Then Frank handed him the ends of the wire, and said:
“In a minute you can touch them to the battery binding-post.”
“All right,” said the professor, with a nod, and Frank went out again.
Peering down, he saw that they were at a safe distance from the place where the shells would explode.
“When the ordinary gun-powder shell is fired on the battlefield,” he muttered, “if it explodes in front of a man, he will get killed, while if it bursts behind him, the man will not be injured, for the force is all thrown forward. Now, in this case, as the shells will be burst from the upper side, the force will be downward, and that will throw the mud up, I think.”
But just here the professor touched the wires to the battery, a current passed down to the shells, and they exploded.
A smothered roar was heard, and a tremendous mass of mud was blown so high in the air that some of it spattered the upper part of the flying ice ship.
When it subsided Frank looked down and saw that a huge pit had been rent in the marsh, and in the middle of it laid the body of an enormous mammoth.
The carcase was somewhat mutilated by the shells, but none of the limbs had been torn off.
A mass of black, muddy water ran back into the holes from the ground and settled around the body of the mammoth.