we can, without danger, compress 500 lbs. of cotton into 27 cubic feet,
that quantity will not take up more than 180 feet in the chamber of the
Columbiad. By these means the projectile will have more than 700 feet of
chamber to traverse under a force of 6,000,000,000 of litres of gas
before taking its flight over the Queen of Night."

Here J.T. Maston could not contain his emotion. He threw himself into
the arms of his friend with the violence of a projectile, and he would
have been stove in had he not have been bombproof.

This incident ended the first sitting of the committee. Barbicane and
his enterprising colleagues, to whom nothing seemed impossible, had just
solved the complex question of the projectile, cannon, and powder. Their
plan being made, there was nothing left but to put it into execution.




CHAPTER X.

ONE ENEMY AGAINST TWENTY-FIVE MILLIONS OF FRIENDS.


The American public took great interest in the least details of the Gun
Club's enterprise. It followed the committee debates day by day. The
most simple preparations for this great experiment, the questions of
figures it provoked, the mechanical difficulties to be solved, all
excited popular opinion to the highest pitch.

More than a year would elapse between the commencement of the work and