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An electric discharge, too, is accompanied by a smell, which smell is due to the presence of what is called ozone; and not long ago M. Schoenbein, of Basel, the inventor of guncotton, discovered ozone as a principle in the oxygen of the atmosphere; and it is considered to be the active principle of that universal constituent.
In default of fulminate, he could easily obtain a substance similar to guncotton, since he had azotic acid at his disposal. This substance, pressed in a cartridge, and introduced among the nitro-glycerine, would burst by means of a fuse, and cause the explosion. But Cyrus Harding knew that nitro-glycerine would explode by a shock.
Three more charges of guncotton did the dynamite cruiser Vesuvius throw into the batteries at the mouth of Santiago Harbour on the night of June 26th, and next morning the evidences of her work could be seen on the western battery, a portion of which was in ruins.
In the morning came the news that the enemy had again surprised and blown up one of our guns none other than the howitzer visited by me the previous evening. Presently the young cadets themselves came riding into camp, bringing with them pieces of guncotton, and showing by the state of their ragged uniforms the hand-to-hand nature of the struggle that had taken place.
The prelude to this third bombardment of Santiago was a second trial of the Vesuvius at midnight on the fifteenth, when she sent three more 250-pound charges of guncotton into the fortifications.
A hole was to be made large enough to hold fifty pounds of guncotton, whose expansive force is four times that of gunpowder. I was terribly excited. Whilst Hans was at work I was actively helping my uncle to prepare a slow match of wetted powder encased in linen. "This will do it," I said. "It will," replied my uncle.
"Danger?" laughed young Captain Jack Benson, stopping before the door and fumbling for the key. "Well, I should say so!" "Something like two tons and a half of guncotton in this old shed," smiled Hal Hastings. "That's not mentioning some other high explosives."
Three long tubes one fixed in the stem, two movable in the superstructure could launch Whitehead torpedoes, mechanical fish carrying two hundred and twenty pounds of guncotton in their heads, which sought in the water a twenty-foot depth, and hurried where pointed at a thirty-knot rate of speed.
"Without any doubt, the island, continents, and the world itself," replied the engineer. "It is only a question of quantity." "Then could you not use this nitro-glycerine for loading firearms?" asked the sailor. "No, Pencroft; for it is too explosive a substance. But it would be easy to make some guncotton, or even ordinary powder, as we have azotic acid, saltpeter, sulphur, and coal.
On this night of June 14th, at the entrance to Santiago Harbour, the dynamite cruiser Vesuvius—that experimental engine of destruction—was given a test in actual warfare, and the result is thus graphically pictured by a correspondent of the New York Herald: “Three shells, each containing two hundred pounds of guncotton, were fired last night from the dynamite guns of the Vesuvius at the hill at the western entrance to Santiago Harbour, on which there is a fort.
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