CHAPTER II
STRANGE EXPERIMENTS
The shot that rang out in the night was echoed by a yell from Lee, whodropped in a huddle beside the glass wheel. For a moment he crouchedthere, fighting against a wild desire to crawl back under the clutter ofrubbish, and hide. What did it all mean? In the dark silence beyond theopen window, what manner of fiend was waiting to shoot down innocentpeople?
But a muttering and moaning and sounds of difficult breathing came tohim from other parts of the room. Uncle Gem, old Pomp, both of themmight be wounded, dying! He couldn't crouch here like a craven and leavethem to their fate. Lee forced himself to action. He began to crawlacross the room to where he knew there were some matches and a candle.Fumbling around in the dark, he at last got the candle lighted, stood upand looked about him.
Pompey, face downwards upon the floor, was moaning loudly, "Lordy,Lordy, the lightning of the air done struck us, like I knowed itwould--"
"Lightning nothing! Don't you know a gunshot when you hear one?" burstfrom Lee. "If you're not hurt yourself, come help me quick with UncleGem--he looks like he's dead!"
"Oh, Marse Gem, is you kilt?" Pomp, who had suffered no injury savefright, rolled to his feet and came on the run, his kindly old blackface all distorted with grief.
Indeed Gem Renaud did look like one dead. He hung slumped sideways, halffallen out of his chair. His drawn face was ashen, his hands limp andcold.
But, though Lee searched frantically, he could find no sign of gunshotwound or oozing blood. Together he and Pompey laid the long figure outat ease on the floor, sponged the face with a wet handkerchief, andrubbed hands and wrists. At last old Gem Renaud opened his eyelids witha slow, tired movement. Then he motioned Lee to prop him up into sittingposition.
"Just fainted--heart not so good! This shooting--must have been that oldfool, Johnny Poolak--taking another shot at the glass wheel--"
"Sh-shooting at the wheel?" stammered Lee. "What for?"
"What for? For superstition mostly," old Gem Renaud's black eyes snappedangrily, "and some for meanness, too!"
As Great-uncle Gem regained his strength, he told about this Poolak, thehalf-wit, full of fool religions and imbued with all the superstitionsthat ignorant people hold to. The rest of the uneducated squatters herein the village were about on this level too. Once, long ago, when Renaudhad been experimenting with his crude electrical devices, a cycloneswept the fringes of the town. Immediately the ignorant villagerscoupled the crystal wheel with the disaster, and Poolak, bent ondestroying the source of evil, took a shot at the "lightning maker."
"Evidently," went on Gem Renaud, "old Poolak has noted your work outhere and thinks you're all set to bring on another cyclone and so hastaken another shot at the contraption. If you'll dig out the bulletthat's imbedded in the wall beyond our wheel of glass, I'll wager thatyou'll find it's a silver bullet. Silver is the only weapon to downwitchcraft according to all the old superstitions, you know."
That night, before he went to bed, Lee slipped down to the old storageroom. There, by the light of a candle, he pried with his knife bladeinto the wall just beyond the crystal wheel. And sure enough, the bulletthat he dug out was not made of lead, but of silver. A rough lump thatold Poolak must have molded for himself, melting down a hard-earnedtwenty-five cent piece, most likely! The silver bullet on his palm gaveLee Renaud a queer sensation, a feeling that he had stepped very farback into a past peopled with eerie fears and superstitions.
The next day Lee moved the whole apparatus of the glass wheel into anunused room on the second floor of the dwelling house. It was safer upthere. A fellow didn't have it hanging over his head that a pious oldignoramus was liable to shoot up one's affairs again with silverbullets.
The wheel, with its wooden base and brass tubes, was heavy, so Leecarried it over piecemeal. This taking it apart and putting it backtogether again gave young Renaud a much better knowledge of it than hehad had heretofore. There was the hollow brass prime conductor,supported on its glass standard and so fixed on its frame that the metalpoints set on the ends of its curved out-branching arms nearly touchedthe glass plate. Lee knew that in some way the metal points collectedthe electricity generated on the glass whirl of the plate and conveyedthis electricity to the hollow brass collector. But there was somethingelse he needed to know.
"Uncle Gem," he questioned, "why is a little chain hung from the furcushions so as to just dangle down against the floor--what's it goodfor?"
"Gadzooks, boy! You can ask more questions in a minute than I can answerin a year." Great-uncle Gem tugged at his militant chin-whisker. "Wish Icould lay hands on Master Lloyd's old schoolbook on the sciences. Itexplains lots. Let me see, though, it goes something like this. By thefriction of the whirling glass plate against the fur cushions,electricity is developed--the glass plate becomes positivelyelectrified, and the cushions negatively--"
"Positive, negative--positive, negative," muttered Lee Renaud, shakinghis head as if he didn't quite take it all in.
"Be quiet, sir!" ordered Uncle Gem testily. "Now that I've startedremembering this blamed thing, I want to finish my say. Without thechains, the cushions are insulated, and the quantity of electricitywhich they generate is limited, consisting merely of that which thecushions themselves contain. We conquer this by making the cushionscommunicate with the ground, the great reservoir of electricity. To dothis, we merely lay a chain attached to the cushions on the floor ortable. After this connection is made, and the wheel is turned again,much more electricity is conveyed to the conductor. Now, young man, doyou see?"
"I--I'm much obliged, Uncle Gem. Reckon I took in a little of it." Leeblinked dazedly and off he went, still muttering under his breath,"Positive, negative--positive, negative."
