Part 7

The mystery had been solved.

WINNING THE OX

This Bill Bennett was a good deal of a marksman, and one day while attending a county fair, where he had imbibed a considerable measure of bottled-up unsteadiness, he came reeling along to a group of men who were engaged in shooting at a target. The range was long, and the price paid by each contestant for a chance to display his skill, or lack of it, was a dollar a shot, but the prize was a fat ox, which was destined to go to the first who made a bull's-eye. As yet none had succeeded in making the lucky shot.

Bill staggered into position, and threw down a ten-dollar bill for ten shots. The attendants steadied him sufficiently to confine his wild target practice to that part of the sky and horizon where the target was located.

Bill had wasted nine shots without coming within speaking distance of the target, which to his drunken sight appeared to be double. Rolling like a ship in a storm, Bill brought the gun to his shoulder for the last round, declaring, "By gum, I'm agoing to hit one of them targets this time."

And he did. As they went sailing by, he let blaze at them, and behold, it was a bull's-eye! Bill had won the ox on a one-to-a-million chance.

A DUEL TO THE DEATH

In the old pioneer days of Maine, when it was still a province of Massachusetts, a young French officer had an altercation with the chief of the Oldtown Indians, and according to the custom of the times, challenged the Red Man to fight a duel with him.

The old Indian, according to the courtesies of the game, was allowed the choice of weapons, and he chose two kegs of gunpowder. Each was to sit upon a keg, with the bung out. Then two pistols were to be discharged in succession. On the firing of the first pistol, two iron pokers, heated to a white heat, were to be laid upon a table beside the duelists, which was to be immediately followed by the discharge of the second pistol. At this signal they were each to seize a poker and thrust it into the bung-hole of the keg on which his adversary was sitting, the old Indian calculating that he would be quicker than the Frenchman.

But the Frenchman had a little calculation of his own, and he figured out something that the Indian had doubtless not thought of. This was that the explosion of either keg would be certain to explode the other.

But he made a bluff of it, thinking that the old Indian too might be bluffing, and so everything was arranged. Each mounted his respective keg and the first pistol was fired. The savage was a graven image, but the Frenchman did not wait for the second signal, and unlike Lot's wife, he never looked back.

THE BEWITCHED FLINTLOCK

My father used to tell a good story about a one-time chief of the Oldtown Indians, and, as it had to do in a way with explosions--indeed, a series of them--I add it to my collection.

There was a farmer living in an adjacent town, who frequently received visits from the old chief. On such occasions, the Red Man always carried his shotgun with him. The weapon, according to the times, was a flintlock, single-barreled muzzle-loader.

One day in the autumn, the farmer was feeding his turkeys by stringing a long line of corn upon the ground, on either side of which the turkeys were standing, head to head, in two opposing ranks for the feeding. The Indian was present, and the farmer asked his guest what he would give for a shot at that double line of turkeys' heads. The Indian answered that he would give five dollars, if he could have every turkey that he killed or wounded. The farmer, who had previously drawn the shot from the Indian's gun, leaving only the powder charge, accepted the offer.

The Indian leveled his gun and fired; but not a turkey fell. The old Red Man looked puzzled. The farmer laughed at his marksmanship, but the old savage merely grunted, and went home.

The chief appeared again next day, and the farmer asked him how he would like to take another shot, having again drawn off a charge of shot from the Indian's gun. He would gladly give another five dollars for a try. This time the discharge of the gun brought down a goodly number of turkeys. The Indian had taken the precaution of loading his gun with a double charge of shot. On the next visit received from the Indian, the farmer unloaded the gun down to the powder charge, then put in a wad of punk, and another powder charge with another wad of punk, and so on, until he had loaded the weapon nearly to the muzzle. He then replaced the gun in its position in the corner, dropped a fire-coal into the muzzle, and invited the Indian to supper.

