rel he pumped.

All the rest listened silently, except Lindau; at every point the
colonel made against the present condition of things he said more and
more fiercely, "You are righdt, you are righdt." His eyes glowed, his
hand played with his knife-hilt. When the colonel demanded, "And what is
the next thing?" he threw himself forward, and repeated: "Yes, sir! What
is the next thing?"

"Natural gas, by thunder!" shouted Fulkerson.

One of the waiters had profited by Lindau's posture to lean over him
and put down in the middle of the table a structure in white sugar. It
expressed Frescobaldi's conception of a derrick, and a touch of nature
had been added in the flame of brandy, which burned luridly up from
a small pit in the centre of the base, and represented the gas in
combustion as it issued from the ground. Fulkerson burst into a roar of
laughter with the words that recognized Frescobaldi's personal tribute
to Dryfoos. Everybody rose and peered over at the thing, while he
explained the work of sinking a gas-well, as he had already explained
it to Frescobaldi. In the midst of his lecture he caught sight of the
caterer himself, where he stood in the pantry doorway, smiling with an
artist's anxiety for the effect of his masterpiece.

"Come in, come in, Frescobaldi! We want to congratulate you," Fulkerson
called to him. "Here, gentlemen! Here's Frescobaldi's health."

They all drank; and Frescobaldi, smiling brilliantly and rubbing his
hands as he bowed right and left, permitted himself to say to Dryfoos:
"You are please; no? You like?"

"First-rate, first-rate!" said the old man; but when the Italian had
bowed himself out and his guests had sunk into their seats again, he
said dryly to Fulkerson, "I reckon they didn't have to torpedo that
well, or the derrick wouldn't look quite so nice and clean."

"Yes," Fulkerson answered, "and that ain't quite the style--that little
wiggly-waggly blue flame--that the gas acts when you touch off a good
vein of it. This might do for weak gas"; and he went on to explain:

"They call it weak gas when they tap it two or three hundred feet down;
and anybody can sink a well in his back yard and get enough gas to light
and heat his house. I remember one fellow that had it blazing up from a
pipe through a flower-bed, just like a jet of water from a fountain. My,
my, my! You fel--you gentlemen--ought to go out and see that country,
all of you. Wish we could torpedo this well, Mr. Dryf