The Baltimore gun club = (From the earth to the moon) : from the French of Jules Verne

Front matter

/O V\ v

THE COMPLETE WORFCS

JULES VERNE,

Preface

Six years ago Verne's wonderful stories, among others his De la T^erre a la Lune, fairly fascinated me. The boldness of the conceptions, the naturalness of the incidents, the details founded on the strictest practical knowledge, the liveliness of the narrative, the clearness of the thought — all revealing a mind that had sounded the depths of many an intricate scientific problem — were indeed a new revelation. Not only that. The elements usually considered indispensable in the ordinary novel, were totally absent. There was no killing, no betraying, no persecution, no heart breaking, no courtly pageantry, no metaphysical speculations, no mystery, no complicated plot, no thrilling descriptions, no fine writing, no photographic sketches of real life, no turning the human heart inside out, no apotheosis of nastiness — and still the story was profoundly and absorbingly interesting ! An ideal story, pure as a sunbeam, less elaborately constructed than Poe's, but like them appealing altogether to the intellect of the reader and his innate love of the marvellous.

Surely, I thought, Verne's are just the books for our clear-brained, quick witted, inquisitive, restless, reality loving Young America, so different from his brothers in Europe, whether plodding Teuton or visionary Celt.

Our boys, I said, devour dime novels by the millions, for* want of something better. They read English reprints, written for a lower order of minds, and therefore sure to deprave their tastes if not to corrupt their hearts. They blind

4 PREFACE.

themselves, physically and morally, over books intended for older readers of more vigorous stamina, and therefore less liable to irreparable injury. Their school books are irksome and apparently useless, having so little in common with the volumes they find lying about at home.

Would not Verne's stories, I asked, suit them exactly ? They treat on healthy manly subjects ; they give the intellect an exciting but not an enervating stimulus ; they are more suggestive of a breezy walk over sunlit mountains than the painted gorgeousness of a theatre or the sickening perfumes of a ball room ; they present pictures that invest studies in geography, chemistry, geology, history, and mathematics and physics generally, with a charm that is nevei discovered in school books. They inculcate earnestness, steadiness, thoughtfulness. When a bright eyed, pure hearted boy asks his teacher what book he can recommend, he may be answered at once, without any hemming or hawing.

Therefore, I fondly concluded, Verne's books are going to be immediately translated by enterprising American publishers, and scattered by tens of thousands all over the land.

How I reckoned without my host !

For five or six years not a single work of Jules Verne issued from the American press, except '' Five Weeks in a Balloon," which, though in the main a good translation, contains so many geographical mistakes that it must have been done in a hurry.

Whence proceeded this indifference of American publishers to the Daniel Defoe of the nineteenth century ? Was there some radical defect in his stories so great as to counterbalance his innumerable merits ? No doubt some thought so. Cool heads might consider his conceptions rather extravagant, the incidents impossible, his science now too profound, now hard to separate from mere

PRE FA CE, o

fancy, his local coloring distortion rather than exaggeration, his humor too thin to bear translation, his men machines rather than human beings, his sentiments odd, his English names harsh and even absurd, and his whole book, in fact, intended for a cast of mind essentially different from that of the ordinary American reader.

Charges of this nature, whether well or ill founded, seem to have completely blinded American publishers for several years, with regard to the merits of Jules Verne.

How little they knew the American public !

In spite of the alleged drawbacks, hasty translations of Verne's works by English hands, in which, either through ignorance, incapacity or prejudice, his errors — sometimes merely typographical — were uncorrected, his defects exaggerated, and even some of his best passages omitted — these translations, reprinted by American publishers, spread like wild fire last year over the country and were everywhere hailed with the greatest delight by both young and old.

Then my resolution was taken. It was to make an original translation, the best I could, of works of such undeniably inherent merit, a translation which, while strictly following the spirit of the author — this it could not do if slavishly bald and literal — would try to make the most of his strong points, throw the weak ones into shade, soften off extravagances, give the names a familiar sound, correct palpable errors — unless where radical, and then say nothing about them — simplify crabbed science, explain difficulties, amplify local coloring, clear up unknown allusions, put a little more blood and heart into the human beings — in short, a translation which should aim as far as possible at that natural, clear, familiar, idiomatic style which Verne himself would have used if addressing himself in English to an American audience.

