Chapter 4 Chapter 4 The little reader's old acquaintance reappears

Barbican Company! ... Isn't Barbicane the director of the Gunners' Club?Why are the gunners buying the Arctic?Please read down slowly. Barbicane, Director of the Baltimore Gunners' Club, Captain Nicole, Maston and Wood-legged Tom Hunter, Jolly Bisby, and Colonel Bronsberry, and others, were too well known to need introduction.Twenty years ago, these strange people had been in the limelight.Twenty years later, they are still the same, mutilated, but still flamboyant, bold and impulsive in their outlandish adventures.Time is not about this army of retired gunners.Time respects them as it honors the old cannons displayed in the museum of ancient weapons.

When the Gunners' Club was first formed, there were eighteen hundred and thirty-three members, and that meant men, not limbs.You know, most people in the club are either missing arms or missing legs.There are now 30,575 correspondent members, all of whom are proud to be associated with the club.However, the number of members was still increasing, because the club had a great reputation outside because of its efforts to establish a direct connection between the earth and the moon. What a sensation that memorable experiment was will never be forgotten.However, we intend to briefly introduce:

After the Civil War, some members of the Gunners Club, tired of the life of doing nothing, proposed a plan to launch the huge "Columbia" cannon to the moon.The cannon was nine hundred feet long and nine feet in diameter. It was cast in the soil of Moon City on the Florida Peninsula and could hold 400,000 catties of gunpowder.The conical aluminum projectile from the cannon, propelled by six billion liters of gas, flew to the moon and circled it once.Due to the deflection of the orbit, it returned to the earth and fell into the Pacific Ocean between 27°7' north latitude and 41°37' west diameter. The destroyer "Suskebana" salvaged it in the sea.The occupants were unharmed.

On board the box projectile were Imbi Barbicane, director of the Gunners' Club, Captain Nicole, and a Frenchman known for his daring adventures.All three are back.The two Americans were still preparing for a new adventure, while the Frenchman Michel Arden was nowhere to be seen.When he returned to France, he seemed to have made a fortune - which surprised many - and now, if you believe the reports of well-informed journalists, he grows cabbages at home, eats them himself, and slowly digests them in his stomach. After the sensation, Imbi Barbicane and Nicole lived a life of relative tranquility, relying on their fame.But they still hunger for big events and dream of other similar adventures.They are not short of money.Last time, the public in the old and new continents subscribed for 5.5 million US dollars, and now there are nearly 200,000 left.In addition, they toured the United States in their lead projectiles like caged monsters.This one action not only earned a huge amount of income, but also greatly satisfied their vanity.

The boring life gnawed at their hearts, and Imbi Barbicane and Captain Nicole could not live a peaceful life.They presumably bought the Arctic to get out of their half-dead state. But don't forget that the reason why they were able to bid more than $800,000 was because Mrs. Evangelina Scobie donated money to make up for the missing part.With the help of this generous woman, America beat Europe.Why is she so generous? If Director Barbicane and Captain Nicole enjoyed an unrivaled reputation when they returned from the experiments, it owed a great deal to another man.It is not difficult to guess that he is Ma Sitong, the enthusiastic Secretary of the Gunners Club.The above experiment can be carried out thanks to the precise calculation of this calculator.If he hadn't been flying around the moon with two of his colleagues the last time, it was not because of fear, but simply because of the usual accidents in war, which caused the excellent gunner to lose an arm and replace his skull with a rubber one.To be honest, let the moon people see him, and the earth people will have an uncomfortable misunderstanding.The moon is just a small satellite of the earth.

Ma Sitong felt very sorry, but had to stay.However, he didn't stay idle because of this. He first built a huge astronomical telescope and installed it on the top of Changfeng, one of the highest peaks in the Rock Mountain Range, and then visited the scene in person.As soon as he discovered the magnificent trajectory drawn by the projectile in the air, he never left the observation post, and from the beginning to the end, he followed his friends soaring in the sky closely in front of the huge eyepiece. Some thought these daring travelers would leave Earth.Because the projectile is attracted by the moon, it will enter a new orbit, and has to fly around the moon like a satellite for eternity.Fortunately, the deviation caused the projectile to change course, and the "moon palace" blessed.It went around the moon, didn't "fall" to the moon, but fell back to the earth faster and faster.When entering the deep sea, its speed reached 57,600 miles per hour.

Fortunately, the sea water of the Pacific Ocean reduces the impact of the fall.The splashdown was observed by the US destroyer USS Suscebana.The news was immediately forwarded to Ma Sitong, Secretary of the Gunners Club.He hurried to the rescue from the Changfeng observation post.In the sea area where the projectile fell, people are probing.The loyal Ma Sitong put on his diving suit without hesitation and went into the sea to find his friends. In fact, there is no need to spend so much effort.After the aluminum projectile plunged into the water, it expelled water heavier than itself and floated back to the surface of the Pacific Ocean.Director Barbicane, Captain Nicole, and Michel Arden were still playing dominoes in their floating cage when they were discovered.

