SULPHURIC ALCIDE.
Such were the advantages promised by Barbicane’s changing the axis of
rotation—a change, however, which would only slightly affect the
movement of our spheroid round the Sun. The Earth would continue to
describe its orbit through space, and the conditions of the solar year
would remain the same.
When the consequences of the change of axis were brought to the
knowledge of the world, they caused extraordinary excitement. At first
this problem of the higher mechanics received an enthusiastic welcome.
The idea of having seasons of constant equality, and, according to the
latitude, “to suit consumers,” was very attractive. The crowd revelled
in the thought that they could enjoy the perpetual spring which the bard
of Telemachus accorded to the Island of Calypso, and that they could
have the spring either fresh or mild. Where the new axis was to be
seemed to be the secret of Barbicane, Nicholl, and J. T. Maston, which
they were in no hurry to present to the public. Would they reveal it in
advance, or would it be known after the experiment? It would be as well
to say so, perhaps, as opinion began to show signs of anxiety in the
matter.
One observation occurred naturally to the mind, and was at once
commented on in the newspapers. By what mechanical means was the change
to be produced, which evidently required the employment of an enormous
force?
The _Forum_, an important New York review, very justly remarked:—
“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. It will therefore be very difficult, if not
impossible, to shift it.”
But after asking what would be the effort required by the engineers of
the North Polar Practical Association, it was at least as interesting to
know if the effort was to be suddenly or insensibly applied. And if it
was to be a sudden effort, would not the proceedings of Messrs.
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.
Although France had taken no part in the syndicating, and officially
treated the matter with disdain, yet there was in that country an
individual who conceived the idea of setting out for Baltimore, to
follow, for his own private satisfaction, the different phases of the
enterprise.
He was a mining engineer of about five and thirty years of age. He had
been the first on the list when admitted to the Polytechnic School, and
he had been the first on the list when he left it, so that he must have
been a mathematician of the first order, and probably superior to J. T.
Maston, who, though he was a long way above the average, was only a
calculator after all—that is to say, what Leverrier was compared to
Newton or Laplace.
This engineer was a man of brains, and—though he was none the worse for
that—somewhat of a humourist, and an original. In conversation with his
intimates, even when he talked science, his language was more that of
the slang of the streets than of the academical formulæ he employed when
he wrote. He was a wonderful worker, being accustomed to sit for ten
hours at a stretch before his table, writing pages on pages of algebra
with as much ease as he would have written a letter.
This singular man was called Pierdeux (Alcide), and in his way of
condensing it—as is the custom of his comrades—he generally signed
himself [AP]ierd, or even ^{[AP]}I, without even dotting the i. He was
so perfervid in his discussions that he had been named Sulphuric Alcide.
Not only was he big, but he was tall. His friends affirmed that his
height was exactly the five millionth part of a quarter of the meridian,
and they were not far out. Although his head was rather too small for
his powerful bust and shoulders, yet he held it well, and piercing were
the eyes that looked through his _pince-nez_. He was chiefly
distinguished by one of those physiognomies in which gaiety and gravity
intermingle, and his hair had been prematurely thinned by the abuse of
algebraic signs under the light of the gas-lamps in the study.
He was one of the best fellows whose memory lingers at the school.
Although his character was independent enough, he was always loyal to
the requirements of Code X, which is law among the Polytechnicians in
all that concerns comradeship and respect for the uniform. He was
equally appreciated under the trees of the court of “Acas,” so named
because there are no acacias, as in the “casers,” the dormitories, in
which the arrangements of his box, and the order that reigned in his
“coffin,” denoted an absolutely methodical mind.
That the head of Alcide Pierdeux was a little too small for his body we
admit, but that it was filled to the meninges will be believed. Above
all things, he was a mathematician like all his comrades are, or have
been, but he only used his mathematics in application to experimental
science, whose chief attraction to him was that it had much to do with
industry. Herein he recognized the inferior side of his nature. No one
is perfect. His strong point was the study of those sciences which,
notwithstanding their immense progress, have, and always will have,
secrets for their followers.
Alcide was still a bachelor. He was still “equal to one,” as he phrased
it, although he had no objection to become “the half of two.” His
friends had had ideas of marrying him to a very charming girl at
Martigues. But, unfortunately, she had a father, who responded to the
first overtures in the following “martigalade:”—
“No, your Alcide is too clever! He talks to my poor girl in a way that
is unintelligible to her!”
And hence Alcide resolved to take a year’s holiday, and thought he could
not employ his time better than in following the North Polar Practical
Association in its peculiar undertaking.
As soon as he arrived at Baltimore he began to think over the matter
seriously. That the Earth would become Jovian by the change of its axis
mattered very little to him. But by what means it was to be brought
about excited his curiosity, and not without reason.
In his picturesque language he said to himself,—
“Evidently Barbicane is going to give our ball a terrible knock; but
what sort of a knock? Everything depends on that! I suppose he is going
to play for ‘side,’ as if with a cue at a billiard-ball; but if he hits
us ‘square’ he may jolt us out of our orbit, and then the years will
dance to a pretty tune. They are going to shift the old axis for a new
one, probably above it, but I do not see where they are to get their
taking-off place from, or how they are to manage the knock. If there was
no rotation, a mere flip would suffice, but they can’t put down that
diurnal spin. That is the _canisdentum_.”
He meant “the rub,” but that was his way of expressing himself.
“Whatever they do,” he continued, “there will be no end of a row before
it is over.”
Try all he could, the engineer could not discover Barbicane’s plan,
which for one reason was much to be regretted, as if it had been known
to him he would at once have made the calculations he needed.
But all at present was a mystery. And so it happened that on the 29th of
December Alcide Pierdeux, “Ingénieur au Corps National des Mines de
France,” was hurrying with lengthy strides through the crowded streets
of Baltimore.