky Mountains, he had transported himself there, and from the moment he found the projectile describing its majestic24 trajectory in the sky he never left his post of observation. At the eye-piece of the huge instrument he devoted25 himself to the task of following his friends as they journeyed in their strange carriage through space.
It might be thought that the bold voyagers were for ever lost to earth. The projectile, drawn26 into a new orbit by the Moon, might gravitate eternally round the Queen of the Night as a sort of sub-satellite. But no! A deviation, which by many was called providential, had modified 37the projectile’s direction, and, after making the circle of the Moon, brought it back from that spheroid at a speed of 172,800 miles an hour at the moment it plunged27 into the ocean.
Luckily the liquid mass of the Pacific had broken the fall, which had been perceived by the U.S. frigate Susquehanna. As soon as the news had reached J. T. Maston, he had set out in all haste from the observatory29 at Long’s Peak to the rescue of his friends. Soundings were taken in the vicinity of where the shell had been seen to fall, and the devoted Maston had not hesitated to go down in diver’s dress to find his friends. But such trouble was unnecessary. The projectile being of aluminium, displacing an amount of water greater than its own weight, had returned to the surface of the Pacific after a magnificent plunge28. And President Barbicane, Captain Nicholl, and Michel Ardan were found in their floating prison playing dominoes.
The part that Maston took in these extraordinary proceedings30 had brought him prominently to the front. He was not handsome, with his artificial cranium and his mechanical arm with its hook for a hand. He was not young, for fifty-eight years had chimed and struck at the date of our story’s beginning. But the originality31 of his character, the vivacity32 of his intelligence, the fire in his eye, the impetuosity with which he had attacked everything, had made him the beau-ideal of a man in the eyes of Evangelina Scorbitt. His brain, carefully protected beneath its gutta-percha roof was intact, and justly bore the reputation of being one of the most remarkable of the day.
Mrs. Scorbitt—though the least calculation gave her a headache—had a taste for mathematicians33 if she had 38not one for mathematics. She looked upon them as upon beings of a peculiar34 and superior species. Heads where x’s knocked against x’s like nuts in a bag, brains which rejoiced in algebraic formulæ, hands which threw about triple integrals as an equilibrist plays with glasses and bottles, intelligences which understood this sort of thing:
∫∫∫Φ(xyz) dx dy dz
—these were the wise men who appeared worthy of all the admiration35 of a woman, attracted to them proportionally to their mass and in inverse36 ratio to the square of their distances. And J. T. Maston was bulky enough to exercise on her an irresistible37 attraction, and as to the distance between them it would be simply zero, if she succeeded in her plans.
It must be confessed that this gave some anxiety to the secretary of the Gun Club, who had never sought happiness in such close approximations. Besides, Evangelina Scorbitt was no longer in her first youth; but she was not a bad sort of person by any means, and she would have wanted for nothing could she only see the day when she was introduced to the drawing-rooms of Baltimore as Mrs. J. T. Maston.
The widow’s fortune was considerable. Not that she was as rich as Gould, Mackay, Vanderbilt, or Gordon Bennett, whose fortunes exceed millions, and who could give alms to a Rothschild. Not that she possessed38 the millions of Mrs. Moses Carper, Mrs. Stewart, or Mrs. Crocker; nor was she as rich as Mrs. Hammersley, Mrs. Helby Green, Mrs. Maffitt, Mrs. Marshall, Mrs. Para Stevens, Mrs. Mintbury, and a few others. But she was the possessor of four good millions of dollars, which had come to her 39from John P. Scorbitt, who had made a fortune by trade in fashionable sundries and salt pork. And this fortune the generous widow would have been happy to employ for the advantage of J. T. Maston, to whom she would bring a treasure of tenderness yet more inexhaustible.
At Maston’s request, she had cheerfully consented to put several hundreds of thousands of dollars at the disposal of the North Polar Practical Association, without even knowing what it was all about. With J. T. Maston concerned in it she felt assured that the work could not but be grandiose39, sublime40, super-excellent. The past of the Gun Club’s secretary was voucher41 enough for the future.
It may be guessed, therefore, if she lost confidence when the auctioneer’s hammer knocked down the North Pole to Barbicane & Co. While J. T. Maston formed part of the “Co.” could she do otherwise than applaud?
And thus it happened that Evangelina Scorbitt found herself chief proprietor42 of the Arctic regions within the eighty-fourth parallel. But what would she do with them? Or rather, how was the company going to get any benefit out of their inaccessible43 domain44?
