Not a year had passed before a trial was made, and within a decade the machinery was complete for storing the energy of the tempests. An immense cave was hollowed out in the rocks of Lilaroma, and its mouth was extended out into the ocean for miles by means of lava bastions. In it was placed enough of the alloy called labramor, or electricity sponge, to take in trillions of horse-power of electric force. At first cables containing millions of wires were floated out towards the coming tornado and electric fields were raised in the air to tap the energy of the blackness. This was continued afterwards to some extent; but it was found that, if only the clouds were electrically tapped, most of the current transmitted itself to the receivers in the cave by means of the water of the ocean. It was thus unnecessary to float out towards the storm more than one cable, so binding to the shore a great raft which held up many labrolans or electricity milkers towards the blackening sky. They acknowledged that they lost by this water-transmission much of the energy emitted from the clouds; for the ocean bore it away in all directions; but they got as much of it as they needed to fill their storehouse, and they killed the cloud monster; at least it floated away across the horizon blowing a mere gale that could do no havoc except upon the careless and unforethinking. One of the most singular effects of this new contrivance was to rid the sea in the neighbourhood of the island of its teeming life and to precipitate to the bottom the matter that floated in the water. For weeks after, we could see the rocks or streaming weeds in the depths as clearly as if it were an ocean of air. Its emerald or azure had vanished, and white light poured down into the hitherto unfathomed hollows and valleys. There could we see the dead denizens sway idly with the forests of marine vegetation and here and there the bulk of some monster lay tangled in the herbage. Only by degrees and after some months did the colour and opacity return to the waves and the myriad life stream from other regions into the void. The currents that swept past the coasts bore down the suspended particles from other seas; and with them came new fish and their parasites.