Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 24.djvu/618

610 Skowhegan, saying he had hired a sleigh to go over to No. 9 ; and in four days more I got this letter :

" March 27th.

" DEAR FRED, I am most glad I came, and I beg you to bring your wife as soon as possible. The river is very full, the wheels, to which Leonard has added two auxiliaries, are moving as if they could not hold out long, the ways are all but ready, and we think we must not wait. Start with all hands as soon as you can. I had no difficulty in coming over from Skowhegan. We did it in two days."

This note I sent at once to Halibur- ton ; and we got all the children ready for a winter journey, as the spectacle of the launch of the MOON was one to be remembered their life long. But it was clearly impossible to attempt, at that season, to get the subscribers to- gether. Just as we started, this de- spatch from Skowhegan was brought me, the last word I got from them :

" Stop for nothing. There is a jam below us in the stream, and we fear back-water.

"ORCUTT."

Of course we could not go faster than we could. We missed no connec- tion. At Skowhegan, Haliburton and I took a cutter, leaving the ladies and children to follow at once in larger sleighs. We drove all night, changed horses at Prospect, and kept on all the next day. At No. 7 we had to wait over night. We started early in the morning, and came down the Spoon- wood Hill at four in the afternoon, in full sight of our little village.

It was quiet as the grave ! Not a smoke, not a man, not an adze-blow, nor the tick of a trowel. Only the gigantic fly-wheels were whirling as I saw them last.

There was the lower Coliseum-like centring, somewhat as I first saw it.

But where was the Brick Dome of the MOON ?

" Good Heavens ! has it fallen on them all ? cried I.

Haliburton lashed the beast till he fairly ran down that steep hill. We turned a little point, and came out in front of the centring. There was no MOON there ! An empty amphithea- tre, with not a brick nor a splinter within !

We were speechless. We left the cutter. We ran up the stairways to. the terrace. We ran by the familiar | paths into the centring. We came out upon the ways, which we had never seen before. These told the story too well ! The ground and crushed surface of the timbers, scorched by the rap- idity with which THE MOON had slid down, told that they had done the duty for which they were built.

It was too clear that in some wild rush of the waters the ground had yield- ed a trifle. We could not find that the foundations had sunk more than six inches, but that was enough. In that fatal six inches' decline of the centring, the MOON had been launched upon the ways just as George had intended that it should be when he was ready. But it had slid, not rolled, down upon these angry fly-wheels, and in an instant, with all our friends, it had been hurled into the sky !

" They have gone up ! " said Hali- burton ; " She has gone up ! " said I ; both in one breath. And with a common instinct, we looked up into the blue.

But of course she was not there.

Not a shred of letter or any other tidings could we find in any of the shanties. It was indeed six weeks since George and Fanny and their children had moved into Annie and Diamond, two unoccupied cells of the MOON, so much more comfortable had the cells proved than the cabins, for winter life. Returning to No. 7, we found there many of the laborers, who were astonished at what we told them. They had been paid off on the 3oth, and told to come up again on the I5th of April, to see the launch. One of them, a man named Rob Shea, told me that George kept his cousin Peter to help