Page:Amazing Stories Volume 01 Number 07.djvu/43

618 other odds and ends that make matters pleasant for the depressed agriculturist?"

OU may have them, of course," said the Bacbicanians, "but they will probably be rarer, owing to the regularity of the climate having its effect on the troubles of the atmosphere! Yes, humanity will profit greatly by the new state of things. It will be quite a transformation of the terrestrial globe. Barbicane & Co. will have conferred much good on the present and future generations by destroying the inequality of the days and nights and the irritating diversity of the seasons!"

And the New York Sun of the 27th of December concluded one of its most eloquent articles:—

"Honor to Impey Barbicane and his colleagues! Not only will they have made the Earth more hygienieally habitable, but they will have made it more productive; for then we can sow as soon as we have harvested; for no time will be wasted over the winter. Not only will our coal supplies be increased by the new fields, which will insure a supply for many long years, but the climatal conditions will be altered to our great advantage! Honor, then, to Barbicane & Co., who will take the first rank among the benefactors of mankind!"

UCH were the advantages promised by Barbicane's changing the axis of rotation—a change, however, which would only slightly affect the movement of our spheroid around the Sun. The Earth would continue to describe its orbit through space, and the conditions of the solar year would remain the same.

When the consequences of the change of axis were brought to the knowledge of the world, they caused extraordinary excitement. At first this problem of the higher mechanics received an enthusiastic welcome. The idea of having seasons of constant equality, and, according to the latitude, "to suit consumers," was very attractive. The crowd reveled in the thought that they could enjoy the perpetual spring which the bard of Telemachus accorded to the Island of Calypso, and that they could have the spring either fresh or mild. Where the new axis was to be seemed to be the secret of Barbicane, Nicholl, and J. T. Maston, which they were in no hurry to present to the public. Would they reveal it in advance, or would it be known after the experiment? It would be as well to say so, perhaps, as opinion began to show signs of anxiety in the matter.

One observation ocurred naturally to the mind, and was at once commented on in the newspapers. By what mechanical means was the change to be produced, which evidently required the employment of an enormous force?

The Forum, an important New York review, very justly remarked: "If the Earth did not turn on its axis, it is probable that a relatively feeble shock would suffice to give a movement of rotation around an axis arbitrarily chosen; but the Earth is like an enormous gyroscope moving at high velocity, and it is a natural law that such an apparatus has a tendency to turn around the same axis, as Foucault demonstrated in his well-known experiments. It will therefore be very difficult, if not impossible, to shift it."

But after asking what would be the effort required by the engineers of the North Polar Practical Association, it was at least as interesting to know if the effort was to be suddenly or insensibly applied. And if it was to be a sudden effort, would not the proceedings of Messrs. Barbicane & Co. produce some rather alarming catastrophies on the face of the Earth?

ERE was something to occupy the brains of the wise and foolish. A shock is a shock, and it is never agreeable to receive the blow or the counter-blow. There was a likelihood that the promoters of the enterprise had been so busy with the advantages the world was to possess that they bad overlooked the destruction the operation would entail. And with considerable cleverness the Major and his allies made the most of this, and began to agitate public opinion against the president of the Gun Club.

Although France had taken no part in the syndicating, and officially treated the matter with disdain, yet there was in that country an individual who conceived the idea of setting out for Baltimore, to follow, for his own private satisfaction, the different phases of the enterprise.

He was a mining engineer of about five and thirty year of age. He had been the first on the list when admitted to the Polytechnic School, and he had been the first on the list when he left it, so that he must have been a mathematician of the first order, and probably superior to J. T. Maston, who, though he was a long way above the average, was only a calculator after all—that is to say, what Leverrier was compared to Newton or Laplace.

This engineer was a man of brains, and—though he was none the worse for that—somewhat of a humorist, and an original. In conversation with his intimates, even when he talked science, his language was more that of the slang of the streets than of the academical formula} he employed when he wrote. He was a wonderful worker, being accustomed to sit for ten hours at a stretch before his table, writing pages on pages of algebra with as much ease as he would have written a letter.

This singular man was called Pierdeux (Alcide), and in his way of condensing it—as is the custom of his comrades—he generally signed himself APierd, or even AP 1, without even dotting the i. He was so perfervid in his discussions that be had been named Vitriolic Alcide. Not only was he big, but he was tall. His friends affirmed that his height was exactly the five millionth part of a quarter of the meridian, and they were not far out. Although his head was rather too small for his powerful bust and shoulders, yet he held it well, and piercing were the eyes that looked through his pince-nez. He was chiefly distiguished by one of those physiognomies in which gaiety and gravity intermingle, and his hair had been prematurely thinned by the abuse of algebraic signs under the light of the gas-lamps in the study.

He was one of the best fellows whose memory lingers at the school. Although his character was independent enough, he was always loyal to the re-