Books with title All Around the Moon: Large Print

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

IT WAS EARLY in March, 1969, that I set out from my bleak camp on the desolate shore some fifty miles southeast of Herschel Island after polar bear. I had come into the Arctic the year before to enjoy the first real vacation that I had ever had. The definite close of the Great War, in April two years before, had left an exhausted world at peace-a condition that had never before existed and with which we did not know how to cope.I think that we all felt lost without war-I know that I did; but I managed to keep pretty busy with the changes that peace brought to my bureau, the Bureau of Communications, readjusting its activities to the necessities of world trade uninfluenced by war. During my entire official life I had had to combine the two-communications for war and communications for commerce, so the adjustment was really not a Herculean task. It took a little time, that was all, and after it was a fairly well accomplished fact I asked for an indefinite leave, which was granted.My companions of the hunt were three Eskimos, the youngest of whom, a boy of nineteen, had never before seen a white man, so absolutely had the last twenty years of the Great War annihilated the meager trade that had formerly been carried on between their scattered settlements and the more favored lands of so-called civilization.

This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.

Coach Payson sent the call to each end of the field and then, swinging his small blue megaphone in his hand, waited for the panting players to gather about him in front of the bench. They came running in from all parts of the gridiron, a motley gathering of football aspirants; seasoned veterans of last year’s Yardley Varsity, Second Team men, substitutes, new boys; big, little, fat, thin, all sizes and conditions. Andy Ryan, the little red-haired trainer, stood over his pile of blankets and his water pail, back of the side-line, and viewed the sixty-odd candidates with a pessimistic shake of his head. John Payson, turning at the moment, saw it and smiled.

Through the treason of a handful of men, contact between Earth & the Moon had become a nightmare. The world became the tool of the Lunarians, whose plundering and cruelty reduced thieving nations to poverty stricken wastelands. The Moon Men is the astounding story of that tragedy, & of the exploits of Julian, the human who dared fight for freedom. It’s the story also of Red Hawk, Julian’s descendant, the nomad who attempted to bring the struggle to its final desperate conclusion.

Through the treason of a handful of men, contact between Earth & the Moon had become a nightmare. The world became the tool of the Lunarians, whose plundering and cruelty reduced thieving nations to poverty stricken wastelands. The Moon Men is the astounding story of that tragedy, & of the exploits of Julian, the human who dared fight for freedom. It’s the story also of Red Hawk, Julian’s descendant, the nomad who attempted to bring the struggle to its final desperate conclusion.

Having been fired out of the giant Columbiad space gun, the Baltimore Gun Club's bullet-shaped projectile, along with its three passengers, Barbicane, Nicholl and Michel Ardan, begins the five-day trip to the moon. A few minutes into the journey, a small, bright asteroid passes within a few hundred yards of them, but does not collide with the projectile. The asteroid had been captured by the Earth's gravity and had become a second moon.

I WAS BORN in the Teivos of Chicago on January 1st, 2100, to Julian 8th and Elizabeth James. My father and mother were not married as marriages had long since become illegal. I was called Julian 9th. My parents were of the rapidly diminishing intellectual class and could both read and write. This learning they imparted to me, although it was very useless learning-it was their religion. Printing was a lost art and the last of the public libraries had been destroyed almost a hundred years before I reached maturity, so there was little or nothing to read, while to have a book in one's possession was to brand one as of the hated intellectuals, arousing the scorn and derision of the Kalkar rabble and the suspicion and persecution of the lunar authorities who ruled.The first twenty years of my life were uneventful. As a boy I played among the crumbling ruins of what must once have been a magnificent city. Pillaged, looted and burned half a hundred times Chicago still reared the skeletons of some mighty edifices above the ashes of her former greatness. As a youth I regretted the departed romance of the long gone days of my fore-fathers when the earth men still retained sufficient strength to battle for existence. I deplored the quiet stagnation of my own time with only an occasional murder to break the monotony of our bleak existence, Even the Kalkar Guard stationed on the shore of the great lake seldom harassed us, unless there came an urgent call from higher authorities for an additional tax collection, for we fed them well and they had the pick of our women and young girls-almost, but not quite as you shall see.

Through the treason of a handful of men, contact between Earth & the Moon had become a nightmare. The world became the tool of the Lunarians, whose plundering and cruelty reduced thieving nations to poverty stricken wastelands. The Moon Men is the astounding story of that tragedy, & of the exploits of Julian, the human who dared fight for freedom. It’s the story also of Red Hawk, Julian’s descendant, the nomad who attempted to bring the struggle to its final desperate conclusion.

A few years ago the world was suddenly astounded by hearing of an experiment of a most novel and daring nature, altogether unprecedented in the annals of science. The BALTIMORE GUN CLUB, a society of artillerymen started in America during the great Civil War, had conceived the idea of nothing less than establishing direct communication with the Moon by means of a projectile! President Barbican, the originator of the enterprise, was strongly encouraged in its feasibility by the astronomers of Cambridge Observatory, and took upon himself to provide all the means necessary to secure its success. Having realized by means of a public subscription the sum of nearly five and a half millions of dollars, he immediately set himself to work at the necessary gigantic labors. In accordance with the Cambridge men's note, the cannon intended to discharge the projectile was to be planted in some country not further than 28° north or south from the equator, so that it might be aimed vertically at the Moon in the zenith. The bullet was to be animated with an initial velocity of 12,000 yards to the second. It was to be fired off on the night of December 1st, at thirteen minutes and twenty seconds before eleven o'clock, precisely. Four days afterwards it was to hit the Moon, at the very moment that she reached her perigee, that is to say, her nearest point to the Earth, about 228,000 miles distant. The leading members of the Club, namely President Barbican, Secretary Marston, Major Elphinstone and General Morgan, forming the executive committee, held several meetings to discuss the shape and material of the bullet, the nature and position of the cannon, and the quantity and quality of the powder. The decision soon arrived at was as follows: 1st—The bullet was to be a hollow aluminium shell, its diameter nine feet, its walls a foot in thickness, and its weight 19,250 pounds; 2nd—The cannon was to be a columbiad 900 feet in length, a well of that depth forming the vertical mould in which it was to be cast, and 3rd—The powder was to be 400 thousand pounds of gun cotton, which, by developing more than 200 thousand millions of cubic feet of gas under the projectile, would easily send it as far as our satellite. These questions settled, Barbican, aided by Murphy, the Chief Engineer of the Cold Spring Iron Works, selected a spot in Florida, near the 27th degree north latitude, called Stony Hill, where after the performance of many wonderful feats in mining engineering, the Columbiad was successfully cast. Things had reached this state when an incident occurred which excited the general interest a hundred fold.

Through the treason of a handful of men, contact between Earth & the Moon had become a nightmare. The world became the tool of the Lunarians, whose plundering and cruelty reduced thieving nations to poverty stricken wastelands. The Moon Men is the astounding story of that tragedy, & of the exploits of Julian, the human who dared fight for freedom. It's the story also of Red Hawk, Julian's descendant, the nomad who attempted to bring the struggle to its final desperate conclusion.