Page:Ballantyne--The Battery and the Boiler.djvu/330

 "There was one eccentric Irishman—one of the best servants I ever had," continued Redpath, "who once made a sort of torpedo arrangement which achieved wonderful success. The fellow is with me still, and it is a treat to hear Flinn, that 's his name, tell the story, but the fun of it mostly lies in the expressive animation of his own face, and the richness of his brogue as he tells it.

I was away in the dissert somewheres,' he is wont to say, 'I don't rightly remimber where, for my brain 's no better than a sive at geagraphy, but it was a wild place, anyhow—bad luck to it! Well, we had sot up a line o' telegraph in it, an' wan o' the posts was stuck in the ground not far from a pool o' wather where the wild bastes was used to dhrink of a night, an' they tuk a mighty likin' to this post, which they scrubbed an' scraped at till they broke it agin an' agin. Och! it 's me heart was broke intirely wi' them. At last I putt me brains in steep an' got up an invintion. It wouldn't be aisy to explain it, specially to onscientific people. No matter, it was an electrical arrangement, which I fixed to the post, an' bein' curious to know how it would work, I wint down to the pool an' hid mesilf in a hole of a rock, wid a big stone over me an' ferns all round about. I tuk me rifle, av coorse, just for company, you know, but not to shoot, for I 'm not bloodthirsty, by no means. Well, I hadn't bin