e wants to get it more perfect before
submitting it to the Admiralty.

His mind runs rather on naval architecture at present, and he has been
devising an ingenious method of preventing wooden-sided vessels from
being crippled by artillery fire. I did not think much of his magnetic
attractor, because it seemed to me that even if it had all the success
that he claimed for it, it would merely have the effect of substituting
some other metal for steel in the manufacture of shells. This new
project has, however, more to recommend it. This is the idea, as put in
his own words; and, as he has been speaking of little else for the last
two days, I ought to remember them.

"If you've got your armour there, laddie, it will be pierced," says he.
"Put up forty feet thick of steel; and I'll build a gun that will knock
it into tooth-powder. It would blow away, and set the folk coughing
after I had one shot at it. But you can't pierce armour which only drops
after the shot has passed through. What's the good of it? Why it
keeps out the water. That's the main thing, after all. I call it the
Cullingworth spring-shutter screen. Eh, what, Munro? I wouldn't take
a quarter of a million for the idea. You see how it would work. Spring
shutters are furled all along the top of the bulwarks where the hammocks
used to be. They are in sections, three feet broad, we will say, and
capable when let down of reaching the keel. Very well! Enemy sends a
shot through Section A of the side. Section A shutter is lowered. Only
a thin film, you see, but enough to form a temporary plug. Enemy's ram
knocks in sections B, C, D of the side. What do you do? Founder? Not
a bit; you lower sections B, C, and D of Cullingworth's spring-shutter
screen. Or you knock a hole on a rock. The same thing again. It's a
ludicrous sight to see a big ship founder when so simple a precaution
would absolutely save her. And it's equally good for ironclads also. A
shot often starts their plates and admits water without breaking them.
Down go your shutters, and all is well."

That's his idea, and he is busy on a model made out of the steels of
his wife's stays. It sounds plausible, but he has the knack of making
anything plausible when he is allowed to slap his hands and bellow.

We are both writing novels, but I fear that the results don't bear
out his theory that a man may do anything which he sets his will to.
I thought mine was not so bad (I have done nine chapters), but
Cullin