That was the question! And if in a pecuniary45 sense it had much interest for Mrs. Scorbitt, from a curiosity point of view it had quite as much interest for the world at large.
The trusting widow had asked a few questions of Maston before she advanced the funds. But Maston invariably maintained the closest reserve. Mrs. Scorbitt, he remarked, would know soon enough, but not before the hour had come, for she would be astonished at the object of the new association.
Doubtless he was thinking of some undertaking which 40to quote Jean Jacques, “never had an example, and never will have imitators,” of something destined46 to leave far behind the attempt made by the Gun Club to open up communication with the Moon.
When Evangelina grew somewhat pressing in her inquiries47, J. T. Maston had placed his hook on his half-closed lips, and remarked soothingly,—
“Have confidence, Mrs. Scorbitt; have confidence!”
And if Mrs. Scorbitt had confidence before the sale, what immense joy she must have experienced at the result!
Still she could not help asking the eminent48 mathematician, what he was going to do next. And though she smiled on him bewitchingly, the eminent mathematician only replied, as he cordially shook her hand,—
“You will know very soon!”
That shake of the hand immediately calmed the impatience49 of Mrs. Scorbitt. And a few days later there was another shake, for the old and new worlds were considerably50 shaken—to say nothing of the shake that was coming—when they learnt the project for which the North Polar Practical Association appealed to the public for subscriptions.
The company announced that it had “acquired” the territory for the purpose of working—“the Coal Fields at the North Pole”!
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1
remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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corporeally
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| adv.肉体上，物质上 | |
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obstreperous
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| adj.喧闹的，不守秩序的 | |
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embarked
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| 乘船( embark的过去式和过去分词 )； 装载； 从事 | |
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obsolete
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| adj.已废弃的，过时的 | |
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cannon
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| n.大炮，火炮；飞机上的机关炮 | |
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7
arsenals
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| n.兵工厂，军火库( arsenal的名词复数 )；任何事物的集成 | |
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8
unprecedented
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| adj.无前例的，新奇的 | |
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celebrity
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| n.名人，名流；著名，名声，名望 | |
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projectile
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| n.投射物，发射体；adj.向前开进的；推进的；抛掷的 | |
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aluminium
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| n.铝 (=aluminum) | |
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deviation
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| n.背离，偏离；偏差，偏向；离题 | |
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trajectory
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| n.弹道，轨道 | |
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frigate
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| n.护航舰，大型驱逐舰 | |
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retirement
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| n.退休，退职 | |
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retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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undertaking
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| n.保证，许诺，事业 | |
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subscriptions
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| n.（报刊等的）订阅费( subscription的名词复数 )；捐款；（俱乐部的）会员费；捐助 | |
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exacting
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| adj.苛求的，要求严格的 | |
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mathematician
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| n.数学家 | |
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worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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warfare
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| n.战争(状态)；斗争；冲突 | |
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humble
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| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
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majestic
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| adj.雄伟的，壮丽的，庄严的，威严的，崇高的 | |
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devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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plunged
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| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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plunge
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| v.跳入，(使)投入，(使)陷入；猛冲 | |
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29
observatory
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| n.天文台，气象台，瞭望台，观测台 | |
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30
proceedings
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| n.进程，过程，议程；诉讼(程序)；公报 | |
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originality
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| n.创造力，独创性；新颖 | |
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vivacity
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| n.快活，活泼，精神充沛 | |
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33
mathematicians
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| 数学家( mathematician的名词复数 ) | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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inverse
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| adj.相反的，倒转的，反转的；n.相反之物；v.倒转 | |
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irresistible
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| adj.非常诱人的，无法拒绝的，无法抗拒的 | |
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possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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grandiose
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| adj.宏伟的，宏大的，堂皇的，铺张的 | |
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40
sublime
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| adj.崇高的，伟大的；极度的，不顾后果的 | |
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41
voucher
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| n.收据；传票；凭单，凭证 | |
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42
proprietor
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| n.所有人；业主；经营者 | |
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inaccessible
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| adj.达不到的，难接近的 | |
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domain
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| n.(活动等)领域，范围；领地，势力范围 | |
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45
pecuniary
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| adj.金钱的；金钱上的 | |
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destined
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| adj.命中注定的；(for)以…为目的地的 | |
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47
inquiries
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| n.调查( inquiry的名词复数 )；疑问；探究；打听 | |
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48
eminent
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| adj.显赫的，杰出的，有名的，优良的 | |
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49
impatience
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| n.不耐烦，急躁 | |
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50
considerably
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| adv.极大地；相当大地；在很大程度上 | |
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