Such services rendered to Jules Verne's stories, if done honestly, unobtrusively, and with even tolerable success, could

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hardly, fail to be of decided advantage to the American public.

The present volume is my first instalment. In it the reader has Jules Verne done into real English, corrected, edited, annotated, revised —

Improved ?

Well — I only hope the public may kindly think so.

E. R.

Broad Street Academy,

Philadelphia, A^ril, 1874.

Contents

Chapter. Page.

I. The Artillerists, 5

II. The President's Communication, 24

Chapter I. The Artillerists

It was during the great Civil War of the United States, that a new and very influential club started in Baltimore, Maryland. Every body knows the astonishing energy with which the military instinct suddenly developed itself in that ship-building, engineering, and commercial nation. Shop keepers who had hardly ever heard of West Point, jumped from their counters into the position of captains, colonels and even generals. Their knowledge of the art of war soon almost equalled that of the great masters of the old world, and, like them too, they won victories by enormous discharges of bullets, men, and ^'greenbacks."

But in gunnery especially the Americans even

surpassed their brethren in Europe. Not that their

arms ever reached a higher degree of precision;

but they were constructed on a scale of such

extraordinary dimensions that ranges were soon

attained that had never before been known. As

far indeed as regards plunging fire, flank fire,

horizontal fire, oblique fire, raking fire, or reverse fire, the English, the French, the Prussians, had very little to learn; but even to-day the best European cannons, howitzers, and mortars are only mere pocket pistols in comparison to the formidable engines of the American artillery.

This is not surprising. The Yankees, the best mechanics on earth, are natural born engineers, as the Italians are natural born musicians, and the Germans are natural born philosophers. It is therefore the most natural thing in the world to see them bring their daring ingenuity to bear on the art of gunnery. Hence their colossal cannons, far .less useful, indeed, than their sewing machines, but quite as astonishing and much more bewildering. The huge monsters devised by Parrot, Dahlgren, Rodman, are well known. And the Armstrongs, the Pallisers, the Whitworths, the Treville de Beaulieus, the Krupps, had nothing for it but to surrender gracefully to their American rivals.,

Accordingly, during the terrible struggle between the North and the South, artillery ruled the roast in America; every day the Union journals chronicled enthusiastically the new inventions ; in every country store, in every bar room throughout the land, the air resounded with ^^ rifled cannon, * ' ^ ^ columbiads, ' * '' swamp angels ; ' ' and nearly every green grocer's clerk went crazy from calculating difficult problems about ^^the long range.''

The moment an American conceives an idea, he gets another American to share it with. If they are three, they elect a president and two secretaries ; if four, they nominate a vice president, and the society takes action ; if five, they call a stated meeting and the club is established. That is exactly what happened at Baltimore. The first inventor of a new cannon associated himself with the first man who cast it and with the first man who bored it. Such was the nucleus of the Gun Club. A month after its formation, its register contained the names of 1, 800 effective, and 30,575 corresponding, members.

It was an imperative condition on every one wishing to join this club, an absolute sine qica 71071^ that he should have invented or at least improved a cannon — or if not a cannon, a fire arm of some kind. Still the inventors of 15 shooters, of revolving carabines, or of sabre pistols and such small fry, enjoyed but slight consideration among the members of the Gun Club. Here, as throughout the nation at large, the artillery men overshadowed every body else.

*^The reputation they obtain" as a learned orator of the Club said one day, ^^is in proportion to the masses of their cannon, and in exact ratio with the square of the distance reached by their projectiles." A comical application of Newton's law of terrestrial gravitation.

The Gun Club once founded, you can easily figure to yourself the results soon reached by the inventive genius of the Americans. The new war engines assumed proportions still more colossal, so that the shells they discharged often killed people who were quietly engaged at their occupations miles beyond the target. Such inventions naturally soon left far behind them the timid instruments of European artillery. Just figure it out a little for yourself.

