Yet for a moment there was nothing to mark the effect, until with a whisper, rising to a roar, the huge pipe filled and discharged its plunging contents against the waiting wheel. Then, as the wheel turned and the belt of gnuppa hide revolved, there crept through the new rock house a strange and droning hum. Louder and louder it rose, as faster and faster the shining armature which Croft and Robur watched spun round. Faster and faster, louder and louder—blue sparks began to shine and quiver under the copper brushes. And suddenly, with a blinding scintillation, a hissing crash, a giant spark leaped the gap between the terminals of two wires Croft had arranged to test the ascending charge.
"Zitu!" Above the crackling discharge the captain in the door cried out: "Fly—we are undone, man of Zitu—fly!" He staggered back and paused and stood staring, vaguely reassured at the smile of triumph on Croft's face.
"Fear not," Jason told him quickly, as he struck up a lever, released the tension of the belt, and caused the first dynamo on Palos to sink from a dizzy whirling toward rest. "This moment speaks success for all our toil of weeks. Go tell the men on the pipes to close the gates."
Robur's face, too, was pale, well-nigh as that of the captain's, though he had held his place. His lips were close pressed, however, and his nostrils slightly pinched. Then, as Croft so easily chained the fiery breathing of the monster he had produced, his eyes began to flash.
"By Zitu, and by Zitu!" he swore the Tamarizian oath of wonder. "Jason, you have indeed harnessed His own lightning, as you have said. For a moment I feared that His wrath were excited by your daring, and He had sent a bolt of His fire to destroy us, with the house." He broke off with an almost shamefaced laugh.
"Yet now it gentles like a wild gnuppa under its master's hand," he went on again as the dynamo stopped and naught remained save the dwindling rush of the waters through the waste pipes from the turbine beneath their feet. "Zitu, my friend, but all men shall marvel yet as I do now at this! What plan you next?"
"Light!" said Croft. "Light, first, and after that to make use in all the ways I mentioned of this force—to turn the wheels in shops, to run the presses I have made to print from type and so supply the schools Jadgor has favored with the means of broadening men's minds—to print for them and their children, and so to spread the truth."
"Thou wilt build a city here to do these things?" Robur questioned, as yet unable to fully sense quite all Croft's words embraced.
"No," Jason told him. "This power shall flow from here to Himyra, Rob, across the line of poles your men are building, along the wires."
"Zitu!" The governor of Aphur stared.