"Come with me to Spieghalter," he said. "He has just built a new kind of hydraulic press which I designed."
Arrived there, Planchette asked Spieghalter to stretch the magic skin. "Our friend," he said, "doubts if we can do it."
"You see this crank?" said Spieghalter to Raphael, pointing to the new press. "Seven turns to it, and a solid steel bar would break into thousands of pieces."
"The very thing I want," said Raphael.
Planchette put the skin between the metal plates, and, proud of his new invention, he energetically twisted the crank.
"Lie flat all of you!" shouted Spieghalter. "We're dead men."
There was an explosion, and a jet of water spurted out with terrific force. Falling on a furnace it twisted up the mass of iron as if it had been paper. The hydraulic chamber of the press had given way.
"The skin is untouched," said Planchette. "There was a flaw in the press."
"No, no!" said Spieghalter. "My press was as sound as a bell. The devil's in your skin, sir. Take it away!"
Spieghalter seized the talisman, and flung it on an anvil, and furiously belaboured it with a heavy sledgehammer. He then pitched it in a furnace, and ordered his workmen to blow the coal into a fierce white heat. At the end of ten minutes he drew it out with a pair of tongs uninjured. With a cry of horror the workmen fled from the foundry.