Part 34

For several years John commanded his six hundred men at the Goeta Canal, and then he decided to enter the army. He had grown tall, and was noted for his great strength and skill in feats of arms. At seventeen he was made an Ensign in the Rifle Corps, and soon after Lieutenant in the Royal Chasseurs. He was fond of the life of the army, but he saw there was no great future in it for him, and he could not give up his passion for science and invention. He procured an appointment as surveyor for the district of Jemtland, and found himself free again to work on his own lines.

Sweden is a rugged country, its northern part serried by great fiords, its mountains steep and often desolate, its forests thick and many. The young surveyor was in his element roughing it through the wild country, with an eye to improving it for cultivation and for defense, making elaborate maps of its hills and valleys, and charts of its fiords and bays. He had a genius for such work, and the drawings he sent back to Stockholm were invaluable for the development of Sweden. The surveyors were paid according to the work they did, but John Ericsson worked so rapidly that the officials were afraid it would cause a scandal if it were known how much money he was receiving, and so they carried him on their account-books as two different men and paid him for two men's work.

In his spare hours in Jemtland and Norrland John was busy with inventions. As a boy he had been delighted to watch his father make a vacuum in a tube by means of fire. Now he worked over uses to which he could put that idea, and finally invented a flame engine based largely on that principle. That success led him to study engines more deeply, and had much to do with deciding his later career.

Sweden had shown the world much that was new in the building of the Goeta Canal, and many of the improvements had been due to the boy cadet Ericsson. He was now persuaded to write a book on "Canals," explaining his inventions and describing the Swedish plans. In such a scientific book the drawings of diagrams were as important as the writing. As soon as John realized that, he could not resist the temptation to try his hand at inventing a machine which should properly engrave the plates he was drawing. It was pure delight to him to exercise his wits on such a problem, and as a result in a short time he had made a machine for engraving plates which was used successfully in preparing the illustrations for his book on "Canals."

The youth had now won wide recognition throughout Sweden for his inventive skill. But his own country offered him small opportunities, devoted though he was to the land and the people. There was more chance for such a man in a country like England, and there he now went. Stephenson was working then on his steam-engine, and Ericsson studied the same subject, and built an engine which in many ways was superior to the Englishman's. In whatever direction he turned his mind he was able to find new ideas for improving on old methods.

Ericsson soon built a locomotive for the directors of the railway between Liverpool and Birmingham which was the lightest and fastest yet constructed, starting off at the rate of fifty miles an hour. He could not find the opportunities he wished, however, in England, and went to Germany, and from there came to the United States.

It was in America that Ericsson won his greatest triumphs. He had invented a screw propeller for boats, and found a splendid market for this type of machinery. He built the steamship Princeton, the first screw steamer with her machinery under the water line. This was a great improvement on the old top-heavy style of steamboats, but how great was only to be known when war showed that ironclads with machinery safely sunk beneath the water line and so out of reach of the enemy's guns were to revolutionize naval warfare.

By the time of the American Civil War men in all countries were experimenting with these new ideas for ships which Ericsson had launched upon the world. News came to Washington that the Confederate government had an all-iron boat, low in the water, which could ram the high-riding wooden ships of the Union navy, and would furnish little target for their fire. The Union was in great alarm, for it looked as though this small iron floating battery could do untold damage to the Union shipping. There was only one man to appeal to if the North were to offset this Southern ship, which had been christened the Merrimac. John Ericsson was the man, and he agreed to build an ironclad which should be superior to the Merrimac, and to build her in one hundred days.

On March 8, 1862, the Merrimac steamed into Hampton Roads, fully expecting to destroy the Union fleet there. But instead, to the great amazement of her officers and men a little iron boat, so small that she looked like a tiny pill-box on a plank, steamed out to meet her. She was so tiny it was almost impossible to hit her; she was almost entirely under water, and her gun turret was built to revolve so that she could fire in any direction. It was like a battle between David and Goliath, and when the day was over David had won, and the Merrimac had to bow to the iron "pill-box" which had been named the Monitor. Proud was John Ericsson then, and rightly so, for he had invented an entirely new kind of ship, and one which was to give its name of Monitor to all ships of its kind.

The building of the Monitor for its successful battle with the Merrimac was the most dramatic incident in Ericsson's career as an inventor, but his whole life showed a series of wonderful inventions which for value and wide range can probably only be compared with those of Edison. The prophecy which the fairy had made to the shepherd in Sweden had come true, the name of Ericsson was known throughout the world. And in addition to John, the older brother Nils had won great renown in Sweden. He was made Director of Canals there, and created a nobleman for his great services to science and to his native land.

On the Battery in New York City, overlooking the wonderful harbor that is filled with ships of every country, stands the statue of a tall, handsome man, somewhat of the type of those Norsemen who were the great adventurers of the Atlantic seas. The statue is of the man who built the Monitor, and who brought to the new world the genius for invention which he had first shown on the hills and in the woods of Sweden in the days when, a boy of fourteen, he had taught men how to build the great canal at Goeta.

XVIII

Garibaldi

The Boy of the Mediterranean: 1807-1882

The town of Nice lay blazing with color under the hot August sun. The houses, with their shining red-tiled roofs, their painted yellow walls, their striped and checkered awnings, were scarcely less vivid than the waters of the bay, which sparkled like a sea of opals under the rich blue Mediterranean sky. Color was everywhere, brilliant even in the sun-tanned cheeks, the black hair and eyes, the orange and gold and red caps and sashes of the three boys who stood on the beach, looking out at the home-coming fleet of feluccas and fishing-smacks.

"If only I were a man!" exclaimed one of the boys. "No more Latin lessons with the Padre. I could sail and fish all day like brother Carlo. And sometimes I'd visit strange lands, like Africa, and have the sort of adventures father tells of."

"I'll be a sailor too, Cesare," agreed the tallest of the three, nodding his head. "Only poor Giuseppe here will have to stay ashore and be a priest." He turned a sympathetic face toward Giuseppe, who stood with his arms folded, his black eyes looking hungrily out to sea.

"Aye, he'll be teaching other boys just as the Padre teaches us," said Cesare.

This prophecy was more than the third boy could stand. He turned quickly toward his friends. "I'll have adventures, too," he exclaimed. "I'll not stay here in Nice all my life; I'll go to Genoa and to Rome, and perhaps I'll fight the Turks. I want to do things, too." His deep eyes shone with excitement and his face glowed. "Look you, Cesare and Raffaelle, why shouldn't we turn sailors now?"

Both boys laughed; they were used to the mad ideas of young Giuseppe Garibaldi. He, however, was not laughing. "Why not? I've been out to sea a hundred times with father. He lets me handle his boat sometimes, though he does say that I'm to enter the Church. Your brother, Cesare, has a boat that he never uses. Why shouldn't we sail in her to Genoa?"

Giuseppe was a born leader. The other boys looked doubtfully at each other, then back at him. The gleam in his eyes held them.

"Let's sail to-morrow at dawn! You, Cesare, furnish the boat, I'll bring bread and sausage from home, and Raffaelle shall get a jug of water. Your brother's boat is sound, Cesare? We'll sail along the shore to Genoa!"

"Some one will catch sight of us and stop us," objected Raffaelle.

"Nay, we'll wait till the other boats are out. They'll all be off before dawn and we'll have the beach to ourselves."

"I've a compass my uncle gave me on my name day," said Cesare. "I'll bring that."

"And I'll bring some fishing lines," put in Raffaelle, unwilling to be outdone.

So almost before they knew it the other two boys had agreed to Giuseppe's plan, just as the boys of Nice usually unconsciously followed his lead.

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