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Updated: May 23, 2025
In the upward travel the bomb-thrower decided to have a parting shot. The airship was steadied momentarily to enable the range to be taken, the automatic detonator was set going and the bomb slipped into the launching tube. But for some reason or other the missile jambed. The situation was desperate. In a few seconds the bomb would burst and shatter the airship.
These beasts worked out the theory that the largest possible number of British and French officers and public men would be inspecting the building at that hour of the day. The plot was successful. Their devilish cunning was rewarded and their hate glutted. The clock struck the detonator, the dynamite exploded, blew the building and the visitors into atoms.
It was just about this time that the Staff came to the conclusion that something simpler in the way of grenades was required than the "Hales" and other long handled types, and to meet this demand someone had invented the "jam tin" an ordinary small tin filled with a few nails and some explosive, into the top of which was wired a detonator and friction lighter.
Tommy would stoop down, get an empty "jam tin," take a handful of clayey mud from the parapet, and line the inside of the tin with this substance. Then he would reach over, pick up his detonator and explosive, and insert them in the tin, the fuse protruding.
The mere burning of this compound would, in itself, have been nothing, for my laboratory was an old out-house, quite unconnected with the dwelling; but in the laboratory also lay my torpedo! The worst of it was that I had inserted a detonator and affixed a fuse, feeling quite secure in doing so, because I invariably locked the door and carried the key in my pocket.
Every morning at nine o'clock two young subalterns meet their class of fifty pupils in a château, and explain with the aid of a diagram on a blackboard the internal economy of the mortar and its 50-lb. bomb, the adjustment of angles of elevation to ranges, and the respective offices of fuse, charge, and detonator.
Sometimes the fuse is not placed properly in the detonator, or the detonator is not properly enclosed in the cartridge, or the fuse is injured by improper tamping. If several shots have been fired together, particularly at the change of a "shift," the men who have to remove the broken material may in so doing explode the missed charge.
Instruction was given in the use of bombs, of which the men had hitherto no knowledge. In those days the bomb first in use was the jam-tin bomb. The men were taught how to cut fuses, fix them into the detonator, attach the lighter and wire the whole together preparatory for use against the enemy.
Caspar's power was gone along with his powder; and the deer and other quadrupeds, which were known to be yet numerous in the valley to say nothing of the winged creatures that frequented it, could now smile at any attempt on the part of Caspar to trouble them any longer with his double-barrelled detonator. The gun would hereafter be as useless as a bar of iron.
In one department of labor, it is a very startling thing to learn that "in a single fuse factory, what they call the danger buildings, mostly women are employed. About five hundred women are found at work in one of these factories on different processes connected with the delicate mechanism and filling of the fuse and gaine, some of which is really dangerous, like detonator work."
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