With provision made for all of the deception and trickery which experience and foresight could suggest we headed for Singapore, to begin a career of adventure such as my wild mind never had conceived, even in its dearest dreams. On the long trip out I whiled away the time in an effort to evolve a torpedo of a new type. I had been interested in high explosives all my life and had long believed that a non-dirigible torpedo could be devised which would be an improvement on our own Harvey,--which was towed in a bridle and was not practicable for a greater distance than two or three hundred yards,--and which would have advantages over the dirigible type. To facilitate my experiments I had on board a lot of sheet brass and before the end of the trip I had developed a torpedo that I regarded as perfection and which I afterward used with success, though it finally got me into trouble in South America. It was six feet long, thirty inches in diameter, and shaped like a fat cigar. The inside was lined with air cylinders to give it the required buoyancy, and inside of these was packed the explosive charge, of wet gun-cotton or dynamite. It was towed by a wire or small rope attached to the blunt nose, from which projected six spider-like arms two feet long, and alternating with these were six shorter arms extending outward from the thickest part of the torpedo. The forcing backward of any one of these arms cut off a shear pin and released a spring which set off a fulminate of mercury cap. This exploded a disc of dry gun-cotton which set off the main charge. The shear pins were of copper wire of any desired thickness, but were intended to be only thick enough to prevent the arms from being forced backward, and the torpedo discharged, by the current of a river or by the resistance of the water when being towed or by small driftwood which might be encountered.