Page:Amazing Stories Volume 01 Number 04.djvu/95

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mendous electrical pressure with which he was charged.

A bolt of sheet rubber was passed in the next morning, however, and Fosdick set to work fashioning some shoes for John L, These were  by noon and the fifty thousand morbid spectators that had come in by special trains breathlessly watched the experiment. Rubber-shod, the cat was dropped to the ground—and it survived. A great cheer went up from the crowd. This had no sooner subsided than Prof. Snooks realized that a terrible mistake had been made. Hastily grabbing a megaphone from a barker of one of the numerous side shows that had set up their tents everywhere, he addressed the crowd. He told them that John L. was at liberty charged with perhaps a hundred million volts of electricity, and that contact with him could mean but one thing—death. Instantly there was a wild commotion in the terrorized crowd and then a wild flight from the awful peril. By nightfall the railroads had deported thirty-nine train loads of people and, save for the few that could find rubber boots, the streets of Whiffleville were as lifeless as the shady paths of the neighboring cemetery.

Rubber and rubber alone could protect them against the deadly menace of John L. This, all realized. A thoughtless humanitarian, Bill Hitchcock by the name, made rubber boots for his three dogs. One of the dogs that very afternoon, spying John L., set sail for him and although he managed only to touch the tail of the cat he became charged with the deadly electrical pressure. And worse, the dog coming home rubbed noses with Hitchcock’s other two dogs, charging them. With three electrical dogs and one electrical cat at large only the foolhardy ventured abroad.

ITHIN the next twenty-four hours there were a number of casualties. About nine in the evening Old Tige, the largest of the dogs, came in contact with a lamp post. The post was instantly fused off even with the ground and the gas became ignited, making a geyser of flame that shot a hundred feet heavenward. The dog died. Later in the night another one of the dogs ran against a barbwire fence, killing ten head of stock four miles away. That dog also died. At daybreak there was a loud explosion in the outskirts of the town. It is thought that this came from a cat fight in which John L. participated. At any rate he has never been seen since and to-day only a pathetic hole in the ground marks his probable last battlefield.

The remaining dog was captured at great peril to life, and turned over to Prof. Snooks for experimental purposes. By gradually drawing off the electrical charge by means of a condenser, the Professor in a week's time reduced the dog’s pressure to approximately five thousand volts and then the animal was further discharged by hooking him up to the town arc light system of fifty lamps which he maintained in the splendid effulgence of over two thousand candle power for a period of nine hours and eleven minutes before his power ran down.

Mr. Fosdick and Mr. Stetzle are now living on two insulated stools in the laboratory of Doolittle College. Their potential is dropping at the rate of ten volts a day, and Prof. Snooks has calculated that they must remain there for the next 957 years, three months and two days before being fully discharged. It seems a great pity.

 

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