" He drew
up the lever, removed the electrodes, and there lay a dozen bricks of
ruddy sparkling gold.
"You see, according to our calculations, our morning's work has been
worth twenty-four thousand pounds, and it has not taken us more than
twenty minutes," remarked the alchemist, as he picked up the newly-made
ingots, and threw them down among the others.
"We will devote one of them to experiment," said he, leaving the last
standing upon the glass insulator. "To the world it would seem an
expensive demonstration which cost two thousand pounds, but our
standard, you see, is a different one. Now you will see me run through
the whole gamut of metallic nature."
First of all men after the discoverer, Robert saw the gold mass, when
the electrodes were again applied to it, change swiftly and successively
to barium, to tin, to silver, to copper, to iron. He saw the
long white electric sparks change to crimson with the strontium, to
purple with the potassium, to yellow with the manganese. Then, finally,
after a hundred transformations, it disintegrated before his eyes, and
lay as a little mound of fluffy grey dust upon the glass table.
"And this is protyle," said Haw, passing his fingers through it.
"The chemist of the future may resolve it into further constituents, but
to me it is the Ultima Thule.
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