e passed over the
constellation of the Twins, and was now nearly halfway between the
horizon and the zenith.

A frightful silence hung over all that scene. There was not a breath of
wind on the earth! Not a sound of breathing from the crowd! Hearts dared
not beat. Every eye was fixed on the gaping mouth of the Columbiad.

Murchison watched the needle of his chronometer. Hardly forty seconds
had to elapse before the moment of departure struck, and each one lasted
a century!

At the twentieth there was a universal shudder, and the thought occurred
to all the crowd that the audacious travellers shut up in the vehicle
were likewise counting these terrible seconds! Some isolated cries were
heard.

"Thirty-five!--thirty-six!--thirty-seven!--thirty--eight!--thirty-nine!
--forty! Fire!!!"

Murchison immediately pressed his finger upon the electric knob and
hurled the electric spark into the depths of the Columbiad.

A fearful, unheard-of, superhuman report, of which nothing could give
an idea, not even thunder or the eruption of volcanoes, was immediately
produced. An immense spout of fire sprang up from the bowels of the
earth as if from a crater. The soil heaved and very few persons caught a
glimpse of the projectile victoriously cleaving the air amidst the
flaming smoke.

CHAPTER XXVII.

CLOUDY WEATHER.

At the moment when the pyramid of flame rose to a prodigious height in
the air it lighted up the whole of Florida, and for an incalculable
moment day was substituted for night over a considerable extent of
country. This immense column of fire was perceived for a hundred miles
out at sea, from the Gulf and from the Atlantic, and more than one
ship's captain noted the apparition of this gigantic meteor in his
log-book.

The discharge of the Columbiad was accompanied by a veritable
earthquake. Florida was shaken to its very depths. The gases of the
powder, expanded by heat, forced back the atmospheric strata with
tremendous violence, passing like a waterspout through the air.

Not one spectator remained on his legs; men, women, and children were
thrown down like ears of wheat in a storm; there was a terrible tumult,
and a large number of people were seriously injured. J.T. Maston, who
had very imprudently kept to the fore, was thrown twenty yards backwards
like a bullet over the heads of his fellow-citizens. Three hundred
thousand people were temporarily deafened and as though thunderstruck.

The atmosp