PAGE 27
The Brick Moon
by
by which he meant, “See article Projectiles in the Cyclopaedia at the end”; and there indeed is the only explanation to be given. When you fire a shot, why does it ever go to the right or left of the plane in which it is projected? Dr. Hutton ascribes it to a whirling motion acquired by the bullet by friction with the gun. Euler thinks it due chiefly to the irregularity of the shape of the ball. In our case the B. M. was regular enough. But on one side, being wholly unprepared for flight, she 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 advice, he had sent us 24 and 25.
24. “We have established a Sandemanian church, and Brannan preaches. 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 wedding-present was the advice to look in the Cyclopaedia at article Projectiles near the end.
25 was:–
“We shall act `As You Like It’ after 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 26:
“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.
27. “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 Orcutt had failed in the great scheme for the longitude, to which they had sacrificed 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 themselves, with the rare power of observation they had, to the benefit of our world. Thus, in 28:
“Your North Pole is an open ocean. It was black, which we think means water, from August 1st to September 29th. Your South Pole is on an island bigger than New Holland. Your Antarctic Continent is a great cluster of islands.”
29. “Your Nyanzas are only two of a large group of African lakes. The green of Africa, where there is no water, is wonderful at our distance.”
30. “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.”
31. “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. 31, 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 and 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 display 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 hundred and fifty words in an hour. Haliburton thought that, with some improvements, he could send one of Mr. Buchanan’s messages up in thirty-seven working-nights.