Chapter 10

CHAPTER X

ONE ENEMY _v._ TWENTY-FIVE MILLIONS OF FRIENDS

The American public took a lively interest in the smallest
details of the enterprise of the Gun Club. It followed day by
day the discussion of the committee. The most simple
preparations for the great experiment, the questions of figures
which it involved, the mechanical difficulties to be resolved--
in one word, the entire plan of work-- roused the popular
excitement to the highest pitch.

The purely scientific attraction was suddenly intensified by the
following incident:

We have seen what legions of admirers and friends Barbicane's
project had rallied round its author. There was, however,
one single individual alone in all the States of the Union who
protested against the attempt of the Gun Club. He attacked it
furiously on every opportunity, and human nature is such that
Barbicane felt more keenly the opposition of that one man than
he did the applause of all the others. He was well aware of the
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
advantage over the other it was difficult to decide from the
results obtained. By last accounts,