t might be, it was unanimously decided in the Gun Club that
Blomsberry's brother Bilsby and Major Elphinstone should start at once
for San Francisco and give their advice about the means of dragging up
the projectile from the depths of the ocean.

These men started without losing an instant, and the railway which was
soon to cross the whole of Central America took them to St. Louis, where
rapid mail-coaches awaited them.

Almost at the same moment that the Secretary of the Navy, the
Vice-President of the Gun Club, and the Sub-Director of the Observatory
received the telegram from San Francisco, the Honourable J.T. Maston
felt the most violent emotion of his whole existence--an emotion not
even equalled by that he had experienced when his celebrated cannon was
blown up, and which, like it, nearly cost him his life.

It will be remembered that the Secretary of the Gun Club had started
some minutes after the projectile--and almost as quickly--for the
station of Long's Peak in the Rocky Mountains. The learned J. Belfast,
Director of the Cambridge Observatory, accompanied him. Arrived at the
station the two friends had summarily installed themselves, and no
longer left the summit of their enormous telescope.

We know that this gigantic instrument had been set up on the reflecting
system, called "front view" by the English. This arrangement only gave
one reflection of objects, and consequently made the view much clearer.
The result was that J.T. Maston and Belfast, whilst observing, were
stationed in the upper part of the instrument instead of in the lower.
They reached it by a twisted staircase, a masterpiece of lightness, and
below them lay the metal, well terminated by the metallic mirror, 280
feet deep.

Now it was upon the narrow platform placed round the telescope that the
two _savants_ passed their existence, cursing the daylight which hid the
moon from their eyes, and the clouds which obstinately veiled her at
night.

Who can depict their delight when, after waiting several days, during
the night of December 5th they perceived the vehicle that was carrying
their friends through space? To that delight succeeded deep
disappointment when, trusting to incomplete observations, they sent out
with their first telegram to the world the erroneous affirmation that
the projectile had become a satellite of the moon gravitating in an
immutable orbit.

After that instant the bullet disappeared behind the invisible disc of