However, if the controversy was intense in the Old World, one can imagine what it must have been in that portion of the New World occupied mainly by the United States.
A Yankee, as everyone knows, never beats around the bush. He cuts right through the bush, and the path he makes generally leads straight to his goal.12 Therefore, the observatories in the American federation did not hesitate to speak their minds. If they did not throw their lenses at each others’ heads, it was only because they would have had to replace them at the moment they were most needed to serve.
On this question that had grown so controversial, the observatories in Washington, D.C., and the one in Cambridge in the state of Massachusetts, locked heads with those of Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and Ann Arbor in Michigan. The subject of their dispute was not on the nature of the object observed, but on the precise moment of observation; for all declared to have seen it on the same night, at the same hour, at the same minute, at the same second, though the trajectory of the mysterious moving object was only a moderate height above the horizon. Now, from New Hampshire to Michigan, from Massachusetts to the District of Columbia, there is enough distance that this double observation, made at the same moment, could be considered impossible.13
Dudley Observatory, in Albany in the state of New York,14 and the Military Academy at West Point, proved their colleagues wrong with a note calculating the right ascension and declination of said object.
But it was recognized later that these observers were mistaken about their object, for the latter was only a meteor that was passing through the middle layer of the atmosphere. Therefore, it could not be the thing in question. Besides, how could that meteor have played the trumpet?
As for that trumpet, people tried in vain to explain away its blaring fanfare as a kind of acoustical illusion. Ears, in this circumstance, were no more mistaken than eyes. People had certainly seen, and certainly heard. On the night of May 12—a very dark night—the astronomers of Yale College, at the Sheffield Scientific School, had been able to transcribe a few measures of a musical phrase, in D major, in 4/4 time, which gave, note for note and rhythm for rhythm, the refrain of the “Chant du départ.”15
“Aha!” replied the wits, “it’s a French orchestra playing in the middle of the clouds!”
But witticisms are no reply. That was the remark of the Boston Observatory, which was founded by the Atlantic Iron Works, and whose opinions on questions of astronomy and meteorology were beginning to be seen as law in the learned world.16
Then intervened the Cincinnati Observatory, created in 1873 on Mount Lookout thanks to the generosity of Mr. Kilgour,17 and so well known for its micrometrical measurements of double stars. Its director declared, in the fullest good faith, that something was certainly there, that some kind of moving object had been seen, at rather closely spaced times, at various points in the atmosphere, but that on the nature of this moving object—its dimensions, its speed, its trajectory—it was impossible to say anything.
It was then that a newspaper of immense circulation, the New York Herald,18 received from one of its subscribers the following anonymous communication:
It will not have been forgotten that, a few years ago, a rivalry led to conflict between the begum of Ragginahra’s two inheritors: the French doctor Sarrasin in his city Franceville, and the German engineer Herr Schultze in his city Stahlstadt, both situated in southern Oregon in the United States.
It cannot have been forgotten either that, with the goal of destroying Franceville, Herr Schultze fired off a colossal projectile intended to crash into the French city and sweep it off the face of the earth in a single blow.
Even less can it possibly have been forgotten that this projectile, whose initial velocity from the mouth of the monster cannon had been miscalculated, flew with a speed six times that of an ordinary shell (150 leagues per hour), that it never fell to earth, and that, having become a satellite, it now circles and will eternally circle our globe.19
Why might not this be the object in question, whose existence cannot be denied?
Very ingenious, that subscriber to the New York Herald. And the trumpet?—There had been no trumpet in Herr Schultze’s projectile!
So all the explanations explained nothing, and all the observatories observed badly.
There still remained the hypothesis proposed by the director of Zika-wei. But the opinion of a Chinese! …
It must not be believed that satiety finally overtook the public in the Old and New World. No! Discussions continued at full force, without anybody managing to agree with anybody else. And yet, there was a pause. A few days rolled by without any report of the object, whether meteor or otherwise, and without any trumpet blast heard in the sky. Had the thing fallen on some point of the globe where it would be difficult to find its traces—at sea, for example? Was it lying in the depths of the Atlantic, Pacific, or Indian Ocean? How could anybody say?
But then, between June 2 and 9, a series of new incidents occurred, which would have been impossible to explain merely by some cosmic phenomenon.
Within eight days, the people of Hamburg, on the tip of the tower of St. Michael’s Church; the Turks, on the highest minaret of the Hagia Sophia; the people of Rouen, at the end of their cathedral’s metallic spire; the people of Strasbourg, on the pinnacle of the Münster;20 the Americans, on the head of their Statue of Liberty at the mouth of the Hudson,21 and on the top of the Washington Monument in Washing-ton;22 the Chinese, on the summit of the Temple of the Five Hundred Gods in Canton;23 the Hindus, on the seventh story of the pyramid of the Temple of Tanjavur;24 the devotees of St. Peter, on the cross of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome; the English, on the cross of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London; the Egyptians, on the tip of the Great Pyramid of Giza; the Parisians, on the lightning rod of the Iron Tower of the Exposition of 1889,25 three hundred meters high—could all observe a flag, flying at each of these all-but-inaccessible places.
And this flag was black, of thin cotton weave, scattered with stars, with a golden sun at its center.26
CHAPTER
2
In which the members of the Weldon Institute dispute without managing to reach an agreement
“And the first to say otherwise—”
“Oh really! … But people will say otherwise, if ever they need to!”
“Yes, despite all your threats! …”
“Watch your language, Bat Fyn!”
“And yours, Uncle Prudent!”
“I say the propeller must not be in the back!”
“So do we! … So do we! …” replied fifty voices, mingled in common accord.
“No! It must be in the front!” shouted Phil Evans.
“In the front!” replied fifty other voices, with a vigor no less remarkable.
“We’ll never be of the same mind!”
“Never! … Never!”
“Then what good is it to argue?”
“This isn’t an argument, it’s a discussion!”
That was difficult to believe, given the polemics, the insults, the vociferations, that had permeated the hall for a good quarter of an hour at least.
This hall, it is true, was the largest one in the Weldon Institute1—a club celebrated among all others, situated in Walnut Street, in Philadelphia, state of Pennsylvania, United States of America.
Now the previous evening,