After the lapse of a few minutes, the Indian's gun went off, bang! Much surprised, the Indian looked around, and remarked that it was a strange occurrence, that he had never before known his gun to go off by itself. While he was still cogitating over the strange occurrence, bang! went the old gun again.

The Indian hurried through his supper, very greatly perturbed, but he had not quite finished when the old gun spoke yet once again. The chief rose from the table hurriedly, seized his ancient weapon, and started off for home with as nearly a display of agitation as is permissible to the dignity of the Red Man. Before he had gone far, however, the old gun uttered another bang! He then broke into a rapid run, and just as he arrived at his wigwam, the gun banged again. Now thoroughly frightened, he hurled it from him over a fence. Still, for more than two hours the Indian's weapon continued its mysterious barking.

When the farmer explained the trick to the old chief, he felt that he had been somewhat compensated for the loss of his turkeys.

WHEN HE SHIRKED

A prominent financier, who was a much better business man than he was inventor, read of Moissan's experiments in making artificial diamonds. The financier conceived the idea of converting anthracite coal directly into diamonds by subjecting it to enormous pressure of gunpowder exploded in a strong steel cylinder.

As he wished to market a large quantity of his manufactured diamonds before their artificial character should leak out, he determined to conduct his experiments very secretly; consequently, he put the man-of-all-work at his country place upon the job. This faithful and useful servant was to report the progress of the work regularly at the city office of his employer.

After trying several experiments with black gunpowder, the man reported that the scheme didn't work--that no diamonds were produced.

The financier then told the useful that he had evidently reached the limit of power of black gunpowder.

"Now try dynamite," said he.

There was a break in the chain of reports, and he wrote the useful, asking him why he did not report. Still no answer.

After waiting some days, the idea suddenly struck the financier that possibly the process had proved successful and that the useful planned to betray him. He accordingly sent a peremptory telegram to him to report at once on pain of discharge.

The next day a vision, swathed and bandaged and perambulating on crutches, entered his office.

"You infernal old scoundrel!" yelled the wreck, as he entered. "Blow a man up with dynamite, and then threaten to discharge him for not reporting!"

THE ELEVATION OF WOMANHOOD

I had a certain man in my employ down at Maxim by the name of Benjamin Billings, whom we called Ben Billingsgate. Ben held views very strongly prejudicial to dogs and matrimony. He was all that is implied by the term "all-round useful." Though an erratic fellow, he was bright and energetic and seemed to be able to do anything under the sun when he set about it. But he lacked initiative, except in the expression of his opinions about those two abominations--dogs and matrimony.

When he was young and ardent he had married Sukyanna, a maiden who was dominated by the delusion that she had been born with a mission, to which all other considerations were secondary and should be subordinated. She was also a woman with a pug dog. Benjamin's nerves had been frazzling out for some time, and his patience was sorely tried by the division of the lady's affections between him and the dog--with a decided leaning toward the dog.

One day he brought home to his wife a beautiful Christmas present, which consisted of a large colored photograph of himself, mounted in an exquisite gilt frame. The expense of the thing represented a week's hard labor, but he wanted to create an impression upon his wife. He believed in doing things by wholes and in striking hard to win. His wife was very pleased--with the frame.

On his return from work the following evening, he took a sidelong glance toward the mantel over which the picture had been hung. He did not recognize himself. There in the frame was a life-size photograph of the pug in place of his, which Sukyanna had removed.

He uttered never a word, but his whole mental mechanism was turning somersaults. The next day, at roll-call, that dog was reported among the missing.

Benjamin pretended to sympathize and to condole with his wife, but she was disconsolate. Some Gypsies had passed that way during the day, and it was suspected that they might have stolen the dog. The horse was accordingly hitched up and a drive of ten miles was taken. When the Gypsies were overhauled and rounded up, the pug was not discovered. Then an advertisement was inserted in all the town papers. Still no pug. The canine continued a persistent absentee.

