Jules Verne

“ Tearful and distracted she had followed J. T. Maston.
“Dear Maston!” said she.
“Well! Yes!” said he; “on one condition—that I never again touch mathematics.”
“I abominate them!” said the widow.
And thus it was that Mrs. Scorbitt became Mrs. J. T. Maston.
As to Alcide Pierdeux, what honour, what celebrity that letter brought both him and his old school! Translated into all languages, copied into all newspapers, it made his name known throughout the world. ”

“ And how did Barbicane & Co. intend to cast a cannon of such colossal dimensions? The only chance for the inhabitants of the world was, as we have seen, in the difficulty of dealing with such a huge undertaking.
To cast a cannon a million times larger than a four hundred pounder would have been beyond the power of man. To make a four hundred pounder is difficult enough, but a four hundred million pounder! ”

“ There was a respectful silence while Barbicane paused.
Then in a thrilling voice he resumed,—
“And so, in spite of devotion and courage unparalleled, the eighty-fourth degree has never been passed. And we may even assert that it never will be by means of ships or sledges. It is not given to man to face such dangers and support such extremes of temperature. It is by other means we must advance to the conquest of the Pole!”
From the subdued murmur of the audience it was evident that therein lay the interest of the communication. ”

“ Honour to Impey Barbicane and his colleagues! Not only will they have made the Earth more hygienically 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! ”

“ The first idea of our enterprise occurred to one of the most learned, devoted, and illustrious of our colleagues. To him also belongs the glory of having made the calculations which rendered the theory practicable, for if the development of the Polar mines is child’s play, the displacement of the Pole is a problem which higher mechanics can alone deal with. ”

“ Barbicane & Co. produce some rather alarming catastrophes on the face of the earth?
Here 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 had 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. ”

“ Maston,” she said, “each to his lot in this world. Remain the extraordinary mathematician that you are. Give yourself entirely to the problems of that immense enterprise to which you and your friends have devoted their lives! I will remain the good woman I ought to be, and assist you with the means.” ”

“ Barbicane and Nicholl had also retired, comparatively speaking, but they had retired only to dream of some new enterprise of a similar character. They were in no want of money. From their last undertaking there remained nearly two hundred thousand dollars out of the five millions and a half yielded by the public subscriptions of the old and new worlds; and by exhibiting themselves in their aluminium projectile throughout the United States they had realized enough wealth and glory to satisfy the most exacting of human ambitions. ”

“ 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 round 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 round the same axis, as Foucault demonstrated in his well-known experiments. ”

“ If a Lesseps were one day to propose to cut a gigantic canal through Europe and Asia, from the shores of the Atlantic to the China Sea; if a well-sinker of genius were to offer to pierce the earth in the hopes of finding and utilizing the beds of silicates supposed to be there in a fluid state; if an enterprising electrician proposed to combine the currents disseminated over the surface of the globe so as to form an inexhaustible source of heat and light ”

“ We have no need of ships or sledges to reach the Pole, but thanks to our arrangements the fusion of the ice, ancient or modern, will take place like enchantment!”
He paused. There was absolute silence.
“Gentlemen,” he continued, “Archimedes demanded but a fulcrum to lift the world! Well, we have found a fulcrum! A lever was what the great Syracusan geometer required, and a lever we possess! We are in a position to displace the Pole—”
“Displace the Pole!” exclaimed Baldenak.
“Bring it to Baltimore!” said Professor Harald. ”

“ The inclination of our planet’s axis, or in other terms, the angle which its axis of rotation makes with the plane of its ecliptic is 66° 32′. A few degrees would thus bring the axis perpendicular to the plane of the orbit it describes round the Sun.
But—it is important to remark—the effort that the North Polar Practical Association was about to make would not, strictly speaking, right the Earth’s axis. Mechanically, no 71force, however considerable, could accomplish that. The Earth is not like a chicken on a spit, that we can take it in our hand and shift it as we will. ”

“ Many of the deeds of gift to the churches begin with the words, ‘The end of the world approaching, and its ruin being imminent.’ When the end of the fatal term arrived the people kept within the basilicas, the chapels, the edifices consecrated to God, and waited in agony for the seven trumpets of the seven angels of judgment to sound in the sky. ”

“ Three miles divided New Park from Ballistic Cottage. But a telephone-wire united the two habitations, and at the ringing of the call between the mansion and the cottage conversation could be instantly established. If the talkers could not see each other, they could hear each other; and no one will be surprised to learn that Evangelina Scorbitt called J. T. Maston much oftener before his telephonic plate than J. T. Maston called Evangelina 53Scorbitt before hers. ”

“ THE NORTH POLE IS KNOCKED DOWN TO THE HIGHEST BIDDER. That the sale of the 3rd of December should take place in the Auction Mart might appear strange. As a rule, only furniture, instruments, pictures, and objects of art were sold there. But for this curious departure from the ordinary practice in the sale of land a precedent was discoverable, as already a portion of our planet had changed hands under the hammer. ”

“ By J. T. Maston’s calculations, the problem had evidently been solved. The operation to be attempted by Barbicane & Co. would, it was only too clear, introduce a most regrettable modification in the diurnal movement. A new axis would be substituted for the old. And we know what would be the consequences of that substitution.
The enterprise of Barbicane & Co. was thus judged, cursed, and demitted to general reprobation. Barbicane and Co. were dangers to society. If they retained a few partisans in the United States, the partisans were few indeed. ”

