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Read Ebook: The Vast Abyss The Story of Tom Blount his Uncles and his Cousin Sam by Fenn George Manville Overend William Heysham Illustrator
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Ebook has 3590 lines and 96505 words, and 72 pages
ounted in the top-floor, the new apparatus, boxes, bottles, and jars were placed on tables and shelves in the middle floor, and the two great glass discs were carefully carried into the stone-floored basement, where a cask was stood up on end, a hole made in the head, and barrowful after barrowful of the fine silver sand plentiful in amongst the pine-trees was wheeled up and poured in, like so much water, with a big funnel, till the cask was full.
"What's that for?" said Uncle Richard, in response to an inquiry from his nephew. "That, Tom, is for a work-bench, meant to be so solid that it will not move. Try if you can stir it."
Tom gave it a thrust, and shook his head.
"I don't think three men could push it over, uncle," he said.
"Two couldn't, Tom. There, that will do. We mustn't have any accident with our speculum. Now then, to begin. Ready? Tuck up your sleeves."
Tom obeyed, and helped his uncle to lift one of the glass discs on to the top of the cask, where it was easily fixed by screwing three little brick-shaped pieces of wood on to the head close against the sides of the glass.
Uncle Richard paused after tightening the last screw, and stood looking at his nephew.
"What a queer boy you are, Tom," he said.
"Am I, uncle?" said the lad, colouring.
"To be sure you are. Most boys would be full of questions, and ask why that's done."
"Oh," cried Tom, who smiled as he felt relieved, "I'm just the same, uncle--as full of questions as any boy."
"But you don't speak."
"No, uncle; it's because I don't want you to think I'm a trouble, but I do want to know horribly all the same."
"I'm glad of it, boy, because I don't want what the Germans call a dummkopf to help me. I see; I must volunteer my information. To begin with then, that disc of glass is--"
"For the speculum," said Tom eagerly; "and you're going to polish it."
"Wrong. That's only for the tool. The other is for the speculum, and we are going to grind it upon the tool."
He turned to the other flat disc of ground-glass, where it lay upon a piece of folded blanket upon a bench under the window, and laid his head upon it.
"Doesn't look much, does it, Tom?" he said.
"No, uncle."
"And I'm afraid that all we have to go through may seem rather uninteresting to you."
"Oh no, uncle; it will be very interesting to make a telescope."
"I hope you will feel it so, boy, for you do not stand where I do, so you must set your young imagination to work. For my part, do you know what I can see in that dull flat piece of glass?"
Tom shook his head.
"Some of the greatest wonders of creation, boy. I can look forward and see it finished, and bringing to our eyes the sun with its majestic spots and ruddy corona, fierce with blazing heat so great that it is beyond our comprehension; the cold, pale, dead, silver moon, with its hundreds of old ring-plains and craters, scored and seamed, and looking to be only a few hundred miles away instead of two hundred and forty thousand; Jupiter with its four moons--perhaps we shall see the fifth-- its belts and great red spot as it whirls round in space; brilliant Venus, with her changes like our moon; bright little Mercury; Saturn, with his disc-like ring, his belts and satellites; leaden-looking Neptune; ruddy Mars; the stars that look to us of a night bright points of light, opened out by that optic glass, and shown to be double, triple, and quadruple. Then too the different misty nebulas; the comets and the different-coloured stars--white, blue, and green. In short, endless wonders, my boy, such as excite, awe, and teach us how grand, how vast is the universe in which our tiny world goes spinning round. Come, boy, do you think you can feel interested in all this, or will you find it dry?"
"Dry, uncle! Oh!" panted Tom, with his eyes flashing with eagerness, "it sounds glorious."
"Say, uncle!" cried Tom. "Let's begin at once!"
"I beg pardon, sir," said a pleasant voice; "but would you mind having a bell made to ring right in here?"
"No, Mrs Fidler," said Uncle Richard; "we will lay down iron pipes underground to make a speaking-tube, so that you can call when you want me. What is it--lunch?"
"Lunch, sir!" said Mrs Fidler; "dear me, no; the dinner's waiting and getting cold."
"Bother the old dinner!" thought Tom.
"Come, my lad, we must eat," said Uncle Richard, with a smile. "We shall not finish the telescope to-day."
"Now then, we'll begin," said Uncle Richard; "and the first thing is to make our mould or gauge, for everything we do must be so exact that we can set distortion at defiance. We must have no aberration, as opticians call it."
"Begin to polish the glass, uncle?"
"Not yet. Fetch those two pieces of lath." Tom fetched a couple of thin pieces of wood, each a little over twelve feet long. These were laid upon the bench and screwed together, so as to make one rod just over twenty-four feet long.
Then at one end a hole was made, into which a large brass-headed nail was thrust, while through the other end a sharp-pointed bradawl was bored, so as to leave its sharp point sticking out a quarter of an inch on the other side.
"So far so good," said Uncle Richard. "Do you know what we are going to do, Tom?" Tom shook his head.
"Strike the curve on that piece of zinc that we are to make our speculum."
"Curve?" said Tom; "why, it's quite round now."
"Yes; the edge is, but we are going to work at the face."
"But arn't you going to polish it into a looking-glass?"
"Yes; but not a flat one--a plane. That would be of no use to us, Tom; we must have a parabolic curve."
"Oh," said Tom, who only knew parabolas from a cursory acquaintance with them through an old Greek friend called Euclid.
"Be patient, and you'll soon understand," continued Uncle Richard, who proceeded to secure the sheet of zinc to a piece of board by means of four tacks at its corners, and ended by carrying it out, and fixing the board just at the bottom of the border, close to the window.
A couple of strong nails at the sides of the board were sufficient, and then he led the way in.
"Now, Tom, take that ball of twine and the hammer, and go up to the top window, open it, and look out."
The boy did not stop to say "What for?" but ran up-stairs, opened the window, and looked out, to find his uncle beneath with the long rod.
"Lower down the end of the string," he cried; and this was done, Tom watching, and seeing it tied to the end of the rod where the brass nail stuck through.
"Haul up, Tom."
The twine was tightened, and the end of the rod drawn up till Tom could take it in his hand.
"Now take away the string."
This was done.
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