Page:The cream of the jest; a comedy of evasions (IA creamofjestcomed00caberich).pdf/179

 not scruple to affirm this is an excellent dark saying, prophetic of that day when no man need outdo Adam in celerity to put by his flesh."

Then Kennaston found the alchemist had been compounding nitrum of Memphis with sulphur, mixing in a little willow charcoal to make the whole more friable, and that the powder had exploded. The old man was now interested, less in the breakage, than in the horrible noise this accident had occasioned.

"The mixture might be used in court-pageants and miracle-plays," he estimated, "to indicate the entrance of Satan, or the fall of Sodom, or Herod's descent into the Pit, and so on. Yes, I shall thriftily sell this secret, and so get money to go on with the great work."

Seeking to find the means of making life perpetual, he had accidentally discovered gunpowder.

Then at Valladolid an age-stricken seaman, wracked with gout, tossed in a mean bed and grumbled to bare walls. He, "the Admiral," was neglected by King Philip, the broth was unfit