Was it of a nature to justify immediate action or not? Decided
unanimously in the affirmative. Why so? Because, whether actually true
or untrue, the incident it announced was not impossible. Had it indeed
announced the Projectile to have fallen in California or in South
America, there would have been good valid reasons to question its
accuracy. But by taking into consideration the Moon's distance, and the
time elapsed between the moment of the start and that of the presumed
fall (about 10 days), and also the Earth's revolution in the meantime,
it was soon calculated that the point at which the Projectile should
strike our globe, if it struck it at all, would be somewhere about 27 deg.
north latitude, and 42 deg. west longitude--the very identical spot given in
the Captain's dispatch! This certainly was a strong point in its favor,
especially as there was positively nothing valid whatever to urge
against it.
A decided resolution was therefore immediately taken. Everything that
man could do was to be done at once, in order to fish up their brave
associates from the depths of the Pacific. That very night, in fact,
whilst the streets of Baltimore were still resounding with the yells of
contending _Belfasters_ and _Barbicanites_, a committee of four, Morgan,
Hunter, Murphy, and Elphinstone, were speeding over the Alleghanies in a
special train, placed at their disposal by the _Baltimore and Ohio
Railroad Company_, and fast enough to land them in Chicago pretty early
on the following evening.
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