Free The Moon-Voyage by Jules Verne Page A

was not destined to be unanimous. One
man, one out of all the United States, protested against the Gun Club.
He attacked it violently on every occasion, and—for human nature is
thus constituted—Barbicane was more sensitive to this one man's
opposition than to the applause of all the others.
    Nevertheless he well knew the motive of this antipathy, from whence came
this solitary enmity, why it was personal and of ancient date; lastly,
in what rivalry it had taken root.
    The president of the Gun Club had never seen this persevering enemy.
Happily, for the meeting of the two men would certainly have had
disastrous consequences. This rival was a savant like Barbicane, a
proud, enterprising, determined, and violent character, a pure Yankee.
His name was Captain Nicholl. He lived in Philadelphia.
    No one is ignorant of the curious struggle which went on during the
Federal war between the projectile and ironclad vessels, the former
destined to pierce the latter, the latter determined not to be pierced.
Thence came a radical transformation in the navies of the two
continents. Cannon-balls and iron plates struggled for supremacy, the
former getting larger as the latter got thicker. Ships armed with
formidable guns went into the fire under shelter of their invulnerable
armour. The Merrimac, Monitor, ram Tennessee, and Wechhausen shot
enormous projectiles after having made themselves proof against the
projectiles of other ships. They did to others what they would not have
others do to them, an immoral principle upon which the whole art of war
is based.
    Now Barbicane was a great caster of projectiles, and Nicholl was an
equally great forger of plate-armour. The one cast night and day at
Baltimore, the other forged day and night at Philadelphia. Each followed
an essentially different current of ideas.
    As soon as Barbicane had invented a new projectile, Nicholl invented a
new plate armour. The president of the Gun Club passed his life in
piercing holes, the captain in preventing him doing it. Hence a constant
rivalry which even touched their persons. Nicholl appeared in
Barbicane's dreams as an impenetrable ironclad against which he split,
and Barbicane in Nicholl's dreams appeared like a projectile which
ripped him up.
    Still, although they ran along two diverging lines, these savants would have ended by meeting each other in spite of all the axioms in
geometry; but then it would have been on a duel field. Happily for these
worthy citizens, so useful to their country, a distance of from fifty to
sixty miles separated them, and their friends put such obstacles in the
way that they never met.
    At present it was not clearly known which of the two inventors held the
palm. The results obtained rendered a just decision difficult. It
seemed, however, that in the end armour-plate would have to give way to
projectiles. Nevertheless, competent men had their doubts. At the latest
experiments the cylindro-conical shots of Barbicane had no more effect
than pins upon Nicholl's armour-plate. That day the forger of
Philadelphia believed himself victorious, and henceforth had nothing but
disdain for his rival. But when, later on, Barbicane substituted simple
howitzers of 600 lbs. for conical shots, the captain was obliged to go
down in his own estimation. It fact, these projectiles, though of
mediocre velocity, drilled with holes and broke to pieces armour-plate
of the best metal.
    Things had reached this point and victory seemed to rest with the
projectile, when the war ended the very day that Nicholl terminated a
new forged armour-plate. It was a masterpiece of its kind. It defied all
the projectiles in the world. The captain had it taken to the Washington
Polygon and challenged the president of the Gun Club to pierce it.
Barbicane, peace having been made, would not attempt the experiment.
    Then Nicholl, in a rage, offered to expose his armour-plate to the shock
of any kind of projectile, solid, hollow, round, or conical.
    The president, who was