Let Providence claim the speed of electricity, light, the
stars, comets, planets, satellites, sound, and wind! But ours is the
speed of the cannon-ball--a hundred times greater than that of trains
and the fastest horses!"

J.T. Maston was inspired; his accents became quite lyrical as he chanted
the hymn consecrated to the projectile.

"Would you like figures?" continued he; "here are eloquent ones. Take
the simple 24 pounder; though it moves 80,000 times slower than
electricity, 64,000 times slower than light, 76 times slower than the
earth in her movement of translation round the sun, yet when it leaves
the cannon it goes quicker than sound; it goes at the rate of 14 miles a
minute, 840 miles an hour, 20,100 miles a day--that is to say, at the
speed of the points of the equator in the globe's movement of rotation,
7,336,500 miles a year. It would therefore take 11 days to get to the
moon, 12 years to get to the sun, 360 years to reach Neptune, at the
limits of the solar world. That is what this modest cannon-ball, the
work of our hands, can do! What will it be, therefore, when, with twenty
times that speed, we shall hurl it with a rapidity of seven miles a
second? Ah! splendid shot! superb projectile! I like to think you will
be received up there with the honours due to a terrestrial ambassador!"

Cheers greeted this brilliant peroration, and J.T. Maston, overcome with
emotion, sat down amidst the felicitations of his colleagues.

"And now," said Barbicane, "that we have given some time to poetry, let
us proceed to facts."

"We are ready," answered the members of the committee as they each
demolished half-a-dozen sandwiches.

"You know what problem it is we have to solve," continued the president;
"it is that of endowing a projectile with a speed of 12,000 yards per
second. I have every reason to believe that we shall succeed, but at
present let us see what speeds we have already obtained; General Morgan
can edify us upon that subject."

"So much the more easily," answered the general, "because during the war
I was a member of the Experiment Commission. The 100-pound cannon of
Dahlgren, with a range of 5,000 yards, gave their projectiles an initial
speed of 500 yards a second."

"Yes; and the Rodman Columbiad?" (the Americans gave the name of
"Columbiad" to their enormous engines of destruction) asked the
president.

"The Rodman Columbiad, tried at Fort Hamilton, near New York, hurled a
projectile, weighing