Have you ever studied
organic chemistry?"
"Slightly."
"Then you can follow me. When tallow is saponified there is formed,
from the palmitin, stearin, and olein contained, with the cauticizing
agent--in this case, lime--a soap. But there are two ends to every
equation, and at the bottom of this immense soap vat, held in solution
by the water, which would afterwards be taken up by the surplus lime,
was the other end of this equation; and as the yield from tallow of
this other product is about thirty per cent., and as we start with
eight thousand fifty-pound kids--four hundred thousand pounds--all of
which has disappeared, we know that, sticking to the skin and sides of
the barrels down here, is--or was once--one hundred and twenty thousand
pounds, or sixty tons, of the other end of the equation--glycerine!"
"Do you mean, Doc," asked Boston, with a startled look, "that--"
"I mean," said the doctor, emphatically, "that the first thing the
acids--mixed in the 'tween-deck to just about the right proportions,
mind you--would attack, on oozing through the skin, would be this
glycerine; and the certain product of this union under intense
cold--this hull was frozen in the ice, remember--would be
nitro-glycerine; and, as the yield of the explosive is two hundred and
twenty per cent.
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