The Secretary of the Navy immediately telegraphed directions to the
_Susquehanna_ to keep a full head of steam up night and day so as to be
ready to give instant execution to orders received at any moment.
The Observatory authorities at Cambridge held a special meeting that
very evening, where, with all the serene calmness so characteristic of
learned societies, they discussed the scientific points of the question
in all its bearings. But, before committing themselves to any decided
opinion, they unanimously resolved to wait for the development of
further details.
At the rooms of the Gun Club in Baltimore there was a terrible time. The
kind reader no doubt remembers the nature of the dispatch sent one day
previously by Professor Belfast from the Long's Peak observatory,
announcing that the Projectile had been seen but that it had become the
Moon's satellite, destined to revolve around her forever and ever till
time should be no more. The reader is also kindly aware by this time
that such dispatch was not supported by the slightest foundations in
fact. The learned Professor, in a moment of temporary cerebral
excitation, to which even the greatest scientist is just as liable as
the rest of us, had taken some little meteor or, still more probably,
some little fly-speck in the telescope for the Projectile.
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