That old science book Uncle Gem was always talking about--if he couldonly find it, he could learn something. For the rest of the day Leepoked around in the dim and dusty attic high up under the eaves of thebig house. Now and again he brought down some volume to submit to UncleGem's inspection. But always Gem Renaud shook his head--no, that was notit, not THE BOOK.
Then at last Lee found it, a great calfskin-bound old volume stored awayat the bottom of a trunk. Even before he carried it to Uncle Gem, he hada feeling this was the right one. It was so full of strange oldillustrations, it was so ponderous--of a truth, it had to be ponderousto live up to its name, "Ye Compleat Knowledge of Philosophy andSciences."
Gem Renaud's hands shook with excitement as he took hold of the ancienttome that had played so large a part in his long gone childhoodtraining.
"Here's a whole education between two covers. Just listen to the index."Old Renaud began to read, "Astronomy, Catoptrics, Gyroscope, Distance ofPlanets, Intensity of Sound, Solar Spectrum--"
"And electricity, there's plenty about that too, isn't there?" LeeRenaud couldn't help but break in.
"Yes, yes," Gem Renaud agreed with him absently, and went on flippingthrough the pages. "How natural they all look, the old illustrations,the waterwheel, undershot and overshot, the waterchain, the turbineengine! It seems just yesterday that Master Lloyd, the Welshman, had usboys all down at the creek building these mechanisms out of canes andwhat-not, building them so as they'd really work, to prove to him thatwe understood what he was trying to teach us."
"And did you build electrical things too?"
"Why, yes. Master Lloyd sent all the way back to New York to get theproper materials for us."
Materials from New York! Lee turned away in disappointment. He had beenhoping to experiment some with electricity himself, but what had he outhere to work with?
Later in the day Lee picked up the old book again and plunged into itsstrange, stilted dissertation on electricity. He learned that away backin 1745, von Kleist, a priest in Pomerania, had experimented with aglass jar half full of water, corked, and a long nail driven through thecork to reach down into the water. When the old Pomeranian priesttouched this nail head to a friction
al machine, he got a "shock" thatmade him think the jar was full of devils. And that endedexperimentation for him. But the next year two Hollanders, professors atLeyden University, carried von Kleist's experiment forward till theydeveloped the Leyden Jar, a practical method for storing electricity.
To Lee Renaud, stumbling upon all this old knowledge, it seemed that hehimself was just discovering electricity. For most of the fifteen yearsof his life, he had merely accepted electricity as an ordinary, everydaything. Now the real glory of it smote him, thrilled him, inspired him.He longed desperately to try out these primitive experiments forhimself. Here on these pages was given the beginning of man's knowledgeof electricity, the beginning of man's struggle to harness this mightypower into usefulness.
If only he could "grow up" with this marvelous power, understand it,step by step! A large order, indeed! Especially for a youngster stuckoff in the backwoods.
But anyway, Lee Renaud flung young enthusiasm and will power into thisstrange task he was setting for himself.
Already he had the crystal wheel that could make a spark, that couldgenerate electricity. But unless that electricity could be "stored," ithad no usefulness. So it was up to him to make an electrical condenser.But of what?
Umph, well, those old fellows in the past had gone right ahead and usedsuch things as came to hand--and he was going to do the same thing.
Lee studied the chapter on electricity in "Ye Compleat Knowledge ofPhilosophy and Sciences" until he could almost say it by heart. Jar offair glass, brass rod "compleated" with a knob, wooden stopper, sheetsof substance tinfoil, chain of brass, three coiled springs--these werethe things Lee needed to make the Leyden Jar, which was to be his firstforward step in electricity.
Desperately he ransacked the place for "laboratory material" and finallygathered together an old metal door knob, an empty fruit jar, a fewlinks of small chain, some tin cans and bits of wire. It didn't lookvery scientific--that pile of junk!
But Lee Renaud set his jaw doggedly, and got down to work. Since he hadno "substance tinfoil," he figured that perhaps pieces of tin from oldtin cans might do. So he slit down a can, and cut it nearly all the wayoff from its bottom. The round bottom he patiently trimmed till it wouldjust slip in through the neck of the jar. By rolling the tin sidessmaller, he managed to push the whole affair down into the jar, wherethe released roll of the tin sprung itself out to fit neatly against theinside surface of the glass. Then the outside had to be "tinned" and Leekept trying until he found a can that was a good tight fit when the jarwas pushed down into it.
And there, he had made a start! Instead of tinfoil, the jar was at leastcovered in tin in the prescribed manner two-thirds of the way up, insideand outside.
Instead of "ye brass rod" that the old book called for, he used a lengthof wire which he "compleated" with the old brass door knob. He thrustthis wire through a wooden stopper he had whittled to fit the mouth ofthe jar. He had no metal springs, but decided to make the contact withthe bit of chain fastened to the end of the wire. When this was thrustdown into the jar, the little chain rested on the tin bottom, which wasstill in part connected with the tin side lining.
Lee Renaud had worked terrifically hard at his job, but now that hestood back to inspect the finished product, it looked more like junkthan ever. It didn't seem humanly possible that such a thing could be anadjunct to collecting power, to storing the marvel of electricity.
Half-heartedly Lee held the knob of the jar to the metal points setagainst the crystal "friction maker." After a few minutes of this, hegrasped the jar in his left hand and experimentally approached his rightthumb towards the knob.
There came a scream and a rattle of glass and tin as the jar was flungfrom Lee's hand to smash into a hundred bits on the floor. The boyleaped high in the air and came down, apparently trying to rub himselfin six places at the same time.