They had landed in the night in a deep valley a
few miles out of San Francisco, and remained two days in that city;
which gave a period of ten days to the entire voyage, out and back.
Forty selected individuals, all bound to secresy, had participated in
the risks and excitements of the extraordinary occasion. Mr. Bonflon
was not of the number. An heroic daughter of his was. His partner,
Mons. De Aery, a French gentleman of great mechanical skill, had
managed the affair; and the craft, in the same hands, was now absent on
her second expedition across the American continent.
Such was the sum of Mr. Bonflon's revelations of the morning. What a
discovery! How the announcement would astonish the world! How the
practical fact would overturn the world, upset commerce, and transform
the habits and relations of mankind! America, the pioneer in many
valuable discoveries and reforms, was still ahead,--still destined to
lead the van in the development of the powers and resources of Nature,
and the onward march of nations.
Hurriedly recalling all these points to mind, I requested to know of
Mr. Bonflon how it had been possible, with so many confidants and the
prying propensities of the press, whose agents, like an invisible
police, are everywhere, to keep the matter from becoming public,--at
least, to cover the affair so completely that no hint of the existence
of his machine should have been given in any quarter, or of the vast
changes which its introduction as a power in the world could not fail
to effect.
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