Once, ^^in the good old times," it was thought to be a pretty respectable performance, if a 36 pounder, at a distance of 300 feet, pierced, by a flank shot, 36 horses and ()Z men. That was only the art in its infancy. It has made some progress since. The Rodman cannon threw a ball weighing half a ton a distance of seven miles, and could have easily stretched 500 horses and 300 men. For a time the Gun Club seriously entertained the idea of convincing the world of such tremendous energy by a grand ocular demonstration. But though the horses might possibly be brought together, unfortunately the men upon whom it was proposed to operate objected so decidedly that the idea was unwillingly abandoned ; so this great scientific question is left unsettled to the present day.

One thing, however, is quite certain : the effect of these cannons was very destructive. At every discharge, the combatants fell before them like grass before the mowing machine. In comparison with such projectiles what was the famous ball that, at Coutras in 1587, in the wars of Henry IV., put 25 men hors de combat "^ Or that other which, at Zorndorff in 1758, when Frederic II. was fighting the Russians, killed 40 men ? or the one thrown by the Austrian cannon at Kesselsdorf in 1745, which at every discharge made seventy enemies bite the sod ? What were even those wonderful guns of Jena and Austerlitz that had so often decided the day? These terrible engines of death would be considered mere children's playthings in the Federal War ! At the battle of Gettysburg, a conical projectile, shot by a rifled cannon, struck down 173 Confederates, and in the retreat across the Potomac, a Rodman ball sent 215 Southerners out of this wicked world without giving them even time to bless themselves. We must here likewise make mention of a formidable mortar invented by J. T. Marston, a most distinguished member and the Honorary Secretary of the Gun Club. This mammoth piece of ordnance at first excited universal enthusiasm, but its results by no means gratified the general expectation, for it burst at its first public trial, and killed a large number of the spectators, men, women, and children — 337 all told.

These eloquent figures speak sufficiently for themselves. Nothing we can say could add to their effect. Accordingly we shall conclude this part* of the subject by giving the following result, obtained after much calculation by W. G. Pitcairn, Esq., the statistician of the Gun Club. By dividing the number of victims who had fallen beneath bullets and balls, by the number of the active members of the Gun Club, he found that each one of the latter had killed, on an average, 2,375^ men. Even a hasty glance at the number must convince the disinterested reader that the only avowed objects of this learned society were : ist, the annihilation of the human race — of course on grounds strictly philanthropical — and 2d, the improvement of cannon as the best instruments of civilization. The Gun Club was in fact a Society of Exterminating Angels — though at heart they were, no doubt, the very best fellows in the world.

It is hardly necessary to add that these Americans, brave as fire, by no means confined their speculations to theory ; they tested them by frequent practical experience. You could find in the Club Register officers of every grade, lieutenants and generals ; soldiers of every age, blushing debutants in the career of arms and grizzly veterans still standing solid at their posts. !Many had fallen in the battle field, and their names were all carefully recorded on the Roll of Honor. And many who had returned still bore on their persons the marks of their unquestioned intrepidity. Crutches, wooden legs, artificial arms, iron hands, gutta percha jaws, silver sculls, platina noses, false teeth — nothing was wanting to the collection \ and W. J. Pitcairn, the statistician already mentioned, calculated that in the Gun Club, on an average, there was only one arm for every four men, and one pair of legs for every six.

But such trifling considerations ' never disturbed the equanimity of these valiant artillery mien, and their bosoms swelled with proper pride, and they congratulated each other with justifiable emotion whenever the New York Herald'^s battle bulletin announced that the number of the slain was ten times greater than that of all the bullets, balls, and shells counted together.

One day, however, a sad and miserable day, peace was signed by the survivors of the war ; the roaring of the artillery ceased ; the mortars grew dumb ; howitzers tightly muzzled, and cannons with their heads hanging downwards, were dragged off to the arsenals; the balls were piled into pretty pyramids ; the bloody tracks of war began to fade away ; the cotton plants grew to an enormous size on the richly manured fields ; mourning garments began to disappear from the streets ; and the Gun Club remained plunged in a lethargy profound, exanimate, and hopeless.

