For my part, as long as I can have the privilege of looking out of the window, I am willing to lease it for a hundred years.

Ah! Barbican, that brings out one of your stony smiles.

You think our lease may last longer than that! Our tenement may become our coffin, eh?
Be it so.

I prefer it anyway to Mahomet's; it may indeed float in the air, but it won't be motionless as a milestone!" [Illustration: TURN ON THE GAS.] Barbican, having made sure by personal inspection that everything was in perfect order, consulted his chronometer, which he had carefully set a short time before with Chief Engineer Murphy's, who had been charged to fire off the Projectile.
"Friends," he said, "it is now twenty minutes past ten.

At 10 46' 40'', precisely, Murphy will send the electric current into the gun-cotton.