8
The years passed. One day, the people saw Two-Legs stand outside his house and wave his arms and shout aloud. They ran from every side to hear what he wanted.
“I have found it, I have found it,” he shouted.
He took the elders indoors and showed them a great iron cylinder which he had constructed. At the top of the cylinder was a hole which joined another cylinder. In the first cylinder was a piston, also of iron, which fitted so accurately that it could just slide up and down; and it was smeared with oil so that it might slide as easily as possible. At the bottom of the cylinder was the boiler with the water and under the boiler the furnace.
Two-Legs lit a fire in the furnace, the water turned to steam and the steam went up to the top cylinder and lifted the piston right up to the top end of the cylinder. There it escaped through the hole into the cylinder beside it, where it was cooled and became water again and ran down into the boiler and was once more heated by the fire and turned into steam.
But, when the steam had escaped through the hole, the piston slid down again to the bottom of the cylinder, was lifted up by fresh steam and rose and fell again; and this went on as long as the fire burnt in the furnace.
“Look, look!” said Two-Legs; and his eyes beamed with pride and delight. “See, I have caught Steam and imprisoned him in this cylinder. When I make a fire in the furnace, he rises out of the water and lifts the piston to the top of the cylinder. Then he has done my bidding and turns to water in the other cylinder until I once more bid him turn to steam and lift the piston. See ... see ... I have caught Steam and made him my servant, like the ox and the horse and the wind!”
“We see it right enough, Father Two-Legs,” said one of the tribe. “But we don’t understand what you mean to use your servant for. Tell us, was it worth while, on this account, for you to live shut up in your house for so many years, while we have had to dispense with your wise counsel?”
“You do not understand,” said Two-Legs. “Go away and come back again this day twelvemonth: then you shall see what I use my new servant for. When I have shown you, you can continue the work yourselves. I tell you, so great is the new servant’s strength and cleverness that, if you learn to use him properly, the whole face of the earth will be changed.”
Thereupon he went into the house and shut his door.
He sat contentedly and looked at his new engine:
“Ho, ho, dear Steam!” he said. “I have you now. I can call you forth and turn you off. I can make you strong and I can make you weak. The more fire, the more water, the more steam. And you must always remain inside the cylinder and do my bidding. I can make the cylinder long and I can make it short; I can make the piston heavy and I can make it light: you must needs draw it up and down, my good Steam.”
“You call me good,” said the steam. “On the day when I burst the mountain and destroyed all your land, you called me bad. Now I told you that I was neither good nor bad. I am what I am. You have caught me and, if you can use me, then use me!”
Two-Legs laughed merrily and rubbed his hands. He lit the furnace and poured water into the boiler and sat and watched how the piston slid up and down:
“Yes, what shall we use you for now?” he said. “Shall we put you to the carriage instead of the horse? I think you might get along the road at a very different pace. Shall I use you to draw the ship? Then you can run close to the wind and need not care a pin for him. Shall I let you turn the stones in the mill?... Oh, there are a thousand things that you must do for me!”
Two-Legs put out the fire. Then he fastened a rod to the piston and to the rod he joined another, which was fastened to the axle of a wheel. He lit the fire under the boiler and, behold, the piston went up and down, the rod moved and the wheel whirred!
He made a carriage, put the whole steam-engine on the carriage and connected the rod with the wheel. He himself stood at the back of the carriage, where the furnace was, lit the fire and heaped on coal. The wheels turned and the carriage ran along the road.
The people of the tribe came hurrying from everywhere and stared in amazement at the strange turn-out. Most of them ran to one side and screamed in terror of the dangerous monster and said that it must end badly. Only the cleverest understood the value of it and looked at the new carriage and talked about it.
“Father Two-Legs,” said one of the elders, “you must not drive that carriage. We fear that it will go badly and the steam burst the engine and kill you, as it once killed your assistant.”
“It was just his death that taught me to be careful,” said Two-Legs. “Come and see.”
Then he explained to them how he had calculated the strength of the steam and the quantity of the steam which he should use to drive his carriage.
The more steam there was, the faster the piston slid up and down, the faster the wheels turned, the faster the carriage moved. The stronger the boiler was and the cylinder, the more steam it could hold without bursting.
But in one part of the boiler there was a hole, which was covered with a valve, fastened by a hinge. The valve was just so heavy that the steam could not lift it when there was as much as there should be and as the engine could bear. But, as soon as more steam came, then the valve became too light and rose and the superfluous steam rushed out of the hole.
“Father Two-Legs is the cleverest of us all,” they said.
But Two-Legs stepped down from the carriage:
“I give it to you,” he said. “Now you can settle for yourselves how you mean to use it. Some of you can go on searching, as I did, and invent new things. The smiths can bring their tools and their ingenuity. The steam-engine is yours and you can do with it what you please.”
Then he went into his house and sat down anew to look out over the world and think.
But the cleverest of the tribe set to work on the steam-engine. As the years passed, they invented first one improvement and then another, so that it worked ever more safely and smoothly.
They laid rails over the ground, so that the steam-carriage ran at a pace of which none had ever seen the like and drew a number of heavily loaded coaches after it. A man could now make a journey in a few days or weeks which formerly had taken him months and years. The produce that grew at one end of the earth was now sent quickly and cheaply to the other.
They put the steam-engine in ships, where it turned paddle-wheels, so that the ships ran against wind and current. They used it to thrash the corn in the barn, to grind it in the mill: there was no end to the objects for which they were able to use it.
The steam-engine had changed the face of the earth, as Two-Legs had foretold.
