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It's a vast, dark, cold chamber-dust an inch deep on the floor, cobwebs festooning the girders and piled from floor to ceiling on the principle of getting the largest bulk into the least room, with barrels, boxes, bales, baskets, chests, crates, and carboys merchandise of all description, from the rough, raw material to the most exquisite choses de luxe.
Two minutes later he rejoined them in the little drawing-room, where the growling Captain was still demanding the whole time and attention of his daughter, and, the motor being ready, the three men walked out, got into it, and were whisked away to the house which once had been the home of the vanished George Carboys.
"Gammon!" "Gammon nothing! Facts!" "Facts? You're out of your head, man. The thing couldn't possibly happen. Somebody's having you!" "Well, somebody had him, at all events. Young Carboys, I mean the chap that's engaged, or, rather, was engaged, to Captain Morrison's daughter; and the poor girl's half out of her mind over it.
"Very little," replied the old man in his quavering tones, "but that little I don't like. I've seen wagons drive up there with big carboys of acid on 'em, and sometimes in the night, when it's all still, I hear a great noise of hammering and strange lights gleam through the chinks of the shutters ah, there's something queer about it I can tell you. All's not right in that house."
Carboys succeeded in getting a clerk's position in town; Van Nant set about modelling clay figures and painting mediocre pictures, and selling both whenever he could find purchasers. "Naturally, these were slow in coming, few and far between; but with Carboys' steady two pounds a week coming in, they managed to scrape along and to keep themselves going.
Boston looked over his shoulder. "That's so; she signed her crew at Boston, too. Where has she been all this time? Let's see this one." The manifest was short, and stated that her cargo was 3000 barrels of lime, 8000 kids of tallow, and 2500 carboys of acid, 1700 of which were sulphuric, the rest of nitric acid. "That cargo won't be much good to us, Doc. I'd hope to find something we could use.
Business was to be done business which was to decide the failure or success of months of work, and which might affect their whole careers. Between them lay a long brown table, stained and corroded by strong acids, and littered with giant carboys, Faure's accumulators, voltaic piles, coils of wire, and great blocks of non-conducting porcelain.
The smell of the chemicals, the carboys filled with acids, the queer, tapering glasses with engraved measurements showing against the coloured liquids, the great blue bottles, the mortars and pestles, the microscopic instruments all brought back the far-off, acrid scene between the late Earl and himself.
Then they opened the main-hatch, and discovered a mixed pile of boxes, some showing protruding necks of large bottles, or carboys, others nothing but the circular opening. Here and there in the tangled heap were sections of canvas sails rolled and unrolled, but all yellow and worthless. They closed the hatch and returned to the cabin, where they could converse.
We believed that that precaution was sufficient, but now it is known that spring water can be kept safe only by putting it in glass bottles and glass carboys. No water will keep sweet in barrels for any great length of time, particularly when exported to hot climates.
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