In the Track of the Troops. Robert Michael Ballantyne
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to such matters.”
“Nay, Jeff,” replied my mother, gently, with a look of reproof on her kind face; “ignorance if you will, but not indifference. I cannot be indifferent to anything that interests you.”
“True; forgive me; I should have said ‘dislike.’”
“Yes, that would have been correct, Jeff, for I cannot pretend to like the bursting, smoking, and ill-smelling things you are so fond of; but you know I am interested in them. You cannot have forgotten how, when you were a boy, I used to run at your call to witness your pyrotechnic, hydraulic, mechanic, and chemic displays—you see how well I remember the names—and how the—”
“The acids,” I interrupted, taking up the theme, “ruined your carpets and table-cloths, and the smoke stifled and blinded, while the noise and flames terrified you; no, mother, I have not forgotten it, nor the patient way you took the loss of your old silk dress, or—”
“Ah! yes,” sighed the dear old lady, with quite a pitiful look, “if it had been any other than my wedding dress, which—but—well, it’s of no use regretting now; and you know, Jeff, I would not have checked you for worlds, because I knew you were being led in the right way, though, in my folly, I sometimes wished that the way had been a little further removed from smoke and smells. But, after all, you were very careful, dear boy—wonderfully so, for your years, and your little accidents did not give me much pain beyond the day of their occurrence. The poisoning of the cat, to be sure, was sad, though unavoidable, and so was the destruction by fire of the cook’s hair; but the flooding of the house, after the repairs you executed on the great cistern, and the blowing out of the laundry window at the time the clothes-boiler was cracked, with other trifles of that sort, were—”
The remainder of my mother’s speech was cut short by a clattering of hoofs.
Next moment my sister Bella came round the corner of the house at full gallop, her fresh face beaming with the exercise, and her golden hair streaming in the breeze.
She pulled up, leaped off her pony, and ran into the room. As she did so, I observed a tall, soldierly man appear in the avenue, advancing with rapid strides. Well did I know his grave, handsome face.
“Here comes Nicholas!” said I, turning round; but Bella had fled.
I observed that my friend, instead of coming straight to the room from the window of which my mother and I had saluted him, turned sharp off to the library.
I was running to the door to welcome him, when my mother called me back. I turned and looked at her. She smiled. So did I. Without uttering a word we both sat down to finish our breakfast.
“Ah! Jeff,” said my mother, with a little sigh, “how I wish you would fall in love with some one!”
“Fall in love, mother! What nonsense! How could I? No doubt there are plenty loveable girls, and there is one charming little—well, no matter—”
At that moment Nicholas entered the room, heartily saluted my mother, and cut short our conversation.
Chapter Two.
Is Still More Explosive than the First
Much to my surprise, I found that neither Nicholas Naranovitsch nor Bella nor my mother would consent to witness my experiments with dynamite that day.
As my old chum approached to greet me on the lawn before breakfast the day following, I could not help admiring his fine, tall, athletic figure. I don’t know how it is, but I have always felt, somehow, as if I looked up at him, although we were both exactly the same height—six feet one without our boots. I suppose it must have been owing to his standing so erect, while I slouched a little. Perhaps my looking up to him mentally had something to do with it.
“You’ll come to-day, won’t you?” I said, referring to the experiments.
“Of course I will, old boy; but,” he added, with a smile, “only on one condition.”
“What may that be?”
“That you don’t bother Bella with minute details.”
Of course I promised not to say a word unless asked for explanations, and after breakfast we all went to a part of the grounds which I wished to bring under cultivation. It was at that time encumbered with several large trees, old roots, and a number of boulders.
“Come along with us, Lancey,” I said to the groom, who was also my laboratory assistant, and whom I met in the stable-yard, the scene of his memorable blowing-up. “I am about to try the effect of an explosive, and wish you to understand the details.”
“Yes, sir,” replied Lancey, with a respectful touch of his cap; “I must say, sir, if you’ll allow me, I never knowed any one like you, sir, for goin’ into details except one, and that one—”
“Ah, yes, I know, that was your friend the Scotch boy,” said I, interrupting; but Lancey was a privileged servant, and would not be interrupted.
“Yes, sir,” he resumed, “the Scotch boy Sandy. We was at school together in Edinburgh, where I got the most o’ my edication, and I never did see such a boy, sir, for goin’ into—”
“Yes, yes, Lancey, I know; but I haven’t time to talk about him just now. We are going to the bit of waste ground in the hollow; follow us there.”
I was obliged to cut him short, because this Scotch hero of his was a subject on which he could not resist dilating on the slightest encouragement.
Arrived at the waste ground, we met the manager of a neighbouring mine, who was deeply learned in everything connected with blasting.
“I have brought my mother and sister, you see, Mr Jones,” said I, as we approached. “They don’t quite believe in the giant-power which is under your control; they seem to think that it is only a little stronger than gunpowder.”
“We can soon change their views on that point,” said the manager, with a slight bow to the ladies, while I introduced Nicholas as an officer of the Russian army.
“This is one of the stones you wish to blast, is it not?” said Mr Jones, laying his hand on an enormous boulder that weighed probably several tons.
“It is,” I answered.
The manager was a man of action—grave of countenance and of few words. He drew a flask from his pocket and emptied its contents, a large quantity of gunpowder, on the boulder. Asking us to stand a little back, he applied a slow match to the heap, and retired several paces.
In a few seconds the powder went off with a violent puff and a vast cloud of smoke. The result was a little shriek of alarm from my mother, and an exclamation from Bella.
“Not much effect from that, you see,” said the manager, pointing to the blackened stone, yet it was a large quantity of powder, which, if fired in a cavity inside the stone, would have blown it to pieces. “Here, now, is a small quantity of dynamite.” (He produced a cartridge about two inches in length, similar to that which I had shown to my mother at breakfast.) “Into this cartridge I shall insert a detonator cap, which is fastened to the end of a Pickford fuse—thus.”
As he spoke, he inserted into the cartridge the end of the fuse, to which was attached a small cap filled with fulminate of mercury, and tied it tightly up. This done, he laid the cartridge on the top of the boulder, placed two or three similar cartridges beside it, and covered all with a small quantity of sand, leaving the other end of the fuse projecting.
“Why the sand?” asked Bella.
“Because a slight amount of confinement is advantageous,” replied Mr Jones. “If I were to bore a short hole in the stone, and put the dynamite therein, the result would be still more effective; but the covering I have put on it will suffice, and will serve all the better to show the great difference between this explosive and gunpowder.”
“But,” said my mother, who had a tendency to become suddenly interested in things when she began to have a faint understanding of them; “but, Mr Jones, you did not give the powder fair play. If you had covered it with sand, would