As a matter of fact, Benjamin had devoted ingenuity enough to the destruction of that dog to form the basis of a Sherlock Holmes detective story. He had prepared a sort of canister-bomb, adapted to go off by a strong thump of any sort. The dog, the bomb and a stout rawhide string, with which to tether the bomb to the dog, were confidingly placed in the hands of a small boy in the neighborhood, known to have both a sense of humor and a taste for the mischievous. The boy was, however, fond of dogs, and it eventuated that he decided to keep the dog for himself. Hence the delay in the finale of this story.

But the urchin's sense of humor finally got the better of his affection. He found it impossible to choke off the appeal to his imagination of hitching that bomb to the dog's tail. Consequently he took the pug out and carefully tied the canister to its tail. Following the ingenious instructions of Benjamin, as soon as he had done so he dodged into the house and shut the door before the dog realized what had happened.

When the pug discovered itself a part of an infernal machine, old-home-week associations rose up in its memory, and it made a bee-line for home and human mother.

Benjamin had made a little miscalculation about the amount of thumping that would be required to actuate the exploding mechanism of his ingenious bomb, and it did not explode immediately, as expected. The dog and bomb, consequently, hurtled through space like a comet with a head on both ends of the tail.

On the dog's arrival, Sukyanna was going about her household duties, with a book in one hand written by Miriam Mushroom on The Transcendentalism of the Universal, and Its Relevancy to the Elevation of Womanhood; while, with the other hand, directed only by subconscious mental process born of habit, she was preparing supper for Benjamin. She prided herself on that power of concentration and absorption, so common to the artistic temperament, which can resist for a while the battering-ram assaults on consciousness of howling children, barking dogs, or a house on fire.

As a result, she did not hear or see puggy as, with whine and din and clatter, he rushed into the room where she stood. Not receiving the expected attention and consolation, puggy in his impatience circled around the human mother, entwining the shanks of her in the strong rawhide cord, until dog and bomb had effectually hobbled her skirts, when, tripping, she went down on both.

This mean trick on the part of Benjamin bruised her artistic soul and proved far too much; she instantly separated from Benjamin--in the direction of the empyrean.

She had at last achieved the realization of the Elevation of Womanhood.

DIDN'T KNOW IT WAS LOADED

At the works of the Maxim-Nordenfelt Company in England, when some of the early experiments with smokeless powders were being made in that company's laboratory, a strong hydraulic cylinder, which had been employed for compressing experimental explosive materials, was thrown out of commission by the ram, or plunger, sticking in the cylinder. The cylinder was taken to the shop, and the job of getting the plunger out of it was given to one of the workmen. He thereupon commenced in his own peculiar way by heating the cylinder over a forge, thinking to expand it sufficiently to allow the plunger to be removed.

He succeeded before long, with an effectuality that perfectly dumbfounded his slow sense of expedition. The contained explosive naturally ignited, and the plunger was blown out like a shot from a cannon. The cylinder itself was blown downward, demolishing the forge, passing through the plank floor, and burying itself in the ground, while the plunger whizzed upward through the roof, and disappeared in the direction of Scotland.

THE WRONG TAP

The worker among high explosive materials must never relax his ceaseless vigilance. Not only his own life, but also the lives of those working at his side, hang upon the thread of infinite care. This fact is emphatically illustrated by an experience of my own, while conducting some experiments with a continuous process for making nitroglycerin which I had invented.

Orders were waiting, and it would take a week of constant labor on my part to complete the apparatus. I therefore crowded the week into three days, working constantly day and night, without a moment's sleep or rest.

I had thought out every detail of the process with the utmost care. I had tested every step, unit by unit, so I was confident not only that the process would prove successful, but also that it would be safe to operate.

On the forenoon of the third day, everything being at last in readiness, I now prepared to turn on the acids and the glycerin. I was well aware of the grim possibilities of my being killed, for if I had made a miscalculation or any wrong determination, I knew that my life might be the forfeit. I gave little thought to the likelihood of my being incautious due to the tremendous strain to which I had so long subjected myself. As it happened, I was so worn out that at the very outset I turned on the glycerin first, instead of the acids. My hand was actually upon the acids tap before I realized my error.

