The Sea Beasts by A Bertram Chandler

Author:A Bertram Chandler [Chandler, A Bertram]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781440553134
Publisher: F+W Media
Published: 2012-09-14T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

Give a man a problem to solve and he is reasonably happy, even when it is such an outré problem as the manufacture of charcoal on a desert island. But there was an interest in the job involved. I owed no allegiance either to Them or to Curley Green — but I knew that even if we deposed the engineer we should still have to go through the motions of playing along with the porpoises. As far as I could see, we were utterly reliant upon them for our supplies of food.

Anyhow, I was interested in the job for its own sake.

I collected from among the debris that had been cleared out from the huts and left in the sun to dry some old newspapers. I was engrossed in a page of ancient society news in the Sydney Sun-Herald when Mary and John returned from the bush, bearing armfuls of fuel. I put down the paper with its photographs of smiling and utterly unknown young men and women, got up to direct operations and to do what I wished to do myself.

“Get me some grass from the edge of the bush,” I told them. “Roots and all, with plenty of dirt.”

Then, carefully, I built a sort of teepee of the dry sticks and leaves, and around it another, thicker walled structure of the damper timber. Outside this I plastered the sods brought to me by the Samoans, being careful to leave a hole at the top and a larger one at the bottom.

I got up and stepped back to survey the structure. It looked like a little green pyramid. It looked, I thought with pride, professional. So far, so good.

Lighting the fire was easy enough. I took the chart magnifier and focused the sun’s rays on a crumpled piece of newspaper. I watched the white tissue inside the glowing spot of heat turn black, watched the red, smouldering ring expand rapidly from the charred centre. And then, almost invisible in the strong sunlight, there was flame.

Before my fingers were scorched I thrust the flaming paper into the hole at the base of the pyramid. A thin trickle of smoke issued from the vent at the top — then ceased. As I have said, lighting the fire was easy — it was keeping it alight that was the problem.

I removed the blackened newspaper. Perhaps it had been too tightly compressed to burn easily. I lit it again, thrust it back into the cold furnace. Again it went out.

I studied the problem, decided to enlarge the hole. I did so — and then, almost as soon as it was relit, the fire went out again. But too large a vent at the top, I reasoned, would create too fierce a through draught. The fire would burn all right, but I should be left with ashes, not charcoal. If I could leave the hole as it was, but just get the fire started …

A third time I lit the paper and this time, remaining on my hands and knees, I pressed my lungs into service as bellows.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.