Captain Derrick gave a nod of grave emphasis. Santoris meantime had
come to my side. Our glances met,--he saw that I had received and
understood the message of the lilies, and a light and colour came
into his eyes that made them beautiful.

"Men have not yet fully enjoyed their heritage," he said, taking up
the conversation--"Our yacht's motive power seems complex, but in
reality it is very simple,--and the same force which propels this
light vessel would propel the biggest liner afloat. Nature has given
us all the materials for every kind of work and progress, physical
and mental--but because we do not at once comprehend them we deny
their uses. Nothing in the air, earth or water exists which we may
not press into our service,--and it is in the study of natural
forces that we find our conquest. What hundreds of years it took us
to discover the wonders of steam!--how the discoverer was mocked and
laughed at!--yet it was not really 'wonderful'--it was always there,
waiting to be employed, and wasted by mere lack of human effort. One
can say the same of electricity, sometimes called 'miraculous'--it
is no miracle, but perfectly common and natural, only we have, until
now, failed to apply it to our needs,--and even when wider
disclosures of science are being made to us every day, we still bar
knowledge by obstinacy, and remain in ignorance rather than learn. A
few grains in weight of hydrogen have power enough to raise a
million tons to a height of more than three hundred feet,--and if we
could only find a way to liberate economically and with discretion
the various forces which Spirit and Matter contain, we might change
the whole occupation of man and make of him less a labourer than
thinker, less mortal than angel! The wildest fairy-tales might come
true, and earth be transformed into a paradise! And as for motive
power, in a thimbleful of concentrated fuel we might take the