From the Earth to the Moon (20 page)

“Yes! He’s turning around!”

“Who is it?”

“It’s Captain Nicholl!”

“Nicholl!” exclaimed Ardan. He felt his heart contract violently. Nicholl was unarmed—it must mean that he had nothing more to fear from his adversary! “Let’s go to him and find out what’s happened.”

But before they had taken fifty steps they stopped to examine the captain more attentively. They had expected to see a bloodthirsty man absorbed in vengeance; they were dumbfounded at what they saw.

A tight net was stretched between two gigantic tulip trees, and in the middle of it was a little bird with its wings entangled, struggling and crying out plaintively. The net had been placed there not by a human being, but by a venomous spider peculiar to the region, with enormous legs and a body the size of a pigeon’s egg. Just as it was about to seize its prey the hideous animal had scurried away and sought refuge in the high branches of a tree, because a formidable enemy had appeared.

Captain Nicholl had laid his rifle on the ground, forgetting the dangers of his situation, and was now trying to free as gently as possible the victim caught in the monstrous spider’s web. When he had finished, he released the little bird. It joyfully fluttered its wings and flew away.

Nicholl was compassionately watching it vanish in the foliage when he heard these words spoken with feeling:

“You’re a brave man! And a kind man!”

He turned around.

“Michel Ardan! What are you doing here?”

“I’ve come to shake your hand, Captain Nicholl, and prevent you from either killing Barbicane or being killed by him.”

“Barbicane!” exclaimed the captain. “I’ve been looking for him for two hours and I can’t find him! Where is he hiding?”

“That’s not polite!” said Ardan. “One must always respect one’s adversary. Don’t worry: if Barbicane is alive, we’ll find him, especially since, if he hasn’t stopped to rescue a bird in distress the way you did, he must be looking for you too. But when we do find him, I assure you there won’t be any question of a duel between you.”

“Between Barbicane and me,” Nicholl replied gravely, “there’s a rivalry so great that only the death of one of us …”

“Come, come! Good men like you two may hate each other, but you also respect each other. You won’t fight.”

“I will.”

“No.”

“Captain,” J. T. Maston said with heartfelt emotion, “I’m Barbicane’s closest friend, his alter ego. If you really had to kill someone, shoot me: it will be exactly the same thing.”

“Sir,” said Nicholl, convulsively gripping his rifle, “such jokes …”

“Mr. Maston isn’t joking,” said Ardan, “and I understand his idea of dying for the man he’s devoted to! But you’re not going to shoot anyone, because I have such an attractive proposal to make to you and Barbicane that you’ll both be eager to accept it.”

“What is it?” Nicholl asked with obvious incredulity.

“Be patient. I can’t tell you what it is unless Barbicane is present too.”

“Then let’s find him,” said the captain.

The three men set off at once. After uncocking his rifle, Nicholl rested it on his shoulder and walked along with an abrupt stride, without saying a word.

For another half hour, the search was fruitless. J. T. Maston had an ominous foreboding. He watched Nicholl sternly, wondering whether he might not already have satisfied his vengeance and whether Barbicane might not be lying lifeless in some bloody thicket with a bullet in his heart. Ardan seemed to have the same thought. They were both casting suspicious glances at Nicholl when J. T. Maston suddenly stopped.

Twenty paces away they saw the motionless bust of a man sitting with his back against a gigantic catalpa tree half hidden in the grass.

“There he is!” said J. T. Maston.

Barbicane still did not move. Ardan looked intently into Nicholl’s eyes, but saw no sign of guilt. He stepped forward and shouted:

“Barbicane! Barbicane!”

No answer. Ardan rushed up to his friend, but just as he was about to clasp him in his arms he stopped short and uttered an exclamation of surprise.

Barbicane, pencil in hand, was writing formulas and sketching geometrical figures in a notebook. His uncocked rifle lay on the ground.

Engrossed in his work, he too had forgotten his duel and his vengeance, and he had neither seen nor heard anything.

