From the Earth to the Moon; and, Round the Moon by Jules Verne Page B

o'clock precisely.
The previous evening each furnace had been charged with 114,000
pounds weight of metal in bars disposed cross-ways to each other,
so as to allow the hot air to circulate freely between them.
At daybreak the 1,200 chimneys vomited their torrents of flame
into the air, and the ground was agitated with dull tremblings.
As many pounds of metal as there were to cast, so many pounds of
coal were there to burn. Thus there were 68,000 tons of coal
which projected in the face of the sun a thick curtain of smoke.
The heat soon became insupportable within the circle of furnaces,
the rumbling of which resembled the rolling of thunder. The powerful
ventilators added their continuous blasts and saturated with
oxygen the glowing plates. The operation, to be successful,
required to be conducted with great rapidity. On a signal given
by a cannon-shot each furnace was to give vent to the molten
iron and completely to empty itself. These arrangements made,
foremen and workmen waited the preconcerted moment with an
impatience mingled with a certain amount of emotion. Not a soul
remained within the enclosure. Each superintendent took his
post by the aperture of the run.
    Barbicane and his colleagues, perched on a neighboring eminence,
assisted at the operation. In front of them was a piece of
artillery ready to give fire on the signal from the engineer.
Some minutes before midday the first driblets of metal began to
flow; the reservoirs filled little by little; and, by the time
that the whole melting was completely accomplished, it was kept
in abeyance for a few minutes in order to facilitate the
separation of foreign substances.
    Twelve o'clock struck! A gunshot suddenly pealed forth and shot
its flame into the air. Twelve hundred melting-troughs were
simultaneously opened and twelve hundred fiery serpents crept
toward the central well, unrolling their incandescent curves.
There, down they plunged with a terrific noise into a depth of
900 feet. It was an exciting and a magnificent spectacle.
The ground trembled, while these molten waves, launching into the
sky their wreaths of smoke, evaporated the moisture of the mould
and hurled it upward through the vent-holes of the stone lining
in the form of dense vapor-clouds. These artificial clouds
unrolled their thick spirals to a height of 1,000 yards into
the air. A savage, wandering somewhere beyond the limits of the
horizon, might have believed that some new crater was forming in
the bosom of Florida, although there was neither any eruption,
nor typhoon, nor storm, nor struggle of the elements, nor any of
those terrible phenomena which nature is capable of producing.
No, it was man alone who had produced these reddish vapors,
these gigantic flames worthy of a volcano itself, these
tremendous vibrations resembling the shock of an earthquake,
these reverberations rivaling those of hurricanes and storms;
and it was his hand which precipitated into an abyss, dug by
himself, a whole Niagara of molten metal!
CHAPTER XVI
THE COLUMBIAD
    Had the casting succeeded? They were reduced to mere conjecture.
There was indeed every reason to expect success, since the mould
has absorbed the entire mass of the molten metal; still some
considerable time must elapse before they could arrive at any
certainty upon the matter.
    The patience of the members of the Gun Club was sorely tried during
this period of time. But they could do nothing. J. T. Maston
escaped roasting by a miracle. Fifteen days after the casting
an immense column of smoke was still rising in the open sky and
the ground burned the soles of the feet within a radius of two
hundred feet round the summit of Stones Hill. It was impossible
to approach nearer. All they could do was to wait with what
patience they might.
    "Here we are at the 10th of August," exclaimed J. T. Maston one
morning, "only four months to the 1st of December! We shall
never be ready in time!" Barbicane said nothing, but his
silence covered serious