9
One evening, he and his disciple were sitting on the bench before the wall, tired with their fruitless labours. They gazed at the sun until it went down. Then twilight fell upon the land.
Two-Legs looked at a fat old toad who came crawling from under the threshold.
He moved his legs heavily and looked with his frightened eyes at Two-Legs and wondered if he meant him any harm. Then he crawled on ... under some wire that lay there. And, as the toad touched the wire, he jumped as if he had been struck a blow.
Two-Legs saw it, for he saw everything. He saw how the toad again touched the wires and again jumped. He stooped down and saw that it was copper-wire and zinc-wire. He saw that the toad jumped highest when he touched both wires. He caught the toad and held him in his hand and put both the wires to him. The toad gave a start. And, every time he touched him with the wire, he started afresh.
Then he let the toad go and remained sitting for a long time with the copper-wire and the zinc-wire in his hand and gazed before him, plunged in thought. Then he said:
“Come, let us go in.”
“Yes, it’s time for bed,” said the disciple. “It’s quite dark.”
“It’s time for work,” said Two-Legs. “To-night a light has been kindled for me, brighter than any before.”
He told the disciple what he had noticed and explained his thought to him:
“It was the electric spirit,” he said. “I think it was the toad’s moist skin that made him show himself. Now we will experiment with copper and zinc.”
He took a glass and filled if half with water and put into it a small piece of zinc and a small piece of copper. Then he fastened a slender wire to the zinc, let the wire stand up in a wide curve and fastened the other end to the copper:
“What shall we put into the water?” he said. “There is sulphur and there is lime and there are a thousand things, in the toad’s skin.... The question is how to hit upon just the right one.”
He experimented patiently. When he put a piece of sulphur into the water, it began to bubble round the zinc.
“Look, look, now the water is jumping just as the toad did!” he said.
He grasped the wire and felt that it was getting hot. Breathlessly, he dropped it and stared at the whole apparatus:
“That’s it, that’s it,” he said and talked quite low, in his excitement. “Wait a bit, now, and see.”
He filed the wire quite thin in one place:
“Feel it,” he said. “It’s glowing.”
The disciple did so and quickly drew back his fingers, for he had burnt himself. Two-Legs stood and stared. Then he cut the wire; and the bubbling in the water stopped at once and the thin piece became cold again. He held the two cut ends together; and, the moment they touched each other, the water bubbled and the wire grew hot. He tried it time after time; and, each time, the same thing happened.
“At last, at last, I have found it,” he said.
He sat for a long time silent, with his face buried in his hands, overcome with emotion. The disciple did not quite understand it, but dared not ask. And, in a little while, Two-Legs himself explained it to him:
“Look here, look here!” he said; and his eyes beamed as they had never beamed before. “Don’t you see that I am making electricity in this little glass? I am making it and it’s here. The wonderful force, the force of the lightning, flows along the wire. I cut the wire and the current is interrupted. I connect it again and the force flows once more. Praise be to the loathsome toad who set my thoughts travelling in the right direction!”
“I don’t see the lightning,” said the disciple.
“You shall see it,” said Two-Legs.
He put a little piece of charcoal at each end of the wire where he had cut it. Then he put out the light in the room and brought the two charcoal tips together. Then they both saw that the charcoal glowed and gave a faint light.
“Do you see that? Do you see that?” cried Two-Legs, exultantly. “I have my thunder-cloud in this little glass: there’s the lightning for you. It only shines faintly as yet, but it is easily made stronger. I can put a thousand thunder-clouds together and you shall see how bright the light becomes. I can put two thousand together and you shall see how strong the electric power is: stronger than the wind, stronger than the steam; there is not a weight it cannot raise, not a wheel it cannot turn. Look, look, I have caught the lightning and imprisoned it in this little glass! I am lord of the mighty electric spirit: he will have to serve me like the ox and the horse, like the wind and Steam!”
He ran and flung open the door. The night was past and it was morning. He shouted till his voice rang over the valley. The people heard and woke and sprang from their beds:
“Father Two-Legs is calling,” they said to one another. “Let us go to his house and hear what he has to tell us.”
They hurried from every side; and Two-Legs stood up, with his great white beard, and told them the marvellous thing that had happened:
“I have caught the electric spirit ... the mysterious, mighty spirit,” he said. “I can produce as strong a current of his immense force as I please and I can carry it whither I please, even to the end of the earth, along a thin wire. I can kindle the lightning, so that it shines calmly and gently, and put it out and kindle it again as easily as I snap my fingers.”
They listened open-mouthed and stared, while he showed them and explained it to them:
TWO-LEGS STOOD UP
“The electric spirit is my captive,” he said. “I have imprisoned him in this little glass and compelled him to obey me. I give him to you; and in him you have a servant whose like you have never known. He will alter the face of the whole earth. If those who died a hundred years ago were to rise again ten years hence, they would not know the world in which they had lived.”
The fools laughed and mocked at him, as was their wont. But the clever ones asked Two-Legs to explain it again and again and never tired of listening to him. At last, they all went home and began to enquire further into the matter, while Two-Legs went into his house and shut his door and wondered what would come next.