Dear Journal,
Trout has informed me that we shall be moving to a place he calls "The Farm" at the end of the week; consequently, I am to wrap up our efforts here in Mont-Havre and pack up anything we must take with us. Perhaps fortunately, the hardened block in my first trial quite gave up the ghost sometime during the night; when I tested it this morning it crumbled quite easily. Thus, I have my first data point: under constant load and with the given sizes, weights, and degree of lift, an otherwise unstressed hardened block survived just under twenty days.
This suggests two subsequent trials, which will have to wait until we are settled once again. First I must replace the hardened block with a hardened rod of similar weight, under continual physical stress; and second, at Bertrand's excellent suggestion, another test in which the lifting block is present but not in fact lifting anything. I had considered that to be pointless, but Bertrand is right: Marc Frontenac's sky-sled failed after having been left idle and unused for some weeks. That leaves one of three possibilities. First, the sled may have been on the verge of failure when Marc put it away. Second, it may have been sufficiently near a warming block, or some other greedy object, that its hardened elements were consumed. Or third, the hardened members might be affected by the mere presence of the lifting and steering blocks, even if they are not in use. I find either of the first two possibilities to be most likely, but I must not discount the third, not given my current state of knowledge!
But that will have to wait for next week. In the meantime I have my preparations to make, including several that Trout will, I trust, never discover. Tomorrow I shall send an arrow to my Amelie. On Tuesday I shall dine with M. Suprenant and his family, and I shall leave with him a new receiving board and some arrows, so that we may communicate privately from the Farm wherever it turns out to be.
And on Wednesday I shall lunch with Jack, and I have determined to tell him all that had gone on and is still going on with Trout—although, of course, Trout has directed me to speak of his plans to no one. I am not pleased to be putting myself further into the man's power. He remains incurious as to my degree of progress, merely inquiring if all is going well, and my sense that he is playing some deeper game at my expense increases with each meeting.
How I wish Bois-de-Bas were closer to Mont-Havre! Using the arrows I can summon aid from Marc and the other townsfolk in quite a short time; but with the sky-chairs and wagons currently out-of-use it will take them days to come to me. Hence I must speak to Jack—for I am certain that neither he nor Lord Doncaster have any real notion of Trout's plans.
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Zymurgia House 