Jack the Englishman

by H. Louisa Bedford

"I know them," cried Jack. "Aunt Betty shows them to me on the map, and we go long voyages in the puff-puff steamers nearly every day!"

"Ah! I was just coming to that. At first men hollowed out boats out of tree trunks, and rowed about in them, timidly keeping close to the shore, and then, as the years rolled on, they grew braver, and said: 'There's another giant that will help us in our fight with water. Let us try and catch the wind.' So they built bigger boats, with sails to them which caught the wind and moved the ships along without any rowing, and for many, many years men were very proud of their two great captive giants, water and wind, and they discovered many new countries with their wind-driven ships, and were happy. But very often the wind failed them, grew sulky, and would not blow, and then the ship lay quiet in the midst of the ocean; or the wind was angry, and blew too strong—giants are dangerous when they lose their temper—and many a stately ship was upset by the fury of the wind, and sent to the bottom. Then men began to think very seriously what giant they could conquer that would help them to make the wind more obedient to their will, so they called in fire to their aid. Fire, properly applied, turned water into steam, and men found that not only ships, but nearly everything in the world could be worked through the help of steam."

Jack was getting wildly interested in the new version. "Oh, but I know," he said, clapping his hands. "There's trains, and there's steam rollers; I love it when they come up here, and there's an engine comes along and goes from farm to farm for the threshing, and that's jolly fun for the threshers all come to dinner, and——"

"Yes, I see you know a lot about these captive giants after all," said the Captain, bringing him back to the point.

"Go on, please; it's just like a game," said Jack. "Perhaps I'll find out some more."

"I can't go on much longer. It would take me all night to tell you of all the giants we keep hard at work. Three are enough to think of at a time. Tell me their names again for fear you should forget."

"Water—one. Wind—two, and Fire, that makes steam—three," said Jack, counting them off, as he rehearsed them on his father's fingers. "Just one more, daddy dear," a phrase he reserved for very big requests.

"One more then, and away you go to bed, for I see Aunt Betty looking at her watch. The last giant that the man of the story very much wishes to conquer, and has not done it yet, is air. He wants to travel in the air faster than any train or steamship will take you by land or water."

"Like my new toy, the one grandmother sent for on my birthday seven. She sent for it all the way to Melbourne, an 'airyplane' she calls it, but it only goes just across the room, and then comes flop."

"That's just it; at present flying in the air too often ends in flop, and this man I'm talking of wants to help to discover something that will make flying in the air safer and surer. There are lots of men all over the world trying to do the same thing. All the giants I have told you of are too big and strong for one man to grapple with by himself, but many men joined together will do it, and the man of the story has been working at it by himself for years, and at last—at last he thinks he has discovered something that will be of service to airmen and to his country, and he's going over to England to test it—to see if his discovery is really as good as he believes it to be."