But when Michel Ardan put his hand on his arm he stood up and stared at him in surprise.

“Ah, it’s you!” he said at length. “I’ve found it, my friend, I’ve found it!”

“You’ve found what?”

“The means!”

“What means?”

“The means of softening the blow inside the projectile when it’s fired!”

“Really?” said Ardan, looking at Nicholl out of the corner of his eye.

“Yes! It’s simply water, water that will act as a spring … Ah, Maston! You too!”

“Yes, it’s Maston,” said Ardan, “and allow me to introduce Captain Nicholl!”

“Nicholl!” cried Barbicane, leaping to his feet. “Excuse me, Captain, I’d forgotten … I’m ready …”

Ardan intervened before the two enemies had time to challenge each other again.

“It’s a good thing the two of you didn’t meet sooner this morning!” he said. “We’d now be mourning for one or both of you. But, thanks to God, who took a hand in the matter, there’s no longer anything to fear. When a man forgets his hatred to plunge into problems of mechanics or rob a spider of his breakfast, it means that his hatred isn’t dangerous for anyone.”

And he told Barbicane how he had come upon Nicholl in the woods.

“And now tell me,” he said in conclusion, “whether you think two fine men like you were made to shoot holes in each other!”

There was something so unexpected in the somewhat ridiculous situation that Barbicane and Nicholl were uncertain as to what attitude they ought to adopt toward each other. Ardan sensed this, and he decided to hasten their reconciliation.

“My good friends,” he said with his best smile, “there’s never been anything between you but a misunderstanding. Nothing more. To prove that it’s all over, and since you’ve already proved that you’re not afraid to risk your lives, accept the proposal I’m about to make to you.”

“Tell us what it is,” said Nicholl.

“Our friend Barbicane believes his projectile will go straight to the moon.”

“I certainly do,” said Barbicane.

“And our friend Nicholl is convinced that it will fall back to earth.”

“I’m sure of it,” said the captain.

“I don’t claim to be able to make you agree with each other,” said Ardan, “but I will say this to you: Leave inside the projectile with me, and we’ll see whether we reach our destination or not.”

“What!” exclaimed J. T. Maston, stupefied.

On hearing this sudden suggestion, the two rivals observed each other carefully. Barbicane waited for Nicholl’s answer. Nicholl waited for Barbicane to speak.

“Well?” Ardan said in his most charming tone. “Why not, since the problem of the initial jolt has been solved?”

“I’ll do it!” said Barbicane.

But before he had finished saying these words, Nicholl had said them too.

“Hurrah! Bravo! Vivat!” cried Michel Ardan, holding out his hands to the two rivals. “And now that the matter has been settled, my friends, allow me to treat you in the French manner. Let’s go to breakfast.”

T
HAT DAY,
all America learned of the duel between Nicholl and Barbicane and its singular outcome. The part played in it by the chivalrous Frenchman, his unexpected proposal which resolved the difficulty, the simultaneous acceptance by the two rivals, the way France and America were going to be united in the conquest of the moon—everything combined to make Michel Ardan’s popularity still greater. The frenzied devotion that the Americans can show for an individual is well known. It is easy to imagine the passion stirred up by the daring Frenchman in a country where solemn magistrates harness themselves to a dancer’s carriage and pull it in a triumphal procession. If Ardan’s horses were not unharnessed, it is probably because he had none, but all other demonstrations of enthusiasm were showered on him. There was not one citizen who did not unite with him in heart and mind.
E pluribus unum,
as the motto of the United States puts it.

From that day on, Michel Ardan never had a moment of rest. He was constantly harassed by delegations from all parts of the country. The hands he shook and the people he smiled at were beyond all counting. He was soon exhausted; his voice, made hoarse by innumerable speeches, escaped from his lips only in unintelligible
sounds, and he nearly got gastroenteritis from the toasts he had to drink to every county in the Union. This success would have intoxicated anyone else from the beginning, but Ardan was able to maintain himself in a state of witty and charming semi-inebriation.

