The Moon-Voyage by Jules Verne (simple e reader txt) 📗

or Nicholl; but neither of the two adversaries answered. Joyful flocks of birds, roused by the noise, disappeared amongst the branches, and some frightened deer fled through the copses.

They continued their search another hour. The greater part of the wood had been explored. Nothing revealed the presence of the combatants. They began to doubt the affirmation of the bushman, and Ardan was going to renounce the pursuit as useless, when all at once Maston stopped.

"Hush!" said he. "There is some one yonder!"

"Some one?" answered Michel Ardan.

"Yes! a man! He does not seem to move. His rifle is not in his hand.
What can he be doing?"

"But do you recognise him?" asked Michel Ardan.

"Yes, yes! he is turning round," answered Maston.

"Who is it?"

"Captain Nicholl!"

"Nicholl!" cried Michel Ardan, whose heart almost stopped beating.

"Nicholl disarmed! Then he had nothing more to fear from his adversary?"

"Let us go to him," said Michel Ardan; "we shall know how it is."

But his companion and he had not gone fifty steps when they stopped to examine the captain more attentively. They imagined they should find a bloodthirsty and revengeful man. Upon seeing him they remained stupefied.

A net with fine meshes was hung between two gigantic tulip-trees, and in it a small bird, with its wings entangled, was struggling with plaintive cries. The bird-catcher who had hung the net was not a human being but a venomous spider, peculiar to the country, as large as a pigeon's egg, and furnished with enormous legs. The hideous insect, as he was rushing on his prey, was forced to turn back and take refuge in the high branches of a tulip-tree, for a formidable enemy threatened him in his turn.

In fact, Captain Nicholl, with his gun on the ground, forgetting the dangers of his situation, was occupied in delivering as delicately as possible the victim taken in the meshes of the monstrous spider. When he had finished he let the little bird fly away; it fluttered its wings joyfully and disappeared.

Nicholl, touched, was watching it fly through the copse when he heard these words uttered in a voice full of emotion:—

"You are a brave man, you are!"

He turned. Michel Ardan was in front of him, repeating in every tone—

"And a kind one!"

"Michel Ardan!" exclaimed the captain, "what have you come here for, sir?"

"To shake hands with you, Nicholl, and prevent you killing Barbicane or being killed by him."

"Barbicane!" cried the captain, "I have been looking for him these two hours without finding him! Where is he hiding himself?"

"Nicholl!" said Michel Ardan, "this is not polite! You must always respect your adversary; don't be uneasy; if Barbicane is alive we shall find him, and so much the more easily that if he has not amused himself with protecting birds he must be looking for you too. But when you have found him—and Michel Ardan tells you this—there will be no duel between you."

"Between President Barbicane and me," answered Nicholl gravely, "there is such rivalry that the death of one of us—"

"Come, come!" resumed Michel Ardan, "brave men like you may detest one another, but they respect one another too. You will not fight."

"I shall fight, sir."

"No you won't."

"Captain," then said J.T. Maston heartily, "I am the president's friend, his alter ego; if you must absolutely kill some one kill me; that will be exactly the same thing."

"Sir," said Nicholl, convulsively seizing his rifle, "this joking—"

"Friend Maston is not joking," answered Michel Ardan, "and I understand his wanting to be killed for the man he loves; but neither he nor Barbicane will fall under Captain Nicholl's bullets, for I have so tempting a proposition to make to the two rivals that they will hasten to accept it."

"But what is it, pray?" asked Nicholl, with visible incredulity.

"Patience," answered Ardan; "I can only communicate it in Barbicane's presence."

"Let us look for him, then," cried the captain.

The three men immediately set out; the captain, having discharged his rifle, threw it on his shoulder and walked on in silence.

During another half-hour the search was in vain. Maston was seized with a sinister presentiment. He observed Captain Nicholl closely, asking himself if, once the captain's vengeance satisfied, the unfortunate Barbicane had not been left lying in some bloody thicket. Michel Ardan seemed to have the same thought, and they were both looking questioningly at Captain Nicholl when Maston suddenly stopped.

The motionless bust of a man leaning against a gigantic catalpa appeared twenty feet off half hidden in the grass.

"It is he!" said Maston.

Barbicane did not move. Ardan stared at the captain, but he did not wince. Ardan rushed forward, crying—

"Barbicane! Barbicane!"

No answer. Ardan was about to seize his arm; he stopped short, uttering a cry of surprise.

Barbicane, with a pencil in his hand, was tracing geometrical figures upon a memorandum-book, whilst his unloaded gun lay on the ground.

Absorbed in his work, the savant, forgetting in his turn his duel and his vengeance, had neither seen nor heard anything.

But when Michel Ardan placed his hand on that of the president, he got up and looked at him with astonishment.

"Ah!" cried he at last; "you here! I have found it, my friend, I have found it!"

"What?"

"The way to do it."

"The way to do what?"

"To counteract the effect of the shock at the departure of the projectile."

"Really?" said Michel, looking at the captain out of the corner of his eye.

"Yes, water! simply water, which will act as a spring. Ah, Maston!" cried Barbicane, "you too!"

"Himself," answered Michel Ardan; "and allow me to introduce at the same time the worthy Captain Nicholl."

"Nicholl!" cried Barbicane, up in a moment. "Excuse me, captain," said he; "I had forgotten. I am ready."

Michel Ardan interfered before the two enemies had time to recriminate.

