Fables for Children, Stories for Children, Natural Science Stories Part 28

She pulled out the bucket, but could not hold it. The bucket pulled away from her, struck the side of the well, and tore the rope. The cow-tender returned to the hut and said to the elder:

"Aleksandr! Climb down into the well,--I have dropped the bucket into it."

Aleksandr said:

"You have dropped it, so climb down yourself."

The cow-tender said that she did not mind fetching it herself, if he would let her down.

The elder laughed at her, and said:

"Well, let us go! You have an empty stomach now, so I shall be able to hold you up, for after dinner I could not do it."

The elder tied a stick to a rope, and the woman sat astride it, took hold of the rope, and began to climb down into the well, while the elder turned the well-wheel. The well was about twenty feet deep, and there was less than three feet of water in it. The elder let her down slowly, and kept asking:

"A little more?"

And the cow-tender cried from below:

"Just a little more!"

Suddenly the elder felt the rope give way: he called the cow-tender, but she did not answer. The elder looked into the well, and saw the cow-tender lying with her head in the water, and with her feet in the air. The elder called for help, but there was n.o.body near by; only the groom came. The elder told him to hold the wheel, and he himself pulled out the rope, sat down on the stick, and went down into the well.

The moment the groom let the elder down to the water, the same thing happened to the elder. He let go of the rope and fell head foremost upon the woman. The groom began to cry, and ran to church to call the people.

Ma.s.s was over, and people were walking home. All the men and women rushed to the well. They gathered around it, and everybody holloaed, but n.o.body knew what to do. The young carpenter Ivan made his way through the crowd, took hold of the rope, sat down on the stick, and told them to let him down. Ivan tied himself to the rope with his belt. Two men let him down, and the rest looked into the well, to see what would become of Ivan. Just as he was getting near the water, he dropped his hands from the rope, and would have fallen down head foremost, if the belt had not held him. All shouted, "Pull him out!" and Ivan was pulled out.

He hung like dead down from the belt, and his head was drooping and beating against the sides of the well. His face was livid. They took him off the rope and put him down on the ground. They thought that he was dead; but he suddenly drew a deep breath, began to rattle, and soon revived.

Others wanted to climb down, but an old peasant said that they could not go down because there was bad air in the well, and that that bad air killed people. Then the peasants ran for hooks and began to pull out the elder and the woman. The elder's mother and wife cried at the well, and others tried to quiet them; in the meantime the peasants put down the hooks and tried to get out the dead people. Twice they got the elder half-way up by his clothes; but he was heavy, and his clothes tore and he fell down. Finally they stuck two hooks into him and pulled him out.

Then they pulled out the cow-tender. Both were dead and did not revive.

Then, when they examined the well, they found that indeed there was bad air down in the well.

This air is so heavy that neither man nor any animal can live in it.

They let down a cat into the well, and the moment she reached the place where the bad air was, she died. Not only can no animal live there, even no candle will burn in it. They let down a candle, and the moment it reached that spot, it went out.

There are places underground where that air gathers, and when a person gets into one of those places, he dies at once. For this purpose they have lamps in the mines, and before a man goes down to such a place, they let down the lamp. If it goes out, no man can go there; then they let down fresh air until the lamp will burn.

Near the city of Naples there is one such cave. There is always about three feet of bad air in it on the ground, but above it the air is good.

A man can walk through the cave, and nothing will happen to him, but a dog will die the moment it enters.

Where does this bad air come from? It is made of the same good air that we breathe. If you gather a lot of people in one place, and close all the doors and windows, so that no fresh air can get in, you will get the same kind of an air as in the well, and people will die.

One hundred years ago, during a war, the Hindoos captured 146 Englishmen and shut them up in a cave underground, where the air could not get in.

After the captured Englishmen had been there a few hours they began to die, and toward the end of the night 123 had died, and the rest came out more dead than alive, and ailing. At first the air had been good in the cave; but when the captives had inhaled all the good air, and no fresh air came in, it became bad, just like what was in the well, and they died.

Why does the good air become bad when many people come together?

Because, when people breathe, they take in good air and breathe out bad air.

HOW BALLOONS ARE MADE

If you take a blown-up bladder under water and let go of it, it will fly up to the surface of the water and will swim on it. Just so, when water is boiled in a pot, it becomes light at the bottom, over the fire,--it is turned into a gas; and when a little of that water-gas is collected it goes up as a bubble. First comes up one bubble, then another, and when the whole water is heated, the bubbles come up without stopping.

Then the water boils.

Just as the bubbles leap to the surface, full of vapoury water, because they are lighter than water, just so will a bladder which is filled with hydrogen, or with hot air, rise, because hot air is lighter than cold air, and hydrogen is lighter than any other gases.

Balloons are made with hydrogen or with hot air. With hydrogen they are made as follows: They make a large bladder, attach it by ropes to posts, and fill it with hydrogen. The moment the ropes are untied, the balloon flies up in the air, and keeps flying up until it gets beyond the air which is heavier than hydrogen. When it gets up into the light air, it begins to swim in it like a bladder on the surface of the water.

