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“What are you thinking of?” cried Bilsby. “Work at ballistics for the benefit of foreigners!”

“Perhaps that would be better than not doing it at all,” answered the colonel.

“Doubtless,” said J.T. Maston, “it would be better, but such an expedient cannot be thought of.”

“Why so?” asked the colonel.

“Because their ideas of advancement would be contrary to all our American customs. Those folks seem to think that you cannot be a general-in-chief without having served as second lieutenant, which comes to the same as saying that no one can point a gun that has not cast one. Now that is simply—”

“Absurd!” replied Tom Hunter, whittling the arms of his chair with his bowie-knife; “and as things are so, there is nothing left for us but to plant tobacco or distil whale-oil!”

“What!” shouted J.T. Maston, “shall we not employ these last years of our existence in perfecting firearms? Will not a fresh opportunity present itself to try the ranges of our projectiles? Will the atmosphere be no longer illuminated by the lightning of our cannons? Won’t some international difficulty crop up that will allow us to declare war against some transatlantic power? Won’t France run down one of our steamers, or won’t England, in defiance of the rights of nations, hang up three or four of our countrymen?”

“No, Maston,” answered Colonel Blomsberry; “no such luck! No, not one of those incidents will happen; and if one did, it would be of no use to us. American sensitiveness is declining daily, and we are going to the dogs!”

“Yes, we are growing quite humble,” replied Bilsby.

“And we are humiliated!” answered Tom Hunter.

“All that is only too true,” replied J.T. Maston, with fresh vehemence. “There are a thousand reasons for fighting floating about, and still we don’t fight! We economise legs and arms, and that to the profit of folks that don’t know what to do with them. Look here, without looking any farther for a motive for war, did not North America formerly belong to the English?”

“Doubtless,” answered Tom Hunter, angrily poking the fire with the end of his crutch.

“Well,” replied J.T. Maston, “why should not England in its turn belong to the Americans?”

“It would be but justice,” answered Colonel Blomsberry.

“Go and propose that to the President of the United States,” cried J.T. Maston, “and see what sort of a reception you would get.”

“It would not be a bad reception,” murmured Bilsby between the four teeth he had saved from battle.

“I’faith,” cried J.T. Maston, “they need not count upon my vote in the next elections.”

“Nor upon ours,” answered with common accord these bellicose invalids.

“In the meantime,” continued J.T. Maston, “and to conclude, if they do not furnish me with the opportunity of trying my new mortar on a real battlefield, I shall send in my resignation as member of the Gun Club, and I shall go and bury myself in the backwoods of Arkansas.”

“We will follow you there,” answered the interlocutors of the enterprising J.T. Maston.

Things had come to that pass, and the club, getting more excited, was menaced with approaching dissolution, when an unexpected event came to prevent so regrettable a catastrophe.

The very day after the foregoing conversation each member of the club received a circular couched in these terms:—

“Baltimore, October 3rd.

“The president of the Gun Club has the honour to inform his colleagues that at the meeting on the 5th ultimo he will make them a communication of an extremely interesting nature. He therefore begs that they, to the suspension of all other business, will attend, in accordance with the present invitation,

“Their devoted colleague,

“IMPEY BARBICANE, P.G.C.”

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On the 5th of October, at 8 p.m., a dense crowd pressed into the saloons of the Gun Club, 21, Union-square. All the members of the club residing at Baltimore had gone on the invitation of their president. The express brought corresponding members by hundreds, and if the meeting-hall had not been so large, the crowd of savants could not have found room in it; they overflowed into the neighbouring rooms, down the passages, and even into the courtyards; there they ran against the populace who were pressing against the doors, each trying to get into the front rank, all eager to learn the important communication of President Barbicane, all pressing, squeezing, crushing with that liberty of action peculiar to the masses brought up in the idea of self-government.

That evening any stranger who might have chanced to be in Baltimore could not have obtained a place at any price in the large hall; it was exclusively reserved to residing or corresponding members; no one else was admitted; and the city magnates, common councillors, and select men were compelled to mingle with their inferiors in order to catch stray news from the interior.

The immense hall presented a curious spectacle; it was marvellously adapted to the purpose for which it was built. Lofty pillars formed of cannon, superposed upon huge mortars as a base, supported the fine ironwork of the arches—real cast-iron lacework.

Trophies of blunderbusses, matchlocks, arquebuses, carbines, all sorts of ancient or modern firearms, were picturesquely enlaced against the walls. The gas, in full flame, came out of a thousand revolvers grouped in the form of lustres, whilst candlesticks of pistols, and candelabra made of guns done up in sheaves, completed this display of light. Models of cannons, specimens of bronze, targets spotted with shot-marks, plaques broken by the shock of the Gun Club, balls, assortments of rammers and sponges, chaplets of shells, necklaces of projectiles, garlands of howitzers—in a word, all the tools of the artilleryman surprised the eyes by their wonderful arrangement, and induced a belief that their real purpose was more ornamental than deadly.

In the place of honour was seen, covered by a splendid glass case, a piece of breech, broken and twisted under the effort of the powder—a precious fragment of J.T. Maston’s cannon.

At the extremity of the hall the president, assisted by four secretaries, occupied a wide platform. His chair, placed on a carved gun-carriage, was modelled upon the powerful proportions of a 32-inch mortar; it was pointed at an angle of 90 degs., and hung upon trunnions so that the president could use it as a rocking-chair, very agreeable in great heat. Upon the desk, a huge iron plate, supported upon six carronades, stood a very tasteful inkstand, made of a beautifully-chased Spanish piece, and a report-bell, which, when required, went off like a revolver. During the vehement discussions this new sort of bell scarcely sufficed to cover the voices of this legion of excited artillerymen.

In front of the desk, benches, arranged in zigzags, like the circumvallations of intrenchment, formed a succession of bastions and curtains where the members of the Gun Club took their seats; and that evening, it may be said, there were plenty on the ramparts. The president was sufficiently known for all to be assured that he would not have called together his colleagues without a very great motive.

Impey Barbicane was a man of forty, calm, cold, austere, of a singularly serious and concentrated mind, as exact as a chronometer, of an imperturbable temperament and immovable character; not very chivalrous, yet adventurous, and always bringing practical ideas to bear on the wildest enterprises; an essential New-Englander, a Northern colonist, the descendant of those Roundheads so fatal to the Stuarts, and the implacable enemy of the Southern gentlemen, the ancient cavaliers of the mother country—in a word, a Yankee cast in a single mould.