Let’s go back to Ma Sitong.He is also known for his participation in these unprecedented adventures. To be honest, Ma Sitong's right upper limb with artificial skull and metal hook is not very handsome, nor young.He was fifty-eight years old when this story began.But his unique character, quick thinking, fiery eyes, and enthusiasm for all careers made him an ideal object in the eyes of Mrs. Evangerina Scobie.In addition, the brain, carefully hidden in the rubber skull, is still intact, and it is recognized as a veritable outstanding calculator of our time. Mrs. Avengerina Scobie, although she has a headache when she talks about calculations and doesn't like mathematics, she admires mathematicians very much and regards mathematicians as superior figures.The X in the mathematician's head is shaking like a walnut in a bag, their brains are playing algebraic symbols, their hands are playing triple integrals, just like acrobats performing a cup and bottle balance show.Their wisdom consists of something like the following formula:

∫∫∫ φ p(xyz)dx dy dz In her view, these scholars are well deserved.The attractiveness of their looks to a woman is proportional to their texture and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.It was true that Ma Sitong was fat enough to have an irresistible attraction to her.If they were committed to each other, the distance would be zero. The Secretary of the Gunners' Club was not worried, for he had never sought happiness in the cuddles of women.Mrs. Scobie was no longer a girl, or even a young woman.She is forty-five years old, her hair sticks to her temples like a piece of dyed and dyed fabric, her mouth is full of big teeth, none of which have fallen out, her figure has no lines, and her manners lack elegance.She had just married a few years ago, but still had that spinster vibe.But she was very nice, and to her, to hear her called Mrs. Marston in Baltimore Hall, was the happiest person on earth.

The widow was wealthy, but not as wealthy as the extended families of Gould, McKay, Vanderbilt, and Gordon Bennett.They are worth more than a billion and can hand out to German bankers!She doesn't have three hundred million like Mrs. Moses Carp, who claims to be the three widows; she doesn't have two hundred million like Mrs. Stewart; she doesn't have eighty million like Mrs. Crocker; As rich as Mrs. Para Stevens, Mrs. Minturi, etc.However, she was entitled to a feast at the Fifth Street Hotel in New York, which only invited guests five times the number of millionaires.Madame Avengerina Scobie's fortune amounted to four million dollars, or twenty million francs.It was the bequest of John Pea Scobie, who made his fortune selling fashion and bacon.The generous widow made this fortune available to Mr. Ma Sitong, and was even willing to give him a lifetime of tenderness.

Mrs. Evangelina Scobie readily agreed to donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to the cause of the Arctic Experiment Association at Ma Sitong's request, but she didn't know what they were up to.She believes that as long as Ma Sitong participates, it must be a magnificent, magnificent and extraordinary cause. It can be imagined that when she learned that the director of the Barbican Company was chaired by the director of the Gunners Club, she must have been full of confidence.As long as Ma Sitong is a member of the company, shouldn't she be happy that she is the company's largest shareholder? In this way, Mrs. Avengerino Sculby became the master of more than half of the Arctic region within the 84° north latitude.It doesn't get any better than this!But how does she, or rather the company, make this inaccessible region profitable for herself? Mrs. Avengerina Scobie was interested in it for the money she had invested in it, and the whole world was interested in it out of sheer curiosity. Before the kind woman handed over the money to the promoters of the cause, she hinted at Ma Sitong obliquely, but Ma Sitong's attitude was very ambiguous.Evangelina Scobie would soon understand why.Of course, this has to wait until the whole world is shocked to learn the purpose of the new company! She probably believed that, as Jean Jacques said, this enterprise, "there has never been one before, and there will be no one since", it far exceeds the exploration of the Gunners Club members to establish a direct connection with the earth's satellites. She wanted to find out the details, but Ma Sitong just put the hook on the end of his arm on his half-closed lips and said to her: "My dear Mrs. Scobie, have faith!" If Mrs. Evangelina Scobie was confident "before," she was even more delighted "afterwards," when the ardent Secretary brought the United States of America to victory over Europe. "Then I can know now?" She asked the outstanding calculator with a smile on her face. "You will know soon!" Ma Sitong shook her hand vigorously, answering in this unique American way. With this shaking, the anxious Mrs. Avengerina Scobie fell silent. A few days later, when people heard that the Arctic Experiment Association called on the public to subscribe for shares in order to realize their crazy plan, both the new and the old continents were shaken - and the worst is yet to come! That's right, the company bought the Arctic region just to develop Arctic coal.