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The profound silence was only broken by the chronometer beating the seconds. Suddenly a frightful shock was felt, and the projectile, under the impulsion of 6,000,000,000 litres of gas developed by the deflagration of the pyroxyle, rose into space. What had happened? What was the effect of the frightful shock? Had the ingenuity of the constructors of the projectile been attended by a happy result?
Without that how are we to know to what distance we can send one of those pretty shot with which we are provided?" "Try them, Pencroft," replied the engineer. "However, I think that in making the experiment, we ought to employ, not the ordinary powder, the supply of which, I think, should remain untouched, but the pyroxyle which will never fail us."
He accordingly resolved to manufacture and employ pyroxyle, although it has some inconveniences, that is to say, a great inequality of effect, an excessive inflammability, since it takes fire at one hundred and seventy degrees instead of two hundred and forty, and lastly, an instantaneous deflagration which might damage the firearms.
That the operation of casting a cannon of 900 feet is impracticable, and cannot possibly succeed. That is it impossible to load the Columbiad, and that the pyroxyle will take fire spontaneously under the pressure of the projectile. That the Columbiad will burst at the first fire.
Some years ago, in 1832, a French chemist, Braconnot, discovered this substance, which he called xyloidine. In 1838, another Frenchman, Pelouze, studied its different properties; and lastly, in 1846, Schonbein, professor of chemistry at Basle, proposed it as gunpowder. This powder is nitric cotton." "Or pyroxyle," answered Elphinstone. "Or fulminating cotton," replied Morgan.
"Hurrah for Maynard and fulminating cotton!" cried the noisy secretary of the Gun Club. "I return to pyroxyle," resumed Barbicane. "You are acquainted with its properties which make it so precious to us. It is prepared with the greatest facility; cotton plunged in smoking nitric acid for fifteen minutes, then washed in water, then dried, and that is all."
But an unforeseen phenomenon, against which nothing could be done, soon came to put public impatience to a rude test. The weather, so fine before, suddenly changed; the sky became covered with clouds. It could not be otherwise after so great a displacement of the atmospheric strata and the dispersion of the enormous quantity of gases from the combustion of 200,000 lbs. of pyroxyle.
Nicholl had thought, not perhaps without reason, that the handling of such formidable quantities of pyroxyle would, in all probability, involve a grave catastrophe; and at any rate, that this immense mass of eminently inflammable matter would inevitably ignite when submitted to the pressure of the projectile.
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