“Well, why don’t you go on?” said Uncle Jeff.
“Because I feel as if you are laughing at me for trying to invent something.”
“I am not, Stan—honour bright!” cried Uncle Jeff. “But even if I was laughing, what right have you to kick against it? Every inventor gets laughed at if he brings out something new, and then stupid people who grinned because they had never seen anything like it before are the first to praise. There! out with it, Stan; the third shot must be a good one.”
The gloom passed off the lad’s countenance, and he laid bare his idea of contriving a kind of torpedo to sink off the wharf and connect by means of a wire with an electric battery in the office, ready for firing as soon as one of the junks was well over it.
“Ah! that sounds better,” cried Uncle Jeff eagerly; “but could it be done?”
“Oh yes,” said Blunt. “I think the idea is capital.”
“So do I,” said Uncle Jeff; “but there’s an old proverb about the engineer being hoist with his own petard, and however willing I might be to blow up a junk full of murderous pirates, I shouldn’t like to go up with them.”
“Oh, that would be easy enough, uncle,” said Stan. “We should have to fill a big, perfectly waterproof canister with powder or some other combustible, make a hole in the side or top, and pass a copper wire through so that it is right in the powder, then solder up the hole, and after the canister has been sunk, bring the wire ashore ready.”
“Yes, and what then? I must confess that I know nothing about electricity.”
“I’ll tell you,” said Stan. “You fetch the copper wire ashore and bring it in, say, through that window. There! like this piece of string,” continued the lad, illustrating his plans with a string-box which he took from the office table, and after drawing out a sufficiency of the twine, he dropped the string-box outside the window. “Now, uncle,” he said, “that thing represents the canister of blasting-powder, and the string is the wire. You see, I shut down the window to hold the wire fast, and bring the end here on to the office table.”