had a terrible time of it. The most respectable men in
Baltimore, with eyes blackened, noses bleeding, and collars torn, saw
the inside of a prison that night for the first time in all their lives.
Men that even the Great War had left the warmest of friends, now abused
each other like fishwomen. The prison could not hold the half of those
arrested. They were all, however, discharged next morning, for the
simple reason that the Mayor and the aldermen had been themselves
engaged in so many pugilistic combats during the night that they were
altogether disabled from attending to their magisterial duties next day.

Our readers, however, may be quite assured that, even in the wildest
whirl of the tremendous excitement around them, all the members of the
Baltimore Gun Club did not lose their heads. In spite of the determined
opposition of the _Belfasters_ who would not allow the Bloomsbury
dispatch to be read at the special meeting called that evening, a few
succeeded in adjourning to a committee-room, where Joseph Wilcox, Esq.,
presiding, our old friends Colonel Bloomsbury, Major Elphinstone, Tom
Hunter, Billsby the brave, General Morgan, Chief Engineer John Murphy,
and about as many more as were sufficient to form a quorum, declared
themselves to be in regular session, and proceeded quietly to debate on
the nature of Captain Bloomsbury's dispatch.

Was it of a nature to justify immediate action or not? Decided
unanimously in the affirmative. Why so? Because, whether actually true
or untrue, the incident it announced was not impossible. Had it indeed
announced the Projectile to have fallen in California or in South
America, there would have been good valid reasons to question its
accuracy. But by taking into consideration the Moon's distance, and the
time elapsed between the moment of the start and that of the presumed
fall (about 10 days), and also the Earth's revolution in the meantime,
it was soon calculated that the point at which the Projectile should
strike our globe, if it struck it at all, would be somewhere about 27 deg.
north latitude, and 42 deg. west longitude--the very identical spot given in
the Captain's dispatch! This certainly was a strong point in its favor,
especially as there was positively nothing valid whatever to urge
against it.

A decided resolution was therefore immediately taken. Everything that
man could do was to be done at once, in order to fish up their brave
associates from the depths of the