Cullingworth is preparing for the issue of our new paper. He has carried the matter through with his usual energy, but he doesn’t know enough about local affairs to be able to write about them, and it is a question whether he can interest the people here in anything else. At present we are prepared to run the paper single-handed; we are working seven hours a day at the practice; we are building a stable; and in our odd hours we are practising at our magnetic ship-protector, with which Cullingworth is still well pleased, though he wants to get it more perfect before submitting it to the Admiralty. His mind runs rather on naval architecture at present, and he has been devising an ingenious method of preventing wooden-sided vessels from being crippled by artillery fire. I did not think much of his magnetic attractor, because it seemed to me that even if it had all the success that he claimed for it, it would merely have the effect of substituting some other metal for steel in the manufacture of shells. This new project has, however, more to recommend it. This is the idea, as put in his own words; and, as he has been speaking of little else for the last two days, I ought to remember them. “If you’ve got your armour there, laddie, it will be pierced,” says he. “Put up forty feet thick of steel; and I’ll build a gun that will knock it into tooth-powder. It would blow away, and set the folk coughing after I had one shot at it. But you can’t pierce armour which only drops after the shot has passed through. What’s the good of it? Why it keeps out the water. That’s the main thing, after all. I call it the Cullingworth spring-shutter screen. Eh, what, Munro? I wouldn’t take a quarter of a million for the idea. You see how it would work. Spring shutters are furled all along the top of the bulwarks where the hammocks used to be. They are in sections, three feet broad, we will say, and capable when let down of reaching the keel. Very well! Enemy sends a shot through Section A of the side. Section A shutter is lowered. Only a thin film, you see, but enough to form a temporary plug. Enemy’s ram knocks in sections B, C, D of the side. What do you do? Founder? Not a bit; you lower sections B, C, and D of Cullingworth’s spring-shutter screen. Or you knock a hole on a rock. The same thing again. It’s a ludicrous sight to see a big ship founder when so simple a precaution would absolutely save her. And it’s equally good for ironclads also. A shot often starts their plates and admits water without breaking them. Down go your shutters, and all is well.” That’s his idea, and he is busy on a model made out of the steels of his wife’s stays. It sounds plausible, but he has the knack of making anything plausible when he is allowed to slap his hands and bellow.