“A sacrifice and a burnt-offering to the Lord.”
“Wouldn’t it work, then—the brass tap?”
“The turbine, you mean? Work and work, why....” Egholm shrugged his shoulders. “Oh yes, it worked all right. My calculations were right enough. Couldn’t be wrong. But the Lord wouldn’t have it. Didn’t suit Him to let my little invention come out just now, and so”—again a mighty shrug of the shoulders—“so, of course, I gave it up. I think she’ll do now.”
He began tearing out handfuls of shavings and spreading them over the boat fore and aft; they filled up beautifully now they were loose.
“No,” he went on; “God wouldn’t have it. I felt it while I was stoking the fire that day. The pressure wouldn’t come as it should, though I’d brought down a whole perambulator full of coal. Then at last, when He sent away the crowd that had come to see, I understood—I understood that He was jealous of my triumph and wouldn’t have it. Well, He can have it now.”
Sivert kept carefully to the opposite side of the boat, away from his father. It was safer, he felt, in case.... For, despite the smile, it was evident that his father was in a highly excited state. He did not scruple to walk round from one side to the other through the water, with his boots and socks on, though the waves splashed up over his knees. Sivert felt it would have been better to go round the other end of the boat, on dry land. At any rate, he preferred that way himself.
Now for the bottle. Egholm waved it generously, sprinkling the paraffin over the shavings and woodwork. Sivert, too, began to find it amusing. Paraffin and shavings—that was the thing!
“Got a match?”
Had he not! Sivert’s fingers had been itching for minutes past to get at the box.
“Right—then fire away!”