Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 24.djvu/696

688 was heavily stored with pork and corn, while her other chambers had in some of them heavy drifts of snow, and some only a few men and women and hens.

Before Orcutt saw Haliburton's ad- vice, he had sent us 23 and 24.

23. " We have established a Sande- manian church, and ordained Brannan. My son Edward and Alice Whitman are to be married this evening."

This despatch unfortunately did not reach Haliburton, though I got it. So, all the happy pair received for our wed- ding-present was the advice to look in the Cyclopaedia at article Projectiles near the end.

24 was :

" We shall act 'As You Like It ' af- ter the wedding. Dead-head tickets for all of the old set who will come."

Actually, in one week's reunion we had come to joking.

The next night we got 25 :

" Alice says she will not read the Cyclopaedia in the honeymoon, but is much obliged to Mr. Haliburton for his advice."

" How did she ever know it was I ? " wrote the matter-of-fact Haliburton to me.

26. " Alice wants to know if Mr. Haliburton will not send here for some rags ; says we have plenty, with little need for clothes."

And then despatches began to be more serious again. Brannan and Or- cutt had failed in the great scheme for the longitude, to which they had sacri- ficed their lives, if, indeed, it were a sacrifice to retire with those they love best to a world of their own. But none the less did they devote them- selves, with the rare power of observa- tion they had, to the benefit of our world. Thus, in 27 :

" Your North Pole is an open ocean. It was black, which we think means water, from August ist to September 29th. Your South Pole is on an island bigger than New Holland. Your An- tarctic Continent is a great cluster of islands."

28. " Your Nyanzas are only two o?a large group of African lakes. The green of Africa, where there is no wa- ter, is wonderful at our distance."

29. " We have not the last numbers of ' Foul Play.' Tell us, in a word or two, how they got home. We can see what we suppose their island was."

30. " We should like to know who proved Right in 'He Knew He was Right.' "

This was a good night's work, as they were then telegraphing. As soon as it cleared, Haliburton displayed,

BEST HOPES. CARRIER DUCKS.

This was Haliburton's masterpiece. He had no room for more, however, and was obliged to reserve for the next day his answer to No. 30, which was simply,

SHE.

A real equinoctial now parted us for nearly a week, and at the end of that time they were so low in our northern horizon that we could not make out their signals ; we ad they were obliged to wait till they had passed through two thirds of their month before we could communicate again. I used the time in speeding to No. 9. We got a few carpenters together, and arranged on the Flat two long movable black platforms, which ran in and out on railroad-wheels on tracks, from under green platforms ; so that we could dis- play one or both as we chose, and then withdraw them. With this apparatus we could give forty-five signals in a minute, corresponding to the line and dot of the telegraph ; and thus could compass some twenty letters in that time, and make out perhaps two hun- dred and fifty words in an hour. Hali- burton thought that, with some im- provements, he could send one of Mr. Buchanan's messages up in thirty-sev- en working-nights.

[These observations bring the history of the Brick Moon to April, 1871, as the attentive reader will observe. In anoth- er paper Mr. Ingham will describe the more important of the observations afterwards made by himself and Mr. Haliburton.]