CHAPTER X.
ONE ENEMY AGAINST TWENTY-FIVE MILLIONS OF FRIENDS.
The American public took great interest in the least details of the Gun Club's enterprise.

It followed the committee debates day by day.

The most simple preparations for this great experiment, the questions of figures it provoked, the mechanical difficulties to be solved, all excited popular opinion to the highest pitch.
More than a year would elapse between the commencement of the work and its completion; but the interval would not be void of excitement.

The place to be chosen for the boring, the casting the metal of the Columbiad, its perilous loading, all this was more than necessary to excite public curiosity.

The projectile, once fired, would be out of sight in a few seconds; then what would become of it, how it would behave in space, how it would reach the moon, none but a few privileged persons would see with their own eyes.