Among the groups of all kinds which assailed him, the “lunatics” were particularly aware of what they owed to the future conqueror of the moon. One day several of these poor people, rather numerous in America, came to him and asked to be allowed to return to their native land with him. Some of them claimed to be able to speak the lunar language and offered to teach it to him. He good-naturedly indulged their innocent mania and agreed to deliver messages to their friends on the moon.

“A strange madness!” he said to Barbicane after he had sent them away. “It’s a madness that often strikes superior minds. One of our most famous scientists, Arago, told me that many sane and sober people became greatly excited and developed incredible peculiarities whenever the moon took possession of them. You don’t believe in the influence of the moon on illnesses?”

“Hardly,” said Barbicane.

“I don’t believe in it either, yet history has recorded some facts that are at least surprising. During an epidemic in 1693, for example, the death rate went up on January 21, when there was an eclipse. The famous Bacon lost consciousness during eclipses of the moon and didn’t regain it until they were completely over. King Charles VI had six fits of insanity in 1399, all of them during either the new moon or the full moon. Some doctors have classified epilepsy among illnesses that follow the phases of the moon. Nervous illnesses have often appeared to be influenced by it. Mead tells of a child who went into convulsions whenever the moon was in opposition.
Gall noticed that the overexcitement of sickly people increased twice a month, at the time of the new moon and the full moon. And there are countless observations of the same kind on dizzy spells, malignant fevers, and somnambulism, all tending to prove that the moon has a mysterious influence on earthly illnesses.”

“But how? Why?” asked Barbicane.

“Why? Well, I’ll give you the same answer that Arago repeated nineteen centuries after Plutarch: ‘Perhaps it’s because it’s not true!’ ”

In the midst of his triumph, Michel Ardan could not escape from any of the ordeals inherent in the position of a famous man. Successful promoters wanted to exhibit him. Barnum offered him a million dollars to allow him to take him from town to town all over the United States and show him off as though he were some kind of strange animal. Ardan called him a mahout and sent him packing.

Although he refused to satisfy the public’s curiosity, his portraits, at least, circulated all over the world and occupied the place of honor in many an album. They were printed in all formats: some were life-size, others were no bigger than a postage stamp. Everyone was able to have his hero in every pose imaginable: face, bust or full-length, from the front, from the side, three-quarters or from the back. Over a million and a half of them were printed. Ardan had a fine chance to sell little parts of himself as relics, but he did not take advantage of it. If he had wanted to sell his hairs for a dollar apiece, he still had enough of them left to make his fortune!

The truth was that this popularity did not displease him. Quite the contrary. He placed himself at the public’s disposal and corresponded with people all over the world. His witty remarks were repeated and spread, especially those he had never made; many were lent to him, in
accordance with the French saying that one lends only to the rich.

There were women among his admirers as well as men. How many “good matches” he could have made, if he had taken it into his head to “settle down”! Old maids especially, those who had been withering on the vine for forty years, dreamed night and day in front of his photographs.

He could easily have found hundreds of wives, even if he had demanded that they go to the moon with him. Women are either fearless or afraid of everything. But since he had no intention of founding a Franco-American family on the moon, he refused.

“I’m not going up there to play the part of Adam with a daughter of Eve!” he said. “All I’d have to do would be to come across a snake, and then …”

As soon as he was finally able to get away from the too often repeated joys of triumph, he went with his friends to pay a visit to the cannon. He felt that he at least owed it a little attention. Besides, he had become an expert on ballistics since he had begun living with Barbicane, J. T. Maston, and their colleagues. His greatest pleasure was to tell those staunch artillerymen that they were nothing but charming and skillful murderers. He constantly made jokes on the subject. When he visited the cannon he admired it greatly and went down to the bottom of the gigantic tube that would soon send him on his way to the moon.