In that vital moment, some secret sense or instinct called back my wandering wits in the nick of time, and, shuddering, I dropped my fingers from the tap. Had I turned it on after the glycerin began to flow, I must inevitably have been blown to pieces.

"WHENCE ALL BUT HIM HAD FLED"

I have a literary friend by the name of Marvin Dana, who, although he was for years editor of the _Smart Set_, once failed in a bit of à priori perspicuity. Some Italians were blasting out a bit of rock at Landing for the foundation of a new bridge, to carry the roadway over the railroad in that village. They had just finished charging a big, deep hole with dynamite, and had lighted the fuze, when Marvin started to cross the temporary bridge with his usual measured stride of ever-conscious dignity. The Italians, who had withdrawn to a safe distance, seeing him coming, and they being unable to speak English, gesticulated wildly, and pointed excitedly in the direction of the blast under the bridge.

The littérateur concluded that there must be something extraordinary going on down below there--something quite worth looking at, and, walking directly above the blast, leaned over the bridge and looked down. Just at that instant the mine exploded.

He was, happily, unhurt by any of the flying stones and débris, but the knock-down argument of the shock from the blast convinced him that such carelessness on the part of those Italians, with never a guard to wave a red flag warning pedestrians, was, indeed, truly shocking.

BREAKING HIS NERVE

Just back upon the hills that rise up from the southern shores of Lake Hopatcong, there is one of the most important dynamite works in the country. James Wentworth began his labors there first as an errand boy, at the age of twelve, soon after the works started. It was his brag that he had grown up with the works, but that he had never gone up with them, although he had seen many another go up, when, on occasion, by some freak of chance, a packing-house or a nitroglycerin apparatus would be blown to the four winds of heaven, spraying wreckage of men and timber over the whole celestial concave.

Jim had no lack of courage. He had worked in every department of the business; had made nitroglycerin and nitrogelatin, and had become one of the most skillful dynamite packers. As he did piece-work, he made money rapidly.

One day, at a church strawberry festival, he was drawn into the vortex of that swirling passion, love, and married. The young wife importuned him to give up the dynamite business, as he had already laid up sufficient money to start him in another business. Yielding to her wishes, he gave notice that his resignation was to take effect at the end of two weeks.

On the third day of the period of his notice, on the advent of the noon hour, he was seized with an uncontrollable impulse to take his dinner-pail and himself out of the packing-house where he was working. He said afterward that he got to thinking, "Suppose this packing-house should blow up; what would become of Susie?"--to say nothing of his own dispersion.

He went to the top of an elevation to eat his dinner, in full view of the packing-house, continuing his pessimistic reflections.

The place began to look suspicious. For the first time in his life he felt fear. On a sudden, that packing-house became a white, dazzling ball of flame, and he was knocked down by the concussion.

He told the superintendent that the three days he had served on his notice must suffice--he had lost his nerve!

THE GRIZZLY CANNON BALL

In the early days, when there was more individual and less corporate mining in the gold country of the West, a long and lean Yankee, Jim Evans, who was once a neighbor of mine in Maine, contracted the gold-fever, and went West.

Luckily, he almost immediately struck a pay streak high up the face of a cliff, where there was a wide shelf of rock that afforded a very convenient roadway for his use, as well as considerable area for the transaction of his operations.

Someone before him had started operations on the same site, but had become discouraged and quit, leaving a big steel tank, open at one end, lying upon its side, the open end pointing, like a huge cannon, over the mining settlement a thousand feet below. Jim used this tank to warehouse certain edibles, together with a keg of black gunpowder.

One day, on Jim's return from grubbing in the ground, he was amazed to find the entrance to his warehouse blocked by a huge grizzly bear that had crawled in to get at the edibles, and that fitted the big tube like a wad in a gun.

