From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne Page B

process of getting the operation under way.
    More than a year was to pass between the beginning of the work and its completion, but that time would not be devoid of excitement. The site to be chosen for the hole in the ground, the construction of the mold, the casting of the cannon, its highly dangerous loading: these things were more than enough to arouse the public’s curiosity. When the projectile was fired, it would be out of sight in a few tenths of a second; from then on, only a privileged few would be able to see what would become of it, how it would behave in space, and how it would reach the moon. For this reason, the main interest lay in the preparations for the experiment and the precise details of its execution.
    But to its purely scientific interest was suddenly added the commotion stirred up by an incident.
    We have already seen how many friends and admirers Barbicane’s project had attracted to him. Honorable andextraordinary though it was, however, this majority was not unanimous. One man in all the states of the Union protested against the project. He attacked it violently at every opportunity, and human nature is so made that Barbicane was more strongly affected by that one man’s opposition than he was by the applause of all the others.
    Yet he well knew the motive of that antipathy, the source of that solitary enmity, why it was personal and of long standing, and the rancorous rivalry that had produced it.
    He had never seen that determined enemy. This was fortunate, for an encounter between the two men would certainly have had regrettable consequences. That rival was a scientist like Barbicane, a proud, dauntless, earnest, violent man, a pure Yankee. His name was Captain Nicholl. He lived in Philadelphia.
    Everyone knows of the strange struggle that took place during the Civil War between cannons and naval armor, with the former determined to pierce the latter, and the latter determined to withstand the former. It led to radical changes in the navies of both continents. Projectiles and armor plate fought relentlessly; the first constantly grew larger as the second grew thicker. Ships armed with formidable guns moved into battle beneath the protection of their invulnerable iron shells. Vessels such as the
Merrimac,
the
Monitor
and the
Weehawken
fired enormous projectiles after armoring themselves against those of the enemy. They did unto others as they would not have had others do unto them, an immoral principle on which the whole art of war is based.
    Barbicane was a great caster of projectiles, and Nicholl was a great forger of armor. One cast night and day in Baltimore, while the other forged day and night inPhiladelphia. Each was pursuing a line of thought essentially opposed to that of the other.
    As soon as Barbicane invented a new projectile, Nicholl invented a new armor plate. Barbicane spent all his time making holes, Nicholl in preventing him from doing so—hence a constant rivalry that soon became personal. Nicholl appeared in Barbicane’s dreams as an impenetrable armor plate which he crashed into at high speed, and Barbicane appeared in Nicholl’s dreams as a projectile that cut him in half.
    Although they were following divergent lines, the two scientists would eventually have encountered each other, despite all the axioms of geometry—but it would have been on the field of honor. Fortunately for these citizens so useful to their country, they were separated by a distance of fifty or sixty miles, and their friends placed so many obstacles along the way that they never met.
    It was not clear which of the two inventors had gotten the better of the other; the results obtained made it difficult to form a precise judgment. It seemed, however, that in the long run the armor plate would have to yield to the projectile.
    Nevertheless there were competent men who had their doubts. In a recent test, Barbicane’s cylindro-conical projectiles had stuck in Nicholl’s armor like pins. Nicholl had