The Purchase of the North Pole by Jules Verne

Barbicane & Co.! The president of the Gun Club! What was the Gun Club going to do with the North Pole? We shall see.

Is it necessary to formally introduce Impey Barbicane, the president of the Gun Club, and Captain Nicholl, and J. T. Maston, and Tom Hunter with the wooden legs, and the brisk Bilsby, and Colonel Bloomsberry and their colleagues? No! Although twenty years had elapsed since the attention of the world was concentrated on these remarkable personages, they had remained much as they were, just as incomplete corporeally, and just as obstreperous, just as daring, just as wrapped up in themselves as when they had embarked in their extraordinary adventure. Time had made no impression on the Gun Club; it respected them as people respect the obsolete cannon that are found in the museums of old arsenals.