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.
