Toasts were given and replied to.

They drank to the earth and her satellite, to the Gun Club, the Union, the Moon, Diana, Phoebe, Selene, "the peaceful courier of the night." All the hurrahs, carried up by the sonorous waves of the immense acoustic tube, reached its mouth with a noise of thunder; then the multitude round Stony Hill heartily united their shouts to those of the ten revellers hidden from sight in the depths of the gigantic Columbiad.
J.T.Maston could contain himself no longer.

Whether he shouted or ate, gesticulated or talked most would be difficult to determine.

Any way he would not have given up his place for an empire, "not even if the cannon--loaded, primed, and fired at that very moment--were to blow him in pieces into the planetary universe.".