Free The Moon-Voyage by Jules Verne Page B

determined not to compromise his last success,
refused.
    Nicholl, excited by this unqualified obstinacy, tried to tempt Barbicane
by leaving him every advantage. He proposed to put his plate 200 yards
from the gun. Barbicane still refused. At 100 yards? Not even at 75.
    "At 50, then," cried the captain, through the newspapers, "at 25 yards
from my plate, and I will be behind it."
    Barbicane answered that even if Captain Nicholl would be in front of it
he would not fire any more.
    On this reply, Nicholl could no longer contain himself. He had recourse
to personalities; he insinuated cowardice—that the man who refuses to
fire a shot from a cannon is very nearly being afraid of it; that, in
short, the artillerymen who fight now at six miles distance have
prudently substituted mathematical formulae for individual courage, and
that there is as much bravery required to quietly wait for a cannon-ball
behind armour-plate as to send it according to all the rules of science.
    To these insinuations Barbicane answered nothing. Perhaps he never knew
about them, for the calculations of his great enterprise absorbed him
entirely.
    When he made his famous communication to the Gun Club, the anger of
Captain Nicholl reached its maximum. Mixed with it was supreme jealousy
and a sentiment of absolute powerlessness. How could he invent anything
better than a Columbiad 900 feet long? What armour-plate could ever
resist a projectile of 30,000 lbs.? Nicholl was at first crushed by this
cannon-ball, then he recovered and resolved to crush the proposition by
the weight of his best arguments.
    He therefore violently attacked the labours of the Gun Club. He sent a
number of letters to the newspapers, which they did not refuse to
publish. He tried to demolish Barbicane's work scientifically. Once the
war begun, he called reasons of every kind to his aid, reasons it must
be acknowledged often specious and of bad metal.
    Firstly, Barbicane was violently attacked about his figures. Nicholl
tried to prove by A + B the falseness of his formulae, and he accused
him of being ignorant of the rudimentary principles of ballistics.
Amongst other errors, and according to Nicholl's own calculations, it
was impossible to give any body a velocity of 12,000 yards a second. He
sustained, algebra in hand, that even with that velocity a projectile
thus heavy would never pass the limits of the terrestrial atmosphere. It
would not even go eight leagues! Better still. Granted the velocity, and
taking it as sufficient, the shot would not resist the pressure of the
gas developed by the combustion of 1,600,000 pounds of powder, and even
if it did resist that pressure, it at least would not support such a
temperature; it would melt as it issued from the Columbiad, and would
fall in red-hot rain on the heads of the imprudent spectators.
    Barbicane paid no attention to these attacks, and went on with his work.
    Then Nicholl considered the question in its other aspects. Without
speaking of its uselessness from all other points of view, he looked
upon the experiment as exceedingly dangerous, both for the citizens who
authorised so condemnable a spectacle by their presence, and for the
towns near the deplorable cannon. He also remarked that if the
projectile did not reach its destination, a result absolutely
impossible, it was evident that it would fall on to the earth again, and
that the fall of such a mass multiplied by the square of its velocity
would singularly damage some point on the globe. Therefore, in such a
circumstance, and without any restriction being put upon the rights of
free citizens, it was one of those cases in which the intervention of
government became necessary, and the safety of all must not be
endangered for the good pleasure of a single individual.
    It will be seen to what exaggeration Captain Nicholl allowed himself to
be carried. He was alone in his opinion. Nobody took any notice of his
Cassandra prophecies. They let him exclaim as much as he liked, till