the fire communicates with a second barrel of
spirits of turpentine; the flames rise on all
sides, and ascend with a continuous roar to
the rigging of the mainmast, which is rapidly
in a blaze. (The model ship is literally all in
a blaze.) In despair and madness, buckets of
water are flung at random—nobody knows
what he is doing; all rush wildly about,
preparing to leap overboard at the very moment
they scream loudest for the boats!—the boats!
—when an individual suddenly recollects, as
by a flash of thought, that there is a machine
on board called a Fire-Annihilator. (Here
Mr. Phillips seizes upon a small brass machine,
out of which he causes a white vapour to
issue.) In a second or two the flames are half
extinguished;—he carries the machine to the
other flaming mast, and to the casks in the
forehold,—the flames are gone!

And so they are! Of the volume of flames
in the model ship, which by this time had
risen to the height of eight or nine feet, not
a flash remains,—they were annihilated in four
or five seconds. The machine which wrought
this wonder was like a brass shaving-pot, or
bachelor's coffee-pot, and certainly not larger.

But how was Mr. Diggs affected by this?
Did the worthy sugar-baker look peculiarly
wise, or did he stand rather aghast at his own
wisdom? Neither the one, nor the other.
Had Mr. Phillips been a fine actor, the
foregoing scene, with its fiery illustration, and the
frantic yet fruitless use of water, would have
had a tremendous effect; but his manner was
not sufficiently excited, and, worse than this,
he very much damaged the effect, and the
conviction it would have carried with it, by
turning his back towards the audience when
he poured the water upon the flames, so that
"standing in his own light," it was
impossible for many people to see whether the
water was really poured into the model ship,
or over the other side, unless they could have
seen through his body. This was not lost
upon John Diggs, who loudly murmured his
dissatisfaction, accordingly, in opposition to
the general applause of those who did see,
which followed the rapid extinction of the
flames. How this was accomplished Mr. Diggs
did not know; he simply considered that water
had not had fair play. He suspected some
trick.

"The existence of water," pursued Mr.
Phillips, "is continuous, flowing, not quickly
to be destroyed; the life of fire is momentary.
(He explodes a large lucifer-match.) Now
you see it at its height! (He dashes it into
water). Now it is nothing! Its life is from
instant to instant. Why has it become
nothing? Because water is its natural
antagonist? No—but because fire cannot exist
without a certain quantity of air; and when
it is entirely immersed in water, this requisite
quantity of air is suddenly withdrawn, and
the fire as instantly dies. The very same
result would follow if I were to dash a lighted
match into oil."

"Let us see! " exclaimed Mr. Diggs; but
he was called to order by a number of
voices.

Mr. Phillips had been led many years ago,
as he now informed us, to consider the nature
of fire and water. It so chanced that he had
witnessed most of the great conflagrations
which have happened in London during the
last twenty or thirty years. The destruction
to the Royal Exchange, the Houses of Parliament
—the fire at the Tower, theatres, great
warehouses—he was present at them all; and
he could not but observe amidst the prodigious
efforts made to save them, that water was
comparatively powerless upon violent flames;
and therefore inadequate to the task it was
called upon to perform. He was also witness
of a series of terrible volcanic eruptions. He
was in a seventy-four gun-ship in the
Mediterranean at the time. For thirty or forty
days there was an eruption, and sometimes
two or three, almost daily. The most terrific
of these—and by which they were nearly lost,
having been driven towards it, and only saved
by a sudden change of wind—was of such
force, that the shock was felt throughout the
south of Europe, from the Rock of Gibraltar,
to Stromboli. A volcanic island was thrown
up in the middle of the sea, from a depth of
four or five hundred feet. This island was of
molten lava, and rose in the form of a crescent
with an open crater, into which the sea
continually rushed like a cataract. But the fire
within was not extinguished. At each
successive eruption, the water was ejected with
a force that sent it up two miles, and
sometimes three miles high—again to descend in
thousands of tons upon the crater, but without
extinguishing the fire. The sea was boiling
for a quarter of a mile on one side of the
island: the fire was completely beyond its
power. Instead of extinguishing fire, the water
was made to boil. But he observed this further
phenomenon, A dense cloud of vapour was
sometimes generated; and whenever the wind
bore this vapour into the flames, they were
immediately extinguished.

A consideration of these phenomena led
Mr. Phillips to the following conclusions.
Fire and water are not natural enemies, but
very near relations. They are each composed
of the same elements; and in the same
proportions; the component parts of water can
be turned into fire; and when fire ceases to
be fire, it becomes water. (This latter
proposition caused Mr. Diggs to prick up his ears,
but he said nothing.) The two elements had
by no means the direct and immediate power
over each other that was generally supposed.
Water was a compact body, and acting in
this body, it could not act simultaneously
on the particles of gases which produce flame;
but a gaseous vapour being of an equally subtle
nature with the gases it has to attack, can
instantly intermix with them. Find, therefore,
a gaseous vapour, which shall intercept the
contact of the gases of flame, and thus