With hot air balloons are made like this: They make a large empty ball, with a neck below, like an upturned pitcher, and to the mouth of it they attach a bunch of cotton, and that cotton is soaked with spirits, and lighted. The fire heats the air in the balloon, and makes it lighter than the cold air, and the balloon is drawn upward, like the bladder in the water. And the balloon will fly up until it comes to the air which is lighter than the hot air in the balloon.

Nearly one hundred years ago two Frenchmen, the brothers Montgolfier, invented the air balloons. They made a balloon of canvas and paper and filled it with hot air,--the balloon flew. Then they made another, a larger balloon, and tied under the balloon a sheep, a c.o.c.k, and a duck, and let it off. The balloon rose and came down safely. Then they attached a little basket under the balloon, and a man seated himself in it. The balloon flew so high that it disappeared from view; it flew away, and came down safely. Then they thought of filling a balloon with hydrogen, and began to fly higher and faster.

In order to fly with a balloon, they attach a basket under the balloon, and in this basket two, three, and even eight persons are seated, and they take with them food and drink.

In order to rise and come down as one pleases, there is a valve in the balloon, and the man who is flying with it can pull a rope and open or close the valve. If the balloon rises too high, and the man who is flying wants to come down, he opens the valve,--the gas escapes, the balloon is compressed, and begins to come down. Then there are always bags with sand in the balloon. When a bag with sand is thrown out, the balloon gets lighter, and it flies up. If the one who is flying wants to get down, but sees that it is not what he wants below him,--either a river or a forest,--he throws out the sand from the bags, and the balloon grows lighter and rises again.

GALVANISM

There was once a learned Italian, Galvani. He had an electric machine, and he showed his students what electricity was. He rubbed the gla.s.s hard with silk with something smeared over it, and then he approached to the gla.s.s a bra.s.s k.n.o.b which was attached to the gla.s.s, and a spark flew across from the gla.s.s to the bra.s.s k.n.o.b. He explained to them that the same kind of a spark came from sealing-wax and amber. He showed them that feathers and bits of paper were now attracted, and now repelled, by electricity, and explained to them the reason of it. He did all kinds of experiments with electricity, and showed them all to his students.

Once his wife grew ill. He called a doctor and asked him how to cure her. The doctor told him to prepare a frog soup for her. Galvani gave order to have edible frogs caught. They caught them for him, killed them, and left them on his table.

Before the cook came after the frogs, Galvani kept on showing the electric machine to his students, and sending sparks through it.

Suddenly he saw the dead frogs jerk their legs on the table. He watched them, and saw that every time when he sent a spark through the machine, the frogs jerked their legs. Galvani collected more frogs, and began to experiment with them. And every time he sent a spark through the machine, the dead frogs moved their legs as though they were alive.

It occurred to Galvani that live frogs moved their legs because electricity pa.s.sed through them. Galvani knew that there was electricity in the air; that it was more noticeable in the amber and gla.s.s, but that it was also in the air, and that thunder and lightning came from the electricity in the air.

So he tried to discover whether the dead frogs would not move their legs from the electricity in the air. For this purpose he took the frogs, skinned them, chopped off their heads, and hung them on bra.s.s hooks on the roof, beneath an iron gutter. He thought that as soon as there should be a storm, and the air should be filled with electricity, it would pa.s.s by the bra.s.s rod to the frogs, and they would begin to move.

But the storm pa.s.sed several times, and the frogs did not move. Galvani was just taking them down, and as he did so a frog's leg touched the iron gutter, and it jerked. Galvani took down the frogs and made the following experiment: he tied to the bra.s.s hook an iron wire, and touched the leg with the wire, and it jerked.

So Galvani decided that the animals lived because there was electricity in them, and that the electricity jumped from the brain to the flesh, and that made the animals move. n.o.body had at that time tried this matter and they did not know any better, and so they all believed Galvani. But at that time another learned man, Volta, experimented in his own way, and proved to everybody that Galvani was mistaken. He tried touching the frog differently from what Galvani had done, not with a copper hook with an iron wire, but either with a copper hook and a copper wire, or an iron hook and an iron wire,--and the frogs did not move. The frogs moved only when Volta touched them with an iron wire that was connected with a copper wire.

Volta thought that the electricity was not in the dead frog but in the iron and copper. He experimented and found it to be so: whenever he brought together the iron and the copper, there was electricity; and this electricity made the dead frogs jerk their legs. Volta tried to produce electricity differently from what it had been produced before.

Before that they used to get electricity by rubbing gla.s.s or sealing-wax. But Volta got electricity by uniting iron and copper. He tried to connect iron and copper and other metals, and by the mere combination of metals, silver, platinum, zinc, lead, iron, he produced electric sparks.

After Volta they tried to increase electricity by pouring all kinds of liquids--water and acids--between the metals. These liquids made the electricity more powerful, so that it was no longer necessary, as before, to rub in order to produce it; it is enough to put pieces of several metals in a bowl and fill it with a liquid, and there will be electricity in that bowl, and the sparks will come from the wires.