A few irrepressible workers, to be sure, unremitting drudges, would still keep on figuring at ballistic calculations and dreaming of gigantic shells and cyclopean howitzers. But, without practice, wherefore such vain theories? Accordingly the club rooms became gradually deserted ; the waiters dozed in the antechambers ; the newspapers, unread, grew mouldy on the files ; the dark corners resounded with mournful snores ; and the members of the Gun Club, once so bustling, so noisy, so exuberant, now reduced to silence by a disastrous peace, sulkily dav/dled away their days and nights in reveries of platonic artillery !

^'This is abominable/' exclaimed Tom Hunter, one evening, wearily stretching his wooden legs, a splendid pair of Palmer's best. ^^ Nothing to do ! Nothing to hope for ! What a miserable existence ! Where is the grand old time when the cannon from Federal Hill woke us up every morning with its joyous detonations?"

^* Those happy days are gone," sang Billsby the brave, jolly as ever, though one of his eyes was only glass. ^^ That was a time to live in! You invented your cannon ; it was hardly cast before you could try it on the enemy. Then on your return to the camp you got a shake hands from Little Mac, or an encouraging nod from Sherman. But now the generals are all back at their counters, sanding their sugar, watering their whiskey, and making the women believe that cotton is wool. Ah ! the melancholy days are come indeed, and Othello's occupation is gone !"

^^It's a fact, Billsby!" cried old Colonel Bloortisbury, quite energetically. _ ^^ Our fate has been pretty rough. Take myself for instance ! I gave up the oyster packing business forever, to go to the war. I went to the war, I learned how to fight, I took my share in everything going, for nearly five years. A life of excitement and adventure became a second nature to me. Where am I now ? Here, a shattered hulk, stranded high and dry, with nothing to do but put my hands in my pockets!'*

The gallant old Colonel must have desired himself to be understood figuratively. Never again, poor fellow, could he put his hands in his pockets. The pockets indeed were plentiful enough, but what had become of the hands nobody ever knew — thiey had been blown off — arms and all — on the Fourth of July, 1864, by the bursting of a columbiad in the works before Petersburg. The Colonel had offered a liberal reward for their recovery, but it had never been claimed.

'^And not a thing likely to turn up !" cried J. T. Marston, scratching with his iron fingers a part of his head where the skull had been replaced by gutta percha. ^' Not a shadow of a cloud in the political horizon ! At a time, too, when so much has been left undone in the science of artillery ! Even this very morning, I, the individual now talking to you, completed the drawing, with plan, section, elevation and all, of a mortar destined to work a revolution in the annals of warfare !'*

*'You don't say so?" asked Tom Hunter, somewhat hurriedly, thinking perhaps of Marston's last experiment.

*'Yes, it is all finished/' replied the latter. ^'But what will be the good of so many studies mastered, of so many difficulties vanquished ? Isn't it working for nothing and finding yourself? We Yankees seem determined to live in peace for the next hundred years, so that even Greeley is alarmed, and in this morning's Tribune comes out in an article showing that we shall increase so fast before the century is out that we shall be obliged to eat each other up for want of room."

^* Still, Marston," replied the Colonel, 'Uhey are always fighting in Europe for something or other."

''Well? what of it?"

''Why, we might see what we could do over there, and if our services were accepted "

"What are you thinking of. Colonel?" exclaimed Billsby, even his artificial eye flashing with horror. " Study ballistics for the benefit of our natural enemies !"

"Better do even that than do nothing at all," retorted the Colonel.

^'You're right, Colonel/' said Marston. ^' Still we must not think of such a thing.*'

'^Why not?" asked the Colonel.

^^ Because," replied Marston, ^^the folks of the old world entertain ideas regarding promotion singularly unconformable with our American notions. These people think that you should never become commander in chief without having commenced as lieutenant ! That's as much as to say you should never point a gun without having commenced by casting it ! Now I call all that "

'^Absurd nonsense !" cried Hunter. ^^But I know it is useless to argue with such people, and now I don't see anything else left for us to do except to raise tobacco in Virginia, or dig oil wells in Pennsylvania."

