I remembered that in America, many
centuries later, when an oil well ceased to flow, they used to
blast it out with a dynamite torpedo. If I should find this well
dry and no explanation of it, I could astonish these people most
nobly by having a person of no especial value drop a dynamite
bomb into it. It was my idea to appoint Merlin. However, it was
plain that there was no occasion for the bomb. One cannot have
everything the way he would like it. A man has no business to
be depressed by a disappointment, anyway; he ought to make up his
mind to get even. That is what I did. I said to myself, I am in no
hurry, I can wait; that bomb will come good yet. And it did, too.
When I was above ground again, I turned out the monks, and let down
a fish-line; the well was a hundred and fifty feet deep, and there
was forty-one feet of water in it. I called in a monk and asked:
"How deep is the well?"
"That, sir, I wit not, having never been told."
"How does the water usually stand in it?"
"Near to the top, these two centuries, as the testimony goeth,
brought down to us through our predecessors."
It was true--as to recent times at least--for there was witness
to it, and better witness than a monk; only about twenty or thirty
feet of the chain showed wear and use, the rest of it was unworn
and rusty. What had happened when the well gave out that other
time? Without doubt some practical person had come along and
mended the leak, and then had come up and told the abbot he had
discovered by divination that if the sinful bath were destroyed
the well would flow again.
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