In the Track of the Troops. Robert Michael Ballantyne
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was now in the army, and as fine-looking a fellow as one could wish to see. Not only was he strong and manly, but gentle in manner and tender of heart. My sister Bella being the sweetest—no, not quite that, for there is a pretty young—well, no matter—Bella being, as I may say, one of the sweetest girls in England, he fell in love with her, of course. So did she with him; no wonder! During a visit to our place in Devonshire at the end of his college career, he and Bella became engaged. Nicholas returned to St. Petersburg to obtain his parents’ consent to the union, and to make arrangements. He was rich, and could afford to marry. At the time I write of, he was coming back, not to claim his bride, for his father thought him still too young, but to see her, and to pay us a visit.
“Now you know, mother,” said I, “after the young people have seen each other for half-an-hour or so, they will naturally want to take a walk or a ride, and—”
“Only half-an-hour?” interrupted my mother, with one of her peculiar little smiles.
“Well, an hour if you like, or two if they prefer it,” I returned; “at all events, they will want a walk before luncheon, and I shall take the opportunity to show them some experiments, which prove the power of the singular compound about which you questioned me just now.”
“The explosive?”
“Yes. Its name is dynamite.”
“And what may that be, Jeff? Something very awful, I daresay,” remarked my mother, with a look of interest, as she sipped her tea.
“Very awful, indeed,” said I; “at least its effects are sometimes tremendous.”
“What! worse than gunpowder?”
“Ay, much worse, though I should prefer to say better than gunpowder.”
“Dear me!” rejoined my mother, lifting her eyebrows a little, in surprise.
“Yes, much better,” I continued; “gunpowder only bursts things—”
“Pretty well that, Jeff, in the way of violence, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but nothing to dynamite, for while powder only bursts things, dynamite shatters them.”
“How very dreadful! What is dynamite?”
“That is just what I am about to explain,” said I. “You must know, then, that it is a compound.”
“Dear, dear,” sighed my mother; “how many compounds you have told me about, Jeff, since you took to chemistry! Are there no uncompounded things—no simple things in the world?”
“Why, yes, mother; you are a simple thing, and I only wish there were a good many more simple things like you in the world—”
“Don’t be foolish, Jeff, but answer my question.”
“Well, mother, there are indeed some simple elements in creation, but dynamite is not one of them. It is composed of an excessively explosive oil named nitro-glycerine (itself a compound), and an earth called kieselguhr. The earth is not explosive, and is only mixed with the nitro-glycerine to render that liquid less dangerous; but the compound is named dynamite, in which form it is made up and sold in immense quantities for mining purposes. Here is some of it,” I added, pulling from my pocket a cartridge nearly two inches in length, and about an inch in diameter. “It is a soft, pasty substance, done up, as you see, in cartridge-paper, and this little thing, if properly fired, would blow a large boulder-stone to atoms.”
“Bless me, boy, be careful!” exclaimed my mother, pushing back her chair in some alarm.
“There is no danger,” I said, in reassuring tones, “for this cartridge, if opened out and set on fire by a spark or flame, would not, in the first place, light readily, and, in the second place, it would merely burn without exploding; but if I were to put a detonator inside and fire it by means of that, it would explode with a violence that far exceeds the force of gunpowder.”
“And what is this wonderful detonator, Jeff, that so excites the latent fury of the dynamite?”
I was much amused by the pat way in which my mother questioned me, and became more interested as I continued my explanation.
“You must know,” I said, “that many powders are violently explosive, and some more so than others. This violence of explosion is called detonation, by which is meant the almost instantaneous conversion of the ultimate molecules of an explosive compound (i.e. the whole concern) into gas.”
“I see; you mean that it goes off quickly,” said my mother, in a simple way that was eminently characteristic.
“Well, yes; but much more quickly than gunpowder does. It were better to say that a powder detonates when it all explodes at the same instant. Gunpowder appears to do so, but in reality it does not. One of the best detonators is fulminate of mercury. Detonating caps are therefore made of this, and one such cap put into the middle of that cartridge of dynamite and set fire to, by any means, would convert the cartridge itself into a detonator, and explode it with a shattering effect.
“A human being,” I continued, “sometimes illustrates this principle figuratively—I mean the violent explosion of a large cartridge by means of a small detonator. Take, for example, a schoolmaster, and suppose him to be a dynamite cartridge. His heart is a detonating cap. The schoolroom and boys form a galvanic battery. His brain may be likened to a conducting-wire. He enters the schoolroom; the chemical elements are seething in riot, books are being torn and thrown, ink spilt, etcetera. Before opening the door, the good man is a quiet piece of plastic dynamite, but the instant his eye is touched, the electric circuit is, as it were, completed; the mysterious current flashes through the brain, and fires his detonating heart. Instantly the gleaming flame shoots with lightning-speed to temples and toes. The entire man becomes a detonator, and he explodes in a violent hurricane of kicks, cuffs, and invective! Now, without a detonator—a heart—the man might have burned with moderate wrath, but he could not have exploded.”
“Don’t try illustration, Jeff,” said my plain-spoken mother, gently patting my arm; “it is not one of your strong points.”
“Perhaps not; but do you understand me?”
“I think I do, in a hazy sort of way.”
Dear mother! she always professes to comprehend things hazily, and indeed I sometimes fear that her conceptions on the rather abstruse matters which I bring before her are not always correct; but it is delightful to watch the profound interest with which she listens, and the patient efforts she makes to understand. I must in justice add that she sometimes, though not often, displays gleams of clear intelligence, and powers of close incisive reasoning, that quite surprise me.
“But now, to return to what we were speaking of—my future plans,” said I; “it seems to me that it would be a good thing if I were to travel for a year or so and see the world.”
“You might do worse, my boy,” said my mother.
“With a view to that,” I continued, “I have resolved to purchase a yacht, but before doing so I must complete the new torpedo that I have invented for the navy; that is, I hope it may be introduced into our navy. The working model in the outhouse is all but ready for exhibition. When finished, I shall show it to the Lords of the Admiralty, and after they have accepted it I will throw study overboard for a time and go on a cruise.”
“Ah, Jeff, Jeff,” sighed my mother, with a shake of her head, “you’ll never leave off till you get blown up. But I suppose you must have your way. You always had, dear boy.”
“But never in opposition to your wishes, had I? Now be just, mother.”
“Quite true, Jeff, quite true. How comes it, I wonder, that you are so fond of fire, smoke, fumes, crash, clatter, and explosions?”
“Really,” said I, somewhat amused by the question, “I cannot tell, unless it be owing to something in that law of compensation which appears to permeate the universe. You have such an abhorrence of fire, fumes, smoke, crash, clatter, and explosions, that your only son is bound, as it were, to take special delight in chemical analysis and combination,