Jim was addicted to humor, and as there was a three-quarter-inch hole in the tank near the closed end right over the keg of gunpowder, the head of which had been removed, it occurred to him that he might make it somewhat interesting for the bear by lighting a piece of fuze and dropping it into the gunpowder. This he proceeded to do, and the bear proceeded to leave that tube after the manner of a cannon ball.

Hearing the report, and seeing a large volume of smoke, the townspeople, looking skyward and Jim-ward, were astonished at seeing a ton of grizzly hurtling outward from Jim's place and descending upon them.

On Jim's return to the village that evening, he was surrounded by numerous interrogators regarding the bear. "Oh," he said, casually, "I found the bear in my shack, and just threw him out, that's all."

THE JOKE WAS NOT ON THE CHINAMEN

When the Alaskan gold excitement was at its height, a couple of adventurous spirits, prospectors from California, had expended several months of precious, good old summer-time and exhausted their resources in an endeavor to locate pay dirt by sinking a shaft into a narrow table of land which jutted out from a high mountain near its base.

After thawing and grubbing and blasting through fifty feet of earth, with no gold in sight, they came upon solid ice underlying the cover of earth through which they had penetrated.

They kept on, however, for several weeks more, in an endeavor to penetrate through the ice; but they found ice, and only ice, for another fifty feet.

Then it was that it occurred to them to salt that ice with fine gold dust and sell out to some tenderfoot sucker.

They very easily found the desired victims in two Chinamen, with evident ample means and sufficient lack of experience.

The two prospectors had about a ton of dynamite on hand. This they lowered into the shaft and concealed it in a side drift just deep enough and big enough to hold it, calculating that the first shot fired by the Chinamen would set off the dynamite and, by completely demolishing the shaft, conceal their fraud.

The first blast made by the Chinamen did explode the dynamite, which not only wrecked the shaft, but also lifted the whole jutting bit of tableland--ice, earth, everything--sending it--an avalanche--down the mountain slope several hundred feet, exposing a thick stratum of glacial detritus, under where the ice had been, so full of gold that it proved to be one of the richest finds ever made in Alaska. The one blast had made the Chinamen millionaires.

CHINESE FIREWORKS

During the gold-digging days of California, before there was a restriction imposed upon the immigration of Chinese, a big American sailing vessel, while in Chinese waters, had taken aboard a large cargo of fireworks and a few tons of gunpowder of a special brand, which was safely housed in the hold, while all the sleeping quarters except those occupied by the crew, and all available deck spaces, were filled with a cargo of coolies to man California mines.

The vessel was one of those staunch, fast, sail-driven craft brought to their highest perfection in the shipyards of Maine just before the advent of the steamship.

When the ship was about a day out on its homeward voyage, the captain learned, through his faithful Chinese cook, that a big part of the Chinamen that he had picked up were half-breed Malay and Chinese pirates who had taken passage for the sole purpose of capturing the ship for piratical purposes, and that they were armed to the teeth, so that resistance offered by his crew of only twelve would be utterly hopeless.

While the captain was deliberating upon what to do, word was brought by his cook that the pirate horde were beginning to act very ugly, and had already taken possession of the fore part of the vessel, preparatory to a final assault upon the crew.

The captain ordered two lifeboats immediately to be filled with water and provisions and lowered, while he went below decks and lighted a train to the cargo of gunpowder and fireworks. Then the captain and his crew, together with the Chinese cook, manned the lifeboats and pulled away, to the amazement of the Chinese pirates, who seemed immensely pleased that they had captured the ship without a struggle.

The captain and the crew, in his two boats, lay on their oars at a safe distance quietly watching events, while the ship, which had now been turned about, was sailing away landward. When at a distance of about half a mile, that ship turned volcano. The whole above-water portion went up into the air with a belch of fire and thunder-roar like another Krakatoa, whose eruption shook the whole earth in 1883.