“ Their object was to discover the motives of the enterprise, and the profit the Association expected to make out of it. But there was no trace of an office at Baltimore. The only address was that of William S. Forster, High Street, and the worthy codfish agent pretended that he knew nothing about it. The secret of the Association was impenetrable.
The consequence was that the delegates met, visited each other, cross-examined each other, and finally entered into communication with a view of taking united action against the Baltimore company. ”

“ Protests came in by every post. The United States Government was urged to interfere.
“Look at these Yankees,” said one. “They want to hang the globe on another axletree! As if the old one, after all these centuries, had worn out! But is it not as sound as it was at the beginning?”
And there was Sulphuric Alcide at work trying to find out the nature and direction of the shock that J. T. Maston had arranged. Once master of the secret, he would very soon know what parts of the Earth were in danger. ”

“ The results of the shock may be much more complicated than they imagine! Why should not the volcanoes take the opportunity to favour us with a few disorderly eruptions, and, like a first voyager, displace some of the matter in their insides? ”

“ On the 5th of September, the President of the Commission visited the prisoner in his cell.
Mrs. Scorbitt, at his urgent request, was allowed to accompany him. Perhaps at the last attempt the influence of this amiable lady might be successful. It would not do to neglect anything. All means were legitimate that might secure the word of the enigma. If they did not succeed, they would see!
“They will see!” said the knowing ones. “Suppose they hang J. T. Maston, and the catastrophe takes place all the same?” ”

“ The North Pole was at last to be conquered by the audacious genius of man!
Barbicane and his co-directors had the means of succeeding where so many others had failed. They would do what had not been done by Franklin, Kane, Nares, or Greely. They would advance beyond the eighty-fourth parallel. They would take possession of the vast portion 48of the globe that had fallen to them under the hammer. They would add to the American flag the forty-third star for the forty-third state annexed to the American Confederation. ”

“ 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! ”

“ It is that part of the Earth comprised between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. Every place within this zone has the Sun in the zenith twice a year.
What are the Temperate zones? The part comprised between the Tropics and the Polar circles; between 23° 28′ and 66° 32′ of latitude, and in which the Sun never rises to the zenith, but is above the horizon on every day in the year.
What are the Frigid zones? That part of the circumpolar regions in which the Sun does not rise above the horizon on every day in the year; while at the Pole itself he does not rise for six months at a time. ”

“ When the axis became perpendicular these things would be different. The Sun would remain on the plane of the Equator. All the year round he would pursue his imperturbable twelve-hour course, and rise to a distance from the zenith according to the latitude of the place. In countries of twenty degrees of latitude he would rise seventy degrees above the horizon; in countries of forty-nine degrees of latitude he would rise forty-one; in places of eighty-four degrees he would rise six, and of ninety degrees (the Pole) , he would just peep half his diameter above the horizon. ”

“ To modify the conditions of the Earth’s movement is beyond the powers of man. It is not given to mankind to change the order established by the Creator in the system of the Universe. ”

“ A hundred miles from Disko its altitude is nearly 7000 feet. And if we consider the different products, animal or vegetable, found in the secular ice, such as the carcases of mastodons, the trunks of conifers, you can see that the continent was once a fertile one, inhabited certainly by animals, and probably by men. There lie buried the thick forests of pre-historic times, which have formed the coal-fields we propose to develop. Yes! It is a continent round the Pole, a virgin continent untrodden by human foot. ”

“ He laughed at difficulties, whether in the science of magnitudes, that is algebra, or in the science of numbers, that is arithmetic; and it was a treat to see him handle the symbols, the conventional signs which form the algebraic notation, whether letters of the alphabet, representing quantities or magnitudes, or lines coupled or crossed, which indicate the relation between the quantities and the operations to which they are submitted. ”

“ North America has immense deposits of coal; new discoveries are often being announced, and there are doubtless more to follow. The Arctic regions seem to be a part of the American continent geologically. ”

“ As soon as the explosion takes place, the centre of the Earth will be displaced in a direction parallel to that of the impetus, and a change will ensue in the plane of the orbit, and consequently in the length of the year ”

“ Is not a woman’s heart unfathomable? ”

“ If the core of this apparatus is firmly fixed in the ground, there can be no doubt but that it would communicate its recoil to the mass of our planet.
“The apparatus adopted by the Association is a monster 88cannon, which would have no effect if discharged vertically. To produce the maximum effect it must be aimed horizontally towards the north or south, and it is this latter direction which has been decided on by the Association. In this way the recoil will produce a shock towards the north of the nature of that given to a billiard-ball when struck on the side.” ”

“ As it was important that the projectile should glide along a perfectly smooth surface without losing any of the gas of deflagration, the interior was lined with a smooth tube of cast iron. This was a much larger affair than the celebrated 122Columbiad of Tampa Town, which had sent the aluminium projectile round the Moon. But what is there that is impossible to the engineers of the modern world?
While the boring went on in the flank of Kilimanjaro, the workmen were busy at the second foundry. While the tube was being built the enormous projectile was in process of manufacture. ”

“ The industrial stomach cannot live without coal: industry is a carbonivorous animal, and must have its proper food. ”

“ From Kilimanjaro to Baltimore is one hundred and fourteen degrees, or a difference in time of four hundred and fifty-six minutes. At the moment of discharge it would be twenty-four minutes past five in the afternoon in the great city of Maryland.
The weather was magnificent. The sun had just set on the plains of the Wamasai behind a perfectly clear horizon. Barbicane & Co. could not have wished for a better night, a calmer or a more star-lit one, in which to hurl their projectile into space. ”