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Chapter 2
The First Making of Cavorite
But Cavor's fears were groundless, so far as the actual making was
concerned. On the 14th of October, 1899, this incredible substance was
made!
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
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