Not sooner.

Ten, thirty-eight, ten!" "Captain, you're a man of method, if there ever was one.

I think, however, that you made a mistake in your wagers." "How so ?" asked the Captain listlessly, his eye still on the dial.
"Because, by Jove, if you win there will be no more of you left to take the money than there will be of Barbican to pay it!" "Friend Ardan," quietly observed Barbican, "my stakes are deposited in the _Wall Street Bank_, of New York, with orders to pay them over to the Captain's heirs, in case the Captain himself should fail to put in an appearance at the proper time." "Oh! you rhinoceroses, you pachyderms, you granite men!" cried Ardan, gasping with surprise; "you machines with iron heads, and iron hearts! I may admire you, but I'm blessed if I understand you!" "Ten, forty-two, ten!" repeated M'Nicholl, as mechanically as if it was the chronometer itself that spoke.
"Four minutes and a half more," said Barbican.
"Oh! four and a half little minutes!" went on Ardan.

"Only think of it! We are shut up in a bullet that lies in the chamber of a cannon nine hundred feet long.

Underneath this bullet is piled a charge of 400 thousand pounds of gun-cotton, equivalent to 1600 thousand pounds of ordinary gunpowder! And at this very instant our friend Murphy, chronometer in hand, eye on dial, finger on discharger, is counting the last seconds and getting ready to launch us into the limitless regions of planetary--" "Ardan, dear friend," interrupted Barbican, in a grave tone, "a serious moment is now at hand.