motive of this antipathy, the origin of this solitary enmity,
the cause of its personality and old standing, and in what
rivalry of self-love it had its rise.

This persevering enemy the president of the Gun Club had never seen.
Fortunate that it was so, for a meeting between the two men would
certainly have been attended with serious consequences. This rival
was a man of science, like Barbicane himself, of a fiery, daring,
and violent disposition; a pure Yankee. His name was Captain
Nicholl; he lived at Philadelphia.

Most people are aware of the curious struggle which arose during
the Federal war between the guns and armor of iron-plated ships.
The result was the entire reconstruction of the navy of both the
continents; as the one grew heavier, the other became thicker
in proportion. The Merrimac, the Monitor, the Tennessee, the
Weehawken discharged enormous projectiles themselves, after
having been armor-clad against the projectiles of others. In fact
they did to others that which they would not they should do to them--
that grand principle of immortality upon which rests the whole art
of war.

Now if Barbicane was a great founder of shot, Nicholl was a
great forger of plates; the one cast night and day at Baltimore,
the other forged day and night at Philadelphia. As soon as ever
Barbicane invented a new shot, Nicholl invented a new plate;
each followed a current of ideas essentially opposed to the other.
Happily for these citizens, so useful to their country, a distance
of from fifty to sixty miles separated them from one another, and
they had never yet met. Which of these two inventors had the