^^ What's that?" exclaimed Marston, in a voice that rang like a trumpet on the morning of a battle. ^^ Do we so soon forget the grand and lofty aims for which our club was called into existence ? Are we not most solemnly pledged to devote the remaining years of our lives to the improvement of all kinds of fire arms ? Do you imagine that no opportunity will ever occur again for trying the range of our projectiles ? That the atmosphere will never again flash with the fire of our red artillery ? That no international difficulty will ever occur again which will allow us to declare war on some trans-atlantic powder ? Will the French never run down one of our steamers ? Will the English be very anxious to settle the Alabama claims ? Will the Spaniards never fire at our flag, mistaking us for fillibusters ?"

*^I'm afraid not, Marston/' answered Bloomsbury. ^' The incidents to which you refer are too good to be likely to occur soon. And even if they did take place, we should never profit by them ! France, England and Spain may bully us to their hearts' content ! Let them bully ! We have made up our minds to have peace for a hundred years, and peace we shall have ! Thin-skinned Americans are getting out of date. The conscription and the taxes have so much disgusted us with war, that we are all fast becoming a nation of women !'*

'^Humiliating thought!" cried Billsby.

'^ Degrading thought!" repeated Hunter.

** Both humiliating and degrading, if true!" cried Marston, vehemently. ''And true I am afraid it is ! There are a thousand reasons cut and dry for fighting, and yet fight we shall not ! We economise legs and arms for people who hardly use them ! — Hold on ! Did not America once belong to the British?'*

^* So they say, at least/* answered Hunter, curious to know what Marston was driving at.

'' Well then, should not Great Britain in her turn belong to the Americans?** asked Marston with a triumphant air.

^* That would be only justice,'' exclaimed Billsby.

^' Well, you go and propose that to President Grant ; how will he receive you ?'*

" He would send us off with a flea in our ear,'* mumbled Billsby, between the only four teeth the war had left him.

^^I shall never vote for him again,*' cried Marston.

^^ Never shall Grant obtain a vote from me!** cried all these invalid warriors with one voice.

*^And now to conclude;** resumed Marston; *'my new mortar is designed, and if I am not furnished pretty soon with the opportunity of testing it on a real battle field, I shall first send in my resignation as member of the Gun Club ; then I will buy a ticket and travel as far west as the Pacific Railroad will take me — never to return !**

'^ And we shall all follow you — never to return !" unanimously replied all his hearers.

In fact, things by this time had come to such a pass that the club was threatened with immediate dissolution, when all at once an un expected event prevented the occurrence of a catastrophe so much to be regretted.

The very morning after the conversation detailed above, each member of the club received a circular worded as follows :

*' Baltimore, Md.

" October 3, 18 6-. *' The President of the Gun Club has the honor to announce to his associates that at the stated meeting of the 5th instant, he will lay before them a communication calculated to interest them profoundly. Accordingly, he entreats them not to fail being present on said important occasion.

^' Their devoted colleague,

"J. P. Barbican,

"P. G. cr

CHAPTER II. THE president's COMMUNICATION

At eight o'clock on the evening of October 5th, the rooms of the Gun Club, 24 Monument Square, were crowded to suffocation. All the members residing in Baltimore or the neighborhood had been on hand almost since midday. As to the corresponding members, the trains had been landing them at all hours, and even at eight o'clock the cry was *^ still they come.'* The immense hall could not hold half of them. The neighboring rooms were closely packed : the passages were jammed : there was not a square inch of room to spare even on the grand staircase that ornamented the front of the building. All the streets in the neighborhood were so thronged, that the city cars stopped running for six hours. It had leaked out somehow that the President of the Gun Club had a very strange communication to make that evening, and every one in Baltimore, rich and poor, white and colored, was intensely curious to know

its nature. In spite of the vast numbers, how- (-4)

ever, it was not a noisy crowd; the most exciting, contradictory and absurd rumors passed from mouth to mouth, but only in whispers; fear of losing anything by loud talking kept them all comparatively still; though, of course, they bustled and jostled, crushed and pushed, and elbowed and shouldered, with all that liberty of action peculiar to a people accustomed to self government, and never backward in exercising its privileges.

