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He had written his sister a year ago that he was tired of life, and marriage did not tempt him; he was, said he, "too lazy to woo, too lazy to support a family, too lazy to endure the responsibility of a wife and children." But upon this ennui fell an electric spark from the old storage-batteries, woman's eyes.
As Craig heard it he rushed with two wires to the window, threw them out, and hurried downstairs, attaching them to the batteries of the cab. In an instant he was back again. "Now, Doctor," he said, "I'm going to perform a very delicate test on this man. Here I have the alternating city current and here a direct, continuous current from the storage-batteries of the cab below.
A naval constructor of note, who was also a shark on chemistry, explained how this coughing was not caused by the chill in the air, but by the particles of sulphuric acid thrown off by the action of the storage-batteries.
Then for three days the two craft lay together, while the engineer and the men familiarized themselves with her internal economy the torpedo-tubes, gasoline-engines, storage-batteries, and motors; and the vast system of pipes, valves, and wires that gave life and action to the boat and while Metcalf experimented with the mysterious searchlight attached to the periscope tube invented by himself, but perfected by others.
Enough power was still left in her storage-batteries to operate the air-pressure system through the floats. This air, with a huge boiling and seething of the white surf, loosened the floats from the cling of the sand; and a score of men at the tackles succeeded at high-tide in hauling Nissr far up on the beach.
The only very discreditable thing to human nature that occurred was later, when hundreds of lazy "bummers" found that they could keep camping in the parks, and make alimentary storage-batteries of their stomachs, even in some cases getting enough of the free rations in their huts or tents to last them well into the summer.
One reason for this trial run was to prove that she could run so many miles an hour under water by the power of her storage-batteries alone. And soon she went at that. And no mild racket inside her then; for a sub's engine power and space are out of all proportion to her tonnage.
The engineer would look at a register and yell back at the manager, who would then set some figures in a book and rush over to the man who was reckoning up the decreasing or increasing amperes or kilowatts or whatever they were of her storage-batteries, and set down more figures; and if the boss had to yell his head off to make himself heard, be sure that the others had to yell even louder.
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