Chapter 26

CHAPTER XXVI

FIRE!

The first of December had arrived! the fatal day! for, if the
projectile were not discharged that very night at 10h. 48m. 40s.
P.M., more than eighteen years must roll by before the moon
would again present herself under the same conditions of zenith
and perigee.

The weather was magnificent. Despite the approach of winter,
the sun shone brightly, and bathed in its radiant light that
earth which three of its denizens were about to abandon for a
new world.

How many persons lost their rest on the night which preceded
this long-expected day! All hearts beat with disquietude, save
only the heart of Michel Ardan. That imperturbable personage
came and went with his habitual business-like air, while nothing
whatever denoted that any unusual matter preoccupied his mind.

After dawn, an innumerable multitude covered the prairie which
extends, as far as the eye can reach, round Stones Hill. Every
quarter of an hour the railway brought fresh accessions of
sightseers; and, according to the statement of the Tampa Town
_Observer_, not less than five millions of spectators thronged
the soil of Florida.

For a whole month previously, the mass of these persons had
bivouacked round the enclosure, and laid the foundations for a
town which was afterward called "Ardan's Town." The whole plain
was covered with huts, cottages, and tents. Every nation under
the sun was represented there; and every language might be heard
spoken at the same time. It was a perfect Babel re-enacted.
All the various classes of American society were mingled
together in terms of absolute equality. Bankers, farmers,
sailors, cotton-planters, brokers, merchants, watermen,
magistrates, elbowed each other in the most free-and-easy way.
Louisiana Creoles fraternized with farmers from Indiana;
Kentucky and Tennessee gentlemen and haughty Virginians
conversed with trappers and the half-savages of the lakes and
butchers from Cincinnati. Broad-brimmed white hats and Panamas,
blue-cotton trousers, light-colored stockings, cambric frills,
were all here displayed; while upon shirt-fronts, wristbands,
and neckties, upon every finger, even upon the very ears, they
wore an assortment of rings, shirt-pins, brooches, and trinkets,
of which the value only equaled the execrable taste. Women, children,
and servants, in equally expensive dress, surrounded their husbands,
fathers, or masters, who resembled the patriarchs of tribes in the
midst of their immense households.

At meal-times all fell to work upon the dishes peculiar to the
Southern States, and consumed with an appetite that threatened
speedy exhaustion of the victualing powers of Florida,
fricasseed frogs, stuffed monkey,