e little Midshipman in a confident tone. "Is
there not a telescope at Long's Peak? Doesn't it bring the Moon within a
few miles of the Rocky Mountains, and enable us to see on her surface,
objects as small as nine feet in diameter? Well! What's to prevent
Barbican and his friends from constructing a gigantic alphabet? If they
write words of even a few hundred yards and sentences a mile or two
long, what is to prevent us from reading them? Catch the idea now, eh?"

They did catch the idea, and heartily applauded the little Middy for his
smartness. Even the Doctor saw a certain kind of merit in it, and
Brownson acknowledged it to be quite feasible. In fact, expanding on it,
the Lieutenant assured his hearers that, by means of large parabolic
reflectors, luminous groups of rays could be dispatched from the Earth,
of sufficient brightness to establish direct communication even with
Venus or Mars, where these rays would be quite as visible as the planet
Neptune is from the Earth. He even added that those brilliant points of
light, which have been quite frequently observed in Mars and Venus, are
perhaps signals made to the Earth by the inhabitants of these planets.
He concluded, however, by observing that, though we might by these means
succeed in obtaining news from the Moon, we could not possibly send any
intelligence back in return, unless indeed the Selenites had at their
disposal optical instruments at least as good as ours.

All agreed that this was very true, and, as is generally the case when
one keeps all the talk to himself, the conversation now assumed so
serious a turn that for some time it was hardly worth recording.

At last the Chief Engineer, excited by some remark that had been made,
observed with much earnestness:

"You may say what you please, gentlemen, but I would willingly give my
last dollar to know what has become of those brave men! Have they done
anything? Have they seen anything? I hope they have. But I should dearly
like to know. Ever so little success would warrant a repetition of the
great experiment. The Columbiad is still to the good in Florida, as it
will be for many a long day. There are millions of men to day as curious
as I am upon the subject. Therefore it will be only a question of mere
powder and bullets if a cargo of visitors is not sent to the Moon every
time she passes our zenith.

"Marston would be one of the first of them," observed Brownson, lighting
his cigar.

"Oh, he would