Two-Legs took no heed of what they thought or said.
Now and again, the elders came to him to report on what was happening, good or bad, in the family: the number of children born, the losses suffered or the gain in prosperity. He looked up hastily from his work, nodded to them and then bade them go and leave him alone.
Sometimes, a young man would come running up, radiantly happy at some discovery he had made, to gather praise from the old, wise man whom they all honoured above any other. Two-Legs scarcely looked up from his work and did not hear him to the end. He knew that the ideas with which he himself was busied were far greater and more important and longed impatiently for the day when they should be realized.
He built new boilers of strange shapes and bigger, so that they could hold more steam, and stronger, so that the steam could not burst them. He made his people dig coal from the mountains and used it for fuel, because he had discovered that it gave greater heat and therefore more quickly turned the water into steam. As each year passed, he thought he was nearing the goal, but as yet he had not reached it and sometimes he was despairing.
One day, the boiler burst. He himself was struck on the forehead by a fragment of iron and received a deep wound; but his grandson and assistant was killed before his eyes.
They all came running up with wailing and lamentations. But Two-Legs wiped the blood from his face and stood long and gazed at the burst boiler. Then he turned and looked at the dead man:
“Poor fellow!” he said. “He would so much have liked to live and see the great work finished. Now he had to die; and indeed he had a fine death, for he died for the greater prosperity of his brethren. Bury him and set a monument over his grave.”
They took him and were about to carry him away, but Two-Legs stopped them and said:
“Wait a minute ... I must have one in the place of him who died: is there any of you that will help me? He knows the lot that awaits him: death, perhaps, and disappointment for many years, before we succeed, and scorn from the blockheads who do not understand.”
Seven at once applied. For, though they were certainly afraid, they felt attracted by the mystery and the danger; and there was no greater honour in the tribe than to stand by Two-Legs.