First Letter

Dear Journal,

I've written little over the last three weeks because there has been little to write. I have had arrows from Amelie in Bois-de-Bas and Jack in Mont-Havre (the latter via M. Suprenant, of course). All is well at home, though I am greatly missed. Jack meanwhile says that Lord Doncaster has as yet heard nothing from Cumbria about Trout, but he hardly could have after so little time; and he assures me that the Farm is being watched and that Bertrand and I are perfectly safe. There is a rail along the front of the porch, and I am to hang a cloth on it if I am in need of immediate assistance during one of Trout's visits.

Trout has continued to visit each week, and if his purpose remains inscrutable at least he has brought us a few more supplies: especially, we now have a lamp and whirtleberry oil so that we need no longer sit by the fire in the evenings. This is a significant blessing in this weather. I have done no building and made no models, for I have little in the way of raw materials, not without taking the farm house or the out-buildings to bits.

The real difficulty lies in not succumbing to a fatal boredom. I have been teaching Bertrand to read (not that the available reading material is of the best); and I have scratched out a chess board on the top of the farmhouse table, and we have had many a game of chess and checkers through the long evenings. We even have reasonably good chess men that I formed from small stones: crude, for I am no sculptor, but recognizable. Fortunately, the chess men are not necessarily either generous or greedy, and so their presence will not throw off my trials.

The trials are going well: indeed, this is the one bright spot. Almost four weeks ago I placed five hardened rods adjacent to lifting blocks. Three of the rods were under greater or lesser strain by means of weights hanging from their ends; the other two were unstressed. Four of the lifting blocks were lifting ten pounds of weight; the fifth, which was adjacent to one of the unstressed rods, was left inactive, not lifting anything.

My prediction was that the unstressed rod next to the active lifting block would fail in about twenty days, as in my previous trial with a hardened block; in the event it took only nineteen days. The reason for the decrease in time is obscure to me, but I suspect it has to do with the difference in the shape of the hardened objects. Meanwhile, the rods under stress are still holding strong, just as I expected.

But the truly delightful outcome is the fifth trial, the unstressed rod adjacent to an inactive lifting block. Bertrand had suggested that perhaps the lifting block was greedy even when not in use, and would continue to draw effort from the hardened rod; and it seems that he is correct, for the unstressed rod crumbled to bits this very afternoon, twenty-six days after I set it up. An inactive lifting block continues to draw in effort from its surroundings! Less than an active one would, this is no surprise, but not very much less!

This is a phenomenal result. It implies that the reason why Marc's sky-sled failed so abruptly, crashing him into the ground, is that it had been left unused for too long! Had he been using it, his weight and the stress from moving him about would have caused the sled's body to flex, which would have stressed the hardened elements, which would have produced effort for the lifting elements to take up. But he let it sit idle, and so the hardened elements were fatally weakened.

Should I ever return to L'Isle de Grand-Blaireau I must use a brand-new sky-chair; and my first act must be to burn the chairs, sleds, and wagons we left there. Or perhaps not, for likely the hardened elements have already turned to dust.

I wonder what has become of the two sloops we turned into housing? For they contain hardened elements, but also active lifting blocks, for they remain floating in mid-air. My guess is that the weight of the sloop stresses the hardened elements enough to provide enough effort to satisfy the lifting blocks. I am glad we didn't try to settle them into some sort of cradle!

I also wonder if M. Fournier has yet acquired a book on algebra for me. There are precise mathematical relationships at play here, I hope and I trust, but I haven't the knowledge or skill to capture them. It is frustrating, for now I begin to have some measurements of interest to work with!

On the whole, I suppose, I am bored but not displeased with my progress. It is ironic, really, that Trout brought me here. He is up to no good, I feel sure, and certainly has no interest in whether or not I produce sky-chairs that work; but it may be due only to him that I will one day be able to produce sky-chairs that work reliably!

If only Amelie and Anne-Marie and Luc were here as well, I should be quite content.

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