That evening, in Baltimore, no amount of money could purchase a ticket of admission into the grand hall ; it was reserved exclusively for the most distinguished members, resident or correspondent : even the ladies had to stay outside : the Mayor and the City Council fared no better, having to stand in the passages, where they could see nothing, and with outstretched ear trying to catch as well as they could all that was going on.

The hall itself presented a spectacle at once startling and interesting. The decorations of the vast apartment were wonderfully appropriate. Tall pillars, formed of cannons fitted to each other in fishing rod style, stout mortars serving as the bases, sustained the light, airy, lace-like cast-iron trusses of the roof. Trophies, made of blunderbusses, arquebusses, linstocks, carabines, matchlocks, all kinds of fire arms, ancient and modern, were grouped in picturesque array along the lofty walls. Gas blazed forth from chandeliers made of thousands of glittering revolvers, whilst girandoles of pistols and candelabras of guns piled in circles, completed the splendid illumination. Models of cannons, specimens of gun metal, breech-sights riddled with bullets, target plates pierced by the balls of the Gun Club, rammers and sponges in varied assortment, shells strung like pearls, grape shot twisted into necklaces, fire balls .formed into garlands, — in a word — an endless variety of an artillery man's complete stock of tools and materials surprised and pleased the eye by their symmetrical arrangement, and almost made you think that their object was decoration rather than destruction.

In a most conspicuous position could be seen, carefully protected from the dust by a magnificent glass shade, a shapeless mass of iron, rent and twisted by the action of powder — the precious remains of J. T. Marston's giant cannon.

At the extremity of the hall, the President, attended by four secretaries, occupied an elevated platform. His seat, supported by a sculptured gun carriage, affected the form of a 32-inch mortar; it was pointed at an angle of S6^ and suspended by the trunnions, so that the President could swing himself at pleasure as in a rocking chair, a convenience sometimes very desirable on account of the great heat. On the desk, which was a large wrought-iron plate supported by six carronades, lay an ink bottle of exquisite taste, made of a beautiful Biscayan rifle splendidly carved; beside it stood a detonating bell, which, on touching the button, went off with a report as loud as a pistol shot. Many a time, during the stormy debates, the ringing crack of this new fashioned bell, sharp and stunning as it was on ordinary occasions, altogether failed to make itself heard above the stentorian voices of the excited disputants.

In front of the desk, benches arranged in zigzag, like the circumvallations of an entrenchment, formed a succession of bastions and curtains where the members of the Gun Club took their seats, and this evening indeed it could be said with truth that

They knew the President's nature well enough to be certain that he would not have called them together unless for some very grave reason. J. P. Barbican was about fifty years of age, calm, cold, austere, remarkably serious, and of all men perhaps the most taciturn and reserved ; punctual as a chronometer, of a temper that nothing could ruffle, and of a resolution that nothing could shake. With no pretensions to chivalry, he rather courted dangerous — even rash — adventures, but he went into them coolly, and with a head full of practical ideas. He was rather an extreme specimen of the New Englander, the Northern settler, the descendant of Cromweirs Ironsides, and, therefore, the implacable foe of all cavaliers, w^hether they showed themselves . as royalists in the old world, or republicans in the new. In a word, he was a cast-iron Yankee.

A native of the State of Maine, he had made an immense fortune in the lumber trade and shipbuilding; in the early part of the war he had equipped and sent to the field a whole regiment almost entirely at his own expense. His extraordinary genius for gunnery was soon known and highly appreciated, and though his name seldom appeared in the papers, his was the master hand that directed most of the great artillery operations by land and water. Fertile in expedients, bold to rashness in his ideas, he contributed powerfully to the progress of this

THE PRESIDEXT'S COMMUNICATION. 29

branch of the service, and gave experimental researches an extraordinary impulse.

He was of about middle size and — rare exception in the Gun Club — his limbs were whole. His strongly marked features singularly resembled those given to Uncle Sam by the illustrated papers, only without their humor or grotesqueness. Severe, perhaps even harsh, they seemed to have been drawn vrith a square and ruler. If, as it is said, you can tell a man's real disposition by looking at his profile, Barbican must have possessed energy, audacity, and imperturbability, each in an extreme degree.