"Faith," said he, "it is fortunate that brave fellows like you did not meet sooner. We should now have to mourn for one or other of you; but, thanks to God, who has prevented it, there is nothing more to fear. When one forgets his hatred to plunge into mechanical problems and the other to play tricks on spiders, their hatred cannot be dangerous to anybody."

And Michel Ardan related the captain's story to the president.

"I ask you now," said he as he concluded, "if two good beings like you were made to break each other's heads with gunshots?"

There was in this rather ridiculous situation something so unexpected, that Barbicane and Nicholl did not know how to look at one another. Michel Ardan felt this, and resolved to try for a reconciliation.

"My brave friends," said he, smiling in his most fascinating manner, "it has all been a mistake between you, nothing more. Well, to prove that all is ended between you, and as you are men who risk your lives, frankly accept the proposition that I am going to make to you."

"Speak," said Nicholl.

"Friend Barbicane believes that his projectile will go straight to the moon."

"Yes, certainly," replied the president.

"And friend Nicholl is persuaded that it will fall back on the earth."

"I am certain of it," cried the captain.

"Good," resumed Michel Ardan. "I do not pretend to make you agree; all I say to you is, 'Come with me, and see if we shall stop on the road.'"

"What?" said J.T. Maston, stupefied.

The two rivals at this sudden proposition had raised their eyes and looked at each other attentively. Barbicane waited for Captain Nicholl's answer; Nicholl awaited the president's reply.

"Well," said Michel in his most engaging tone, "as there is now no shock to fear——"

"Accepted!" cried Barbicane.

But although this word was uttered very quickly, Nicholl had finished it at the same time.

"Hurrah! bravo!" cried Michel Ardan, holding out his hands to the two adversaries. "And now that the affair is arranged, my friends, allow me to treat you French fashion. Allons déjeuner."

CHAPTER XXII. THE NEW CITIZEN OF THE UNITED STATES.

That day all America heard about the duel and its singular termination. The part played by the chivalrous European, his unexpected proposition which solved the difficulty, the simultaneous acceptation of the two rivals, that conquest of the lunar continent to which France and the United States were going to march in concert—everything tended to increase Michel Ardan's popularity. It is well known how enthusiastic the Yankees will get about an individual. In a country where grave magistrates harness themselves to a dancer's carriage and draw it in triumph, it may be judged how the bold Frenchman was treated. If they did not take out his horses it was probably because he had none, but all other marks of enthusiasm were showered upon him. There was no citizen who did not join him heart and mind:—Ex pluribus unam, according to the motto of the United States.

From that day Michel Ardan had not a minute's rest. Deputations from all parts of the Union worried him incessantly. He was forced to receive them whether he would or no. The hands he shook could not be counted; he was soon completely worn out, his voice became hoarse in consequence of his innumerable speeches, and only escaped from his lips in unintelligible sounds, and he nearly caught a gastro-enterite after the toasts he proposed to the Union. This success would have intoxicated another man from the first, but he managed to stay in a spirituelle and charming demi-inebriety.

Amongst the deputations of every sort that assailed him, that of the "Lunatics" did not forget what they owed to the future conqueror of the moon. One day some of these poor creatures, numerous enough in America, went to him and asked to return with him to their native country. Some of them pretended to speak "Selenite," and wished to teach it to Michel Ardan, who willingly lent himself to their innocent mania, and promised to take their messages to their friends in the moon.

"Singular folly!" said he to Barbicane, after having dismissed them; "and a folly that often takes possession of men of great intelligence. One of our most illustrious savants, Arago, told me that many very wise and reserved people in their conceptions became much excited and gave way to incredible singularities every time the moon occupied them. Do you believe in the influence of the moon upon maladies?"

"Very little," answered the president of the Gun Club.

"I do not either, and yet history has preserved some facts that, to say the least, are astonishing. Thus in 1693, during an epidemic, people perished in the greatest numbers on the 21st of January, during an eclipse. The celebrated Bacon fainted during the moon eclipses, and only came to himself after its entire emersion. King Charles VI. relapsed six times into madness during the year 1399, either at the new or full moon. Physicians have ranked epilepsy amongst the maladies that follow the phases of the moon. Nervous maladies have often appeared to be influenced by it. Mead speaks of a child who had convulsions when the moon was in opposition. Gall remarked that insane persons underwent an accession of their disorder twice in every month, at the epochs of the new and full moon. Lastly, a thousand observations of this sort made upon malignant fevers and somnambulism tend to prove that the Queen of Night has a mysterious influence upon terrestrial maladies."

"But how? why?" asked Barbicane.

"Why?" answered Ardan. "Why, the only thing I can tell you is what Arago repeated nineteen centuries after Plutarch. Perhaps it is because it is not true."

In the height of his triumph Michel Ardan could not escape any of the annoyances incidental to a celebrated man. Managers of entertainments wished to exhibit him. Barnum offered him a million dollars to show him as a curious animal in the different towns of the United States.

Still, though he refused to satisfy public curiosity in that way, his portraits went all over the world, and occupied the place of honour in albums; proofs were made of all sizes from life size to medallions. Every one could possess the hero in all positions—head, bust, standing, full-face, profile, three-quarters, back. Fifteen hundred thousand copies were taken, and it would have been a fine occasion to get money by relics, but he did not profit by it. If he had sold his hairs for a dollar apiece there would have remained enough to make his fortune!

To tell the truth, this popularity did not displease him. On the contrary, he put himself at the