“That’s right, too,” he said. “The steam turns to water again.”
He saw them put a lid on the pot to keep in the heat. They made up the fire and more steam came, so that the lid began to jump.
“Now it’s getting too close in there,” he said. “Just as Steam told me about the volcano.”
They put a stone on the lid to hold it down. Two-Legs added more and more fuel and more and more steam came. At last it flung off the lid with the stone and darted out into the room.
“The mountain is splitting,” said Two-Legs, rubbing his hands.
7
He built himself a big boiler and a great furnace. Here he kept up a constant fire and tried the strength of the steam and pondered how to make use of it. He had only one person with him, one of his grandsons, who was cleverer than the others, and with whom he often talked of the thought that dwelt in him.
Many a time they two would sit long into the night and work and talk, always of the same thing. It was the question of making the steam work the way it should and no other and as strongly as it should and no more. No one ventured to disturb them. All the rest of the tribe looked upon Two-Legs’ house with awe and reverence, for they knew how clever he was and that he was working alone for the good of the whole race. Some of them, also, believed that he would at last succeed in mastering Steam, but many thought that it would never come to pass and that it would end in terror, as though he were fighting the most secret and powerful forces in nature.
But, whether they held this view or that, they all preferred to keep away from Two-Legs’ house, because they understood how great the danger was to which he exposed himself. All those who had survived the calamity of the volcano were long since dead; but the legend of that terrible day still lingered in the tribe and Two-Legs’ kinsmen could not help thinking what terrible things might happen if Steam should suddenly, one day, turn bad again.
