For my part, as long as I can
have the privilege of looking out of the window, I am willing to lease
it for a hundred years. Ah! Barbican, that brings out one of your stony
smiles. You think our lease may last longer than that! Our tenement may
become our coffin, eh? Be it so. I prefer it anyway to Mahomet's; it may
indeed float in the air, but it won't be motionless as a milestone!"
[Illustration: TURN ON THE GAS.]
Barbican, having made sure by personal inspection that everything was in
perfect order, consulted his chronometer, which he had carefully set a
short time before with Chief Engineer Murphy's, who had been charged to
fire off the Projectile.
"Friends," he said, "it is now twenty minutes past ten. At 10 46' 40'',
precisely, Murphy will send the electric current into the gun-cotton. We
have, therefore, twenty-six minutes more to remain on earth."
"Twenty-six minutes and twenty seconds," observed Captain M'Nicholl, who
always aimed at mathematical precision.
"Twenty-six minutes!" cried Ardan, gaily. "An age, a cycle, according to
the use you make of them. In twenty-six minutes how much can be done!
The weightiest questions of warfare, politics, morality, can be
discussed, even decided, in twenty-six minutes.
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