“Thad, my good sir, is my new medal, which I gall ‘aethereum’ begause of ids wonderful lighdness. See here.”
There was a very handsome cut glass water-jug, full, standing on the table in a capacious salver of hammered brass. The professor took up the jug and emptied it into the salver, almost filling the latter. Then he laid the glittering slab of metal down on the surface of the water, where it floated as buoyantly as though it had been an empty box constructed of the lightest cardboard. The professor raised the salver from the table and agitated the water, to show that the metal actually floated.
“Why, it floats as lightly as a cork!” exclaimed the colonel in the utmost astonishment.
“Korg!” exclaimed the professor disdainfully, “korg is heavy gombared with this. This is the lighdesd solid known. Loog ad this.”
The professor lifted the plate of metal out of the water, and, wiping it dry very carefully with his silk pocket-handkerchief, held it suspended, flat side downwards, between his finger and thumb. Then, when he had poised it as nearly horizontal as he could guess at, he let it go. It wavered about in the air as a thin sheet of paper would have done, and finally sailed aslant and very gently to the ground, amid the astonished exclamations of the beholders, by whom it was immediately examined with the utmost curiosity.
“You have seen for yourselves and gan therefore judge how marvellously lighd this medal is,” continued the professor when the plate had been handed back to him; “bud ids sdrength you musd dake my word for, as I have no means ad hand do illusdrade id. Ids sdrength is as wonderful as ids lighdness, being—zo var as I have had obbordunidy do desd id—exactly one hundred dimes thad of the besd sdeel.”
“If that be the case, professor, then I should say you have solved the problem of aerial navigation,” remarked the colonel. “But you spoke of having also discovered a new power. What is it?”
The professor once more instituted a search in his pockets, and at length produced a small paper packet, which, on being opened, was found to contain about a table-spoonful of green metallic-looking crystals.
“There id is,” he said, handing the packet to the colonel for inspection.
“Um!” ejaculated the colonel, turning the crystals over slowly with his finger. “Quite new to me; I don’t recognise them at all. And what is the nature of the power derivable from these crystals?”