But I was not finished. Two more spindles were secured; I attached a bit of wood to the axles, placed some stones upon it, and pushed the laden vehicle along. Never have I seen human beings more excited. They fairly shrieked with delight, trundled the crude thing back and forth, pushed each other aside in their eagerness to use it, and gabbled and chattered like magpies. Several passers-by stopped, people in nearby fields came hurrying to see what the excitement was about, and in a few minutes Nohul Voh’s house was surrounded by a crowd of excited, jabbering, laughing, marveling people. However, once they had grasped the idea of the wheel, they lost no time in putting it into use. Within twenty-four hours there was scarcely a man or woman or even a child--in the whole of Mictolan--who did not have a wheeled vehicle of some sort. At first they made only miniatures, copying precisely the crude thing I had made, but with a little aid and instruction they learned that size had nothing to do with the new wonder, and carts and wheeled barrows of useful, practical size began to appear. And never have I found greater interest or greater amusement and pleasure than in teaching the people the innumerable useful purposes which the wheel would serve. I showed them how to pivot the front axle of four-wheeled carts, how to grease the axles, how to use mill-wheels or arastras for grinding their giant maize, and I even taught them the principle of the block and tackle and of the windlass. And always they showed the greatest interest. * * * * * THEN came my greatest triumph--a wind-mill. To be sure, my first was a mere model set up on a post close to Nohul Voh’s home, and it called upon all my patience and ingenuity to make this. It was merely a toy, but to Nohul Voh and his people it was the most astonishing thing ever seen. For hours at a time they would stand entranced, watching it whirl in the breeze, swinging from side to side as the wind veered; wrapt in silent wonder at the thing. The old sorcerer, moreover, was the most fascinated of all. He could make nothing of it; the source, or rather the principle of its motion was as inexplicable to him as his green sphere had been to me, and I marveled that a man of such superior intelligence and wisdom should not be able to reason out the puzzle. But it was in perfect accord with all matters pertaining to these people.