"Eight hundred thousand," screamed Maston.
A moment of silence followed this triple proposal; it was at last broken by the president.
"Gentlemen," he quietly said, "I start from this principle, that the resistance of a gun, constructed under the given conditions, is unlimited. I shall surprise our friend Maston, then, by stigmatizing his calculations as timid; and I propose to double his 800,000 pounds of powder."
