Margery looked on with much mystification, as did the Indians. When the chief questioned his medicine men, evidently asking what sort of magic this was to be, they seemed baffled.
Margery questioned Tom with her eyes but he smiled across at her and while wondering, in his mind, how he was going to make any showing against such a manifestation, he did not lose his courage or his trust in being led to know what to do and how to do it.
“You’ll need water for that carbide,” suggested Cliff. “We’ll tell you that much.”
“Oh, I know that—knew it all the time!” scoffed Mort. Turning to Margery he demanded. “Have water fetched!”
“I know that sort of thing a little,” Cliff said. “Back in high school we had an outfit of that kind. You see, it all packs in a suitcase to make it portable.”
“Yes,” Nicky agreed. “The film is what they call non-inflamable. It won’t burn.”
“That’s right,” Cliff agreed. “That’s why it can be used with an open flame light. You know, don’t you, that the lamp has to be filled with those crystals of calcium carbide—in the can, there. Then, water is put in the container and when it is all assembled and the screw is opened, water drips onto the crystals and they act to make gas.”
“Yes,” Nicky said. “We had something about that in chemistry class.”
But Mort and Henry were not having such a good time setting the machine in position. They got the “head” or apparatus for jerking the bits of exposed film down, back end foremost, and had to turn it around. That made them fidget and sweat.
To a degree, even in face of the danger, the boys were amused at the “hot time,” as Nicky whispered, that the older men were having to get their magic in readiness.