CHAPTER XXIII
THE END
We may remember the intense sympathy which had accompanied thetravelers on their departure. If at the beginning of theenterprise they had excited such emotion both in the old andnew world, with what enthusiasm would they be received ontheir return! The millions of spectators which had besetthe peninsula of Florida, would they not rush to meet thesesublime adventurers? Those legions of strangers, hurrying fromall parts of the globe toward the American shores, would theyleave the Union without having seen Barbicane, Nicholl, andMichel Ardan? No! and the ardent passion of the public wasbound to respond worthily to the greatness of the enterprise.Human creatures who had left the terrestrial sphere, and returnedafter this strange voyage into celestial space, could not failto be received as the prophet Elias would be if he came backto earth. To see them first, and then to hear them, such wasthe universal longing.
Barbicane, Michel Ardan, Nicholl, and the delegates of the GunClub, returning without delay to Baltimore, were received withindescribable enthusiasm. The notes of President Barbicane'svoyage were ready to be given to the public. The New York_Herald_ bought the manuscript at a price not yet known, butwhich must have been very high. Indeed, during the publicationof "A Journey to the Moon," the sale of this paper amounted tofive millions of copies. Three days after the return ofthe travelers to the earth, the slightest detail of theirexpedition was known. There remained nothing more but to seethe heroes of this superhuman enterprise.
The expedition of Barbicane and his friends round the moon hadenabled them to correct the many admitted theories regarding theterrestrial satellite. These savants had observed _de visu_,and under particular circumstances. They knew what systemsshould be rejected, what retained with regard to the formationof that orb, its origin, its habitability. Its past, present,and future had even given up their last secrets. Who couldadvance objections against conscientious observers, who at lessthan twenty-four miles distance had marked that curious mountainof Tycho, the strangest system of lunar orography? How answerthose savants whose sight had penetrated the abyss ofPluto's circle? How contradict those bold ones whom the chancesof their enterprise had borne over that invisible face of thedisc, which no human eye until then had ever seen? It was nowtheir turn to impose some limit on that selenographic science,which had reconstructed the lunar world as Cuvier did theskeleton of a fossil, and say, "The moon _was_ this, a habitableworld, inhabited before the earth. The moon _is_ that, a worlduninhabitable, and now uninhabited."
To celebrate the return of its most illustrious member and histwo companions, the Gun Club decided upon giving a banquet, buta banquet worthy of the conquerors, worthy of the Americanpeople, and under such conditions that all the inhabitants ofthe Union could directly take part in it.
All the head lines of railroads in the States were joined byflying rails; and on all the platforms, lined with the sameflags, and decorated with the same ornaments, were tables laidand all served alike. At certain hours, successivelycalculated, marked by electric clocks which beat the seconds atthe same time, the population were invited to take their placesat the banquet tables. For four days, from the 5th to the 9thof January, the trains were stopped as they are on Sundays onthe railways of the United States, and every road was open.One engine only at full speed, drawing a triumphal carriage, hadthe right of traveling for those four days on the railroads ofthe United States.
The engine was manned by a driver and a stoker, and bore, byspecial favor, the Hon. J. T. Maston, secretary of the Gun Club.The carriage was reserved for President Barbicane, ColonelNicholl, and Michel Ardan. At the whistle of the driver, amidthe hurrahs, and all the admiring vociferations of the Americanlanguage, the train left the platform of Baltimore. It traveledat a speed of one hundred and sixty miles in the hour. But whatwas this speed compared with that which had carried the threeheroes from the mouth of the Columbiad?
Thus they sped from one town to the other, finding wholepopulations at table on their road, saluting them with the sameacclamations, lavishing the same bravos! They traveled in thisway through the east of the Union, Pennsylvania, Connecticut,Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire; the north andwest by New York, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin; returning tothe south by Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, and Louisiana;they went to the southeast by Alabama and Florida, going up byGeorgia and the Carolinas, visiting the center by Tennessee,Kentucky, Virginia, and Indiana, and, after quitting theWashington station, re-entered Baltimore, where for four daysone would have thought that the United States of America wereseated at one immense banquet, saluting them simultaneously withthe same hurrahs! The apotheosis was worthy of these threeheroes whom fable would have placed in the rank of demigods.
And now will this attempt, unprecedented in the annals oftravels, lead to any practical result? Will directcommunication with the moon ever be established? Will theyever lay the foundation of a traveling service through thesolar world? Will they go from one planet to another, fromJupiter to Mercury, and after awhile from one star to another,from the Polar to Sirius? Will this means of locomotion allowus to visit those suns which swarm in the firmament?
To such questions no answer can be given. But knowing the boldingenuity of the Anglo-Saxon race, no one would be astonished ifthe Americans seek to make some use of President Barbicane's attempt.
Thus, some time after the return of the travelers, the publicreceived with marked favor the announcement of a company,limited, with a capital of a hundred million of dollars, dividedinto a hundred thousand shares of a thousand dollars each, underthe name of the "National Company of Interstellary Communication."President, Barbicane; vice-president, Captain Nicholl; secretary,J. T. Maston; director of movements, Michel Ardan.
And as it is part of the American temperament to foreseeeverything in business, even failure, the Honorable HarryTrolloppe, judge commissioner, and Francis Drayton, magistrate,were nominated beforehand!