As he was departing, Quivven flung her arms around him and begged him not to go to certain destruction, but he gently disengaged himself, smiling indulgently at this show of childish affection.
“My dear little girl,” he admonished, “most of our troubles last time came from your following me. This time I warn you that I shall be very displeased if you fail to stick closely to home and complete my two magic furnaces for me. Promise me that you will.”
So, with tears of dread in her blue eyes, she promised; and the expedition set forth. They were gone about five days. The trip proved uneventful from any except a scientific viewpoint. They returned, bearing several pounds of silvery grains, placermined from the river sands; also some large lumps of galena crystal, and nearly a ton of zinc-blende. They found that, under the skillful direction of little Quivven, the furnaces were nearly completed.
Quivven the Golden Flame was overjoyed at Cabot’s safe return, while even he had to confess considerable relief. He complimented her warmly on the progress of the furnaces, and noted her pleasure at his expressions of approval.
A few details which had perplexed her were quickly straightened out, and the work was rushed to completion.
He next tested the silver grains which he had brought from the river. His method was a very simple one, invented by himself. It consisted in filling a clay cup with water and weighing it, then weighing a quantity of the metal, and then putting this metal in the water and weighing the whole. A simple mathematical calculation from these three weights gave him the specific gravity of the metal. This process was repeated a number of times to avoid error, and gave as an average the figure 21.5, which he remembered to be the specific gravity of pure platinum.
As a further test he hammered some of the supposed platinum into a thin sheet, and attempted, without success, to melt it. Then he laid a sliver of one of his lead bullets on it, and tried again, with the result that the lead melted and burned a hole through the metal sheet. This test convinced him that he truly had found platinum.
Cabot next turned his attention to glass making. For ordinary glass he would need quartz, soda, potash, and limestone.
The reason for his employing both soda and potash instead of merely one or the other, was that together they would have a lower fusing point, and thus be easier for him to handle with his crude equipment. For glass for his tubes he would use litharge in place of the limestone.
The quartz and the limestone were already available. Soda would be a byproduct of his sal ammoniac when he got around to making it, but this would not be until he had made sulphuric acid from his copper ore, which was a most complicated process as he remembered it.