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A moment of silence followed this triple proposal; it was at
last broken by the president.
"Gentlemen," he quietly said, "I start from this principle, that
the resistance of a gun, constructed under the given conditions,
is unlimited. I shall surprise our friend Maston, then, by
stigmatizing his calculations as timid; and I propose to double
his 800,000 pounds of powder."
"Sixteen hundred thousand pounds?" shouted Maston, leaping from
his seat.
"Just so."
"We shall have to come then to my ideal of a cannon half a mile
long; for you see 1,600,000 pounds will occupy a space of about
20,000 cubic feet; and since the contents of your cannon do not
exceed 54,000 cubic feet, it would be half full; and the bore
will not be more than long enough for the gas to communicate to
the projectile sufficient impulse."
"Nevertheless," said the president, "I hold to that quantity
of powder. Now, 1,600,000 pounds of powder will create
6,000,000,000 litres of gas. Six thousand millions!
You quite understand?"
"What is to be done then?" said the general.
"The thing is very simple; we must reduce this enormous quantity
of powder, while preserving to it its mechanical power."
"Good; but by what means?"
"I am going to tell you," replied Barbicane quietly.
"Nothing is more easy than to reduce this mass to one quarter of
its bulk. You know that curious cellular matter which
constitutes the elementary tissues of vegetable? This substance
is found quite pure in many bodies, especially in cotton, which
is nothing more than the down of the seeds of the cotton plant.
Now cotton, combined with cold nitric acid, become transformed
into a substance eminently insoluble, combustible, and explosive.
It was first discovered in 1832, by Braconnot, a French chemist,
who called it xyloidine. In 1838 another Frenchman, Pelouze,
investigated its different properties, and finally, in 1846,
Schonbein, professor of chemistry at Bale, proposed its employment
for purposes of war. This powder, now called pyroxyle, or
fulminating cotton, is prepared with great facility by simply
plunging cotton for fifteen minutes in nitric acid, then washing
it in water, then drying it, and it is ready for use."
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