Picture the scene that Fay had in his mind as he toiled his six
laborious months upon this dark invention. He saw himself, in
imagination, fixing his infernal box upon the rudder post of a ship
loading at a dock in New York harbor. As the cargo weighed the ship
down, the box would disappear beneath the water. At length the ship
starts on its voyage, and, as the rudder swings her into the stream,
the first beat in the slow, sure knell of death for ship and crew is
clicked out by its very turning. Out upon the sea the shift of wind and
blow of wave require a constant correction with the rudder to hold the
true course forward. At every swing the helmsman unconsciously taps out
another of the lurking beats of death. Somewhere in midocean, perhaps
at black midnight, in a driving storm, the patient mechanism hid below
has turned the last of its calculated revolutions. The neck piece from
the bolt slips loose, the spring drives downward, there is a flash, a
deafening explosion, and five minutes later a few mangled bodies and
a chaos of floating wreckage are all that is left above the water’s
surface.