Oddly enough, it was made at last by accident, when Mr. Cavor least
expected it. He had fused together a number of metals and certain other
things--I wish I knew the particulars now!--and he intended to leave
the mixture a week and then allow it to cool slowly. Unless he had
miscalculated, the last stage in the combination would occur when the
stuff sank to a temperature of 60 degrees Fahrenheit. But it chanced
that, unknown to Cavor, dissension had arisen about the furnace tending.
Gibbs, who had previously seen to this, had suddenly attempted to shift
it to the man who had been a gardener, on the score that coal was soil,
being dug, and therefore could not possibly fall within the province of
a joiner; the man who had been a jobbing gardener alleged, however, that
coal was a metallic or ore-like substance, let alone that he was cook.
But Spargus insisted on Gibbs doing the coaling, seeing that he was a
joiner and that coal is notoriously fossil wood. Consequently Gibbs
ceased to replenish the furnace, and no one else did so, and Cavor was
too much immersed in certain interesting problems concerning a Cavorite
flying machine (neglecting the resistance of the air and one or two
other points) to perceive that anything was wrong. And the premature
birth of his invention took place just as he was coming across the field
to my bungalow for our afternoon talk and tea.

I remember the occasion with extreme vividness. The water was boiling, and
everything was prepared, and the sound of his "zuzzoo" had brought me out
upon the verandah. His active little figure was black against the autumnal
sunset, and to the right the chimneys of his house just rose above a
gloriously tinted group of trees. Remoter rose the Wealden Hills, faint
and blue, while to the left the hazy marsh spread out spacious and serene.
And then--

The chimneys jerked heavenward, smashing into a string of bricks as they