“The casting will be a fine ceremony,” said J.T. Maston to his friend Barbicane.
“Undoubtedly,” answered Barbicane, “but it will not be a public one!”
“What! you will not open the doors of the inclosure to all comers?”
“Certainly not; the casting of the Columbiad is a delicate, not to say a dangerous, operation, and I prefer that it should be done with closed doors. When the projectile is discharged you may have a public ceremony if you like, but till then, no!”
The president was right; the operation might be attended with unforeseen danger, which a large concourse of spectators would prevent being averted. It was necessary to preserve complete freedom of movement. No one was admitted into the inclosure except a delegation of members of the Gun Club who made the voyage to Tampa Town. Among them was the brisk Bilsby, Tom Hunter, Colonel Blomsberry, Major Elphinstone, General Morgan, and tutti quanti, to whom the casting of the Columbiad was a personal business. J.T. Maston constituted himself their cicerone; he did not excuse them any detail; he led them about everywhere, through the magazines, workshops, amongst the machines, and he forced them to visit the 1,200 furnaces one after the other. At the end of the 1,200th visit they were rather sick of it.
The casting was to take place precisely at twelve o’clock; the evening before each furnace had been charged with 114,000 lbs. of metal in bars disposed crossway to each other so that the warm air could circulate freely amongst them. Since early morning the 1,200 chimneys had been pouring forth volumes of flames into the atmosphere, and the soil was shaken convulsively. There were as many pounds of coal to be burnt as metal to be melted. There were, therefore, 68,000 tons of coal throwing up before the sun a thick curtain of black smoke.
The heat soon became unbearable in the circle of furnaces, the rambling of which resembled the rolling of thunder; powerful bellows added their continuous blasts, and saturated the incandescent furnaces with oxygen.
The operation of casting in order to succeed must be done rapidly. At a signal given by a cannon-shot each furnace was to pour out the liquid iron and to be entirely emptied.
These arrangements made, foremen and workmen awaited the preconcerted moment with impatience mixed with emotion. There was no longer any one in the inclosure, and each superintendent took his place near the aperture of the run.
Barbicane and his colleagues, installed on a neighbouring eminence, assisted at the operation. Before them a cannon was planted ready to be fired as a sign from the engineer.
A few minutes before twelve the first drops of metal began to run; the reservoirs were gradually filled, and when the iron was all in a liquid state it was left quiet for some instants in order to facilitate the separation of foreign substances.
Twelve o’clock struck. The cannon was suddenly fired, and shot its flame into the air. Twelve hundred tapping-holes were opened simultaneously, and twelve hundred fiery serpents crept along twelve hundred troughs towards the central well, rolling in rings of fire. There they plunged with terrific noise down a depth of 900 feet. It was an exciting and magnificent spectacle. The ground trembled, whilst these waves of iron, throwing into the sky their clouds of smoke, evaporated at the same time the humidity of the mould, and hurled it upwards through the vent-holes of the masonry in the form of impenetrable vapour. These artificial clouds unrolled their thick spirals as they went up to a height of 3,000 feet into the air. Any Red Indian wandering upon the limits of the horizon might have believed in the formation of a new crater in the heart of Florida, and yet it was neither an irruption, nor a typhoon, nor a storm, nor a struggle of the elements, nor one of those terrible phenomena which Nature is capable of producing. No; man alone had produced those reddish vapours, those gigantic flames worthy of a volcano, those tremendous vibrations like the shock of an earthquake, those reverberations, rivals of hurricanes and storms, and it was his hand which hurled into an abyss, dug by himself, a whole Niagara of molten metal!
CHAPTER XVI.
THE COLUMBIAD.
Had the operation of casting succeeded? People were reduced to mere conjecture. However, there was every reason to believe in its success, as the mould had absorbed the entire mass of metal liquefied in the furnaces. Still it was necessarily a long time impossible to be certain.
In fact, when Major Rodman cast his cannon of 160,000 lbs., it took no less than a fortnight to cool. How long, therefore, would the monstrous Columbiad, crowned with its clouds of vapour, and guarded by its intense heat, be kept from the eyes of its admirers? It was difficult to estimate.
The impatience of the members of the Gun Club was put to a rude test during this lapse of time. But it could not be helped. J.T. Maston was nearly roasted through his anxiety. A fortnight after the casting an immense column of smoke was still soaring towards the sky, and the ground burnt the soles of the feet within a radius of 200 feet round the summit of Stony Hill.
The days went by; weeks followed them. There were no means of cooling the immense cylinder. It was impossible to approach it. The members of the Gun Club were obliged to wait with what patience they could muster.
“Here we are at the 10th of August,” said J.T. Maston one morning. “It wants hardly four months to the 1st of December! There still remains the interior mould to be taken out, and the Columbiad to be loaded! We never shall be ready! One cannot even approach the cannon! Will it never get cool? That would be a cruel deception!”
They tried to calm the impatient secretary without succeeding. Barbicane said nothing, but his silence covered serious irritation. To see himself stopped by an obstacle that time alone could remove—time, an enemy to be feared under the circumstances—and to be in the power of an enemy was hard for men of war.
However, daily observations showed a certain change in the state of the ground. Towards the 15th of August the vapour thrown off had notably diminished in intensity and thickness. A few days after the earth only exhaled a slight puff of smoke, the last breath of the monster shut up in its stone tomb. By degrees the vibrations of the ground ceased, and the circle of heat contracted; the most impatient of the spectators approached; one day they gained ten feet, the next twenty, and on the 22nd of August Barbicane, his colleagues, and the engineer could take their place on the cast-iron surface which covered the summit of Stony Hill, certainly a very healthy spot, where it was not yet allowed to have cold feet.
“At last!” cried the president of the Gun Club with an immense sigh of satisfaction.
The works were resumed the same day. The extraction of the interior mould was immediately proceeded with in order to clear out the bore; pickaxes, spades, and boring-tools were set to work without intermission; the clay and sand had become exceedingly hard under the action of the heat; but by the help of machines they cleared away the mixture still burning at its contact with the iron; the rubbish was rapidly carted away on the railway, and the work was done with such spirit, Barbicane’s intervention was so urgent, and his arguments, presented under the form of dollars, carried so much conviction, that on the 3rd of September all trace of the mould had disappeared.
The operation of boring was immediately begun; the boring-machines were set up without delay, and a few weeks later the interior surface of the immense tube was perfectly cylindrical, and the bore had acquired a high polish.
At last, on the 22nd of September, less than a year after the Barbicane communication, the enormous weapon, raised by means of delicate instruments, and quite vertical, was ready for use. There was nothing but the moon to wait for, but they were sure she would not fail.
J.T. Maston’s joy knew no bounds, and he nearly had a frightful fall whilst looking down the tube of 900 feet. Without Colonel Blomsberry’s right arm, which he had happily preserved, the secretary of the Gun Club, like a modern Erostatus, would have found a grave in the depths