One Enemy Amongst Twenty-Five Millions of Friends
- It seems like every single person in the United States is head over heels for this idea. Everyone, that is, except for Captain Nicholl.
- Captain Nicholl is the anti-Barbicane: Instead of investing his genius into the creation of weapons, Nicholl is "a great manufacturer of iron plates" (10.8).
- During the Civil War, these two men got into a fierce rivalry, each creating a new invention to outperform the other's, and so on and so forth.
- Barbicane won their duel when he invented a shot that could pound through any amount of Nicholl's armor. Nicholl actually invented a new type of plating to stop these shots, but the war ended before it could be implemented. Drat.
- After learning of the Gun Club's new mission, Nicholl starts writing op-eds for newspapers tearing the plan to pieces.
- He even places a "series of wagers" (10.24) that the project will fall flat on its face.
- Oh, it's on. Bring it, Nicholl.