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.