"What is this world, gentlemen?"
"A round ball," said Jack, with the promptitude of a Board schoolboy and the profundity of a Woolwich cadet.
"Sir, it is like a great orange. It has its outer rind, what they call the crust. Get through that crust and what do you find?"
"More crust," replied Ladds, who was not a competition-wallah.
"Did you ever eat pumpkin-pie, sir?" Mr. Beck replied, more Socratico, by asking another question. "And if you did, was your pie all crust? Inside that pie, sir, was pumpkin, apple, and juice. So inside the rind of the earth there may be all sorts of things: gold and iron, lava, diamonds, coals; but the juice, the pie-juice, is Ile. You tap the rind and you get the Ile. This Ile will run, I calculate, for five thousand and fifty-two years, if they don't sinfully waste it, at an annual consumption of eighteen million bar'ls. Now that's a low estimate when you consider the progress of civilisation. When it is all gone, perhaps before, this poor old airth will crack up like an empty egg."
This was an entirely new view of geology, and it required time for Mr. Beck's hearers to grasp the truth thus presented to their minds. They were silent.
"At Rockoleaville," he went on, "I've got the pipe straight into the middle of the pie, and right through the crust. There's no mistake about that main shaft. Other mines may give out, but my Ile will run for ever."
"Then we may congratulate you," said Jack, "on the possession of a boundless fortune."
"You may, sir."
"And what do you intend to do?"