Page:McClure's Magazine volume 10.djvu/416

24 hills tip together when there is a heavy load of moisture in a valley between them. And then when the moisture evaporates in a hot sun, they tip away from each other. These pendulums show that."

I listened in wonder, and presently we went back into the house, which is a real corner of Japan, with a Japanese servant salaaming about and bringing in pleasant things to drink, and the Professor's wife, a Japanese lady, doing the honors with all the grace of her own country.

And the Professor gave some amusing reminiscences of their troubles in getting the instruments properly set up. To begin with, there were imperceptible air currents that would set the booms swinging in a most perplexing way; and when these were disposed of, there came the ghost of Charles I. out of its dungeon and blew the little lamp out, being displeased, so the neighbors declared, at their invading old Carisbrooke Castle (as they did) with such unholy contrivances. After much vain conjecture over this lamp incident, "Snow" finally discovered that it was the doing of a small beetle, which had managed to drop down the tiny glass chimney from the castle ceiling and get himself burned to ashes before extinguishing the flame.

Next there appeared upon the scene—or rather made himself felt—a little gray "money-spinner," that managed to hide inside the red box and would come out nights for experiments of his own. This little spider knew nothing about earthquakes, but took the greatest interest in the swinging of the boom, and soon began to join in the game himself. He would catch the end of the boom with his feelers and tug it over to one side as far as ever he could. Then he would anchor himself there and hold on like grim death until the boom slipped away. Then he would run after it, and tug it over to the other side, and hold it there until his strength failed again. And so he would keep on for an hour or two until quite exhausted, enjoying the fun immensely, and never dreaming that he was manufacturing wonderful seismograms to upset the scientific world, since they seemed to indicate shocking earthquake disasters in all directions.

Such yarns as these the Professor spun for me that evening in his charming Japanese-English home, and he showed me photographs of earthquakes in Japan, taken by himself and his friend Professor Burton, and pictures of volcanoes blowing their heads off, and he told me of exciting adventures crossing Iceland with a remarkable man named Watts, who would jump across yawning chasms just to see if he could do it. Finally, we went to bed.

The next day gave me a better understanding of the instruments, and a good idea of the regular routine of work in an earthquake observatory. I followed "Snow" through his ordinary round in the little houses, saw him wind the clocks that keep the record bands moving, glance through the slit in the red box to make sure that the boom was swinging free, fill the lamp, see that the watch which marks the hours on the band was right to the second, mix some fresh developer for the films, and then, for my especial benefit, draw the red window, and develop the accumulation of four days, a strip about fifteen feet long, which might have on it a record of earthquake horrors, or might have nothing. You can never tell until the end of the week, when in the ordinary course a batch of seven days' films is developed. In this case there was nothing, only a straight line down the length of the band. The earth had been behaving itself. But they showed me other films from other weeks that indicated a very different state of things. {nop}}