For a printing press, I decided to bypass the evolutionary step of the flatbed press and go directly to a simple rotary press, and to cast the type in a solid line, rather than bothering with movable type. I drew up what
I thought were some very simple designs, but they took a team of our best machinists along with the Moslem goldsmith over a year to make them work.
And the cigarette lighter took. the longest damn time. We actually spent three times as many man-hours developing it than we did on our first steam engine. It had seemed so easy in the beginning.
We had flint, steel, and white lightning for fuel. I drew up a simple Zippo-type lighter, except that I made it cylindrical instead of flat to simplify the machining, and with a pull-off cap because we didn't have a decent steel spring to hold the usual flip-top in place. It was bulkier than the modem equivalent, but these people used pouches instead of pockets, so that wasn't a problem.
The problem was in generating a spark. Flint was harder than any steel we could make. The spark wheel wore away before the flint was touched, and all without a spark. I even sacrificed the disposable butane lighter I'd had with me from the twentieth century. We took it apart but didn't learn much, since the flint was about gone.
But flint gouged up the modem spark wheel as well, which told us that the flint in a lighter wasn't like the flint we were using. This got us to collecting flint from every source we could find, but all of it seemed to be the same.
I finally dropped back and punted. Some of the more expensive modem lighters used a quartz crystal that was struck by a tiny hammer to generate a spark electrically.
I found some quartz crystals in a shop in Wroclaw, and had our jeweler cut several pieces at different angles of the crystal. Within a week, we had a working lighter! After that, it was just a matter of tooling up for a very profitable line.
It can take a half hour to start a fire with flint and steel, but it only took moments with one of our lighters. You just took off the cap, raised the little weight on its slider, let it drop and presto! Fire! We sold them by the thousands! It also gave us a nice market for lighter fluid, which was wood alcohol, after a while.
By then, spring was on us and it was time to get back into the construction business. Transporting coke by pack mule from Three Walls to the boat landing on the Odra River was extremely expensive. After that, transport costs by riverboat weren't nearly so bad, about one-twelfth the cost per ton mile.
Many of Count Lambert's knights had followed his lead in digging coal mines for fuel, now that potbellied stoves were available. Questioning them and going down most of the shafts, I was able to map out the coalfield fairly well.
All indications were that I could dig for coal right on the riverbank. All through the winter, I'd had six men digging a pilot shaft there on some of Count Lambert's land, and they'd struck coal five dozen yards down.
It made all kinds of sense to build a mining-and-coking operation there, so I made a deal with Count Lambert for half a square mile of land and as soon as the weather broke, I got ready to head there with a construction crew.
FROM THE DIARY OF PIOTR KULCZYNSKI
It was early morning, and we were mounted up in caravan fashion to go to the new lands sold to Sir Conrad by Count Lambert near the River Odra. There we would open mines for coal and build coke ovens of a new design.
Sir Conrad rode up the line of loaded mules and three gross men, seeing that all was ready. I was stationed near the front, next to Sir Vladimir. The three Banki brothers were away making final arrangements for their upcoming weddings, which we were all looking forward to.
There was a great commotion at the gate, and I looked to see the merchant Boris Novacek, a friend of my lord Sir Conrad, crawling through the wood gate on his knees and elbows, for he had no hands!
Sir Vladimir shouted for Sir Conrad, and we both rode to Novacek's aid. Yet Sir Conrad passed us and was there first.
"Boris! What happened?" Sir Conrad shouted as he dug out his medical kit.
"What happened?" Boris said, half dazed. "Why, they cut my hands off."
"Who did this?"
"I don't know. We were never properly introduced." Novacek tried to laugh, but tears came out. "Do you have any water?"
Sir Conrad threw his canteen to Sir Vladimir, who sat Novacek up and held that strange metal bottle to his lips.
"You!" Sir Conrad shouted, looking at a young man in the crowd that was gathering, "Run and get Krystyana!"
"You! Run and get a stretcher! You! Have the men stand down. We leave at three!" Sir Conrad ordered while he opened his kit and examined Novacek's stumps.
"What happened to your guard, Sir Kazimierz?" Sir Vladimir asked.
"Sir Kazimierz? He's dead, poor lad. The good Sir Kazimierz is dead. He took an arrow in the eye and I think he did not see it fly at him."
"You were ambushed?" Sir Conrad said.
"Yes, my friend. My lord. Cut down on the road. There's nothing to buy now in Hungary. I sell your cloth and metalwork there, but they have nothing to give for it but silver. Even all the wine they can spare has already been brought here, I carried nothing but silver and gold, all my silver and gold. We had no caravan to protect us, you see, so they chopped my hands off." Novacek spoke as one falling pleasantly to sleep after hard work and many beers.
"He's lost a lot of blood," Sir Conrad said to my love Krystyana, who had just arrived, walking as fast as she could, for she was heavy with child. Of course she would not took on me. He tied off the arteries in the left stump, and left it for Krystyana to sew up, going around the merchant to tend the right one.
"Boris, who put on these tourniquets for you?" Sir Conrad asked.
"The tourniquets? Why, I put on the right one myself, after the fight. The highwaymen put on the other."
"But how could you have tied it without any hands?"
"I still had my left hand then. It was hard, but one can do things when motivated sufficiently." Novacek seemed not to notice the trimming and sewing they were doing to the stumps of his wrists, and I think the tourniquets must have had them completely numb.
"Then how did you loose the left one?"
"They cut off my right hand in the battle, and my sword with it. They cut off my left one that night, in sport. At least they thought it great sport. I wasn't asked." Boris giggled.
I could see a terrible fury building up on Sir Conrad's face.
"So this happened yesterday?"
"Could it have been only yesterday? It seems much longer. But it must have been yesterday afternoon, for I planned to make Three Walls by sunset."
"And where did it happen, Boris? Can you remember where?"
"It was on the trail from Sir Miesko's. A ways down the trail. About half a night's crawl." He giggled again.
"Anna, can you smell out Boris's path back to the outlaws?" Sir Conrad asked his mount, as he finished tying off and cleaning up the right stump. Annastashia was there, washing her hands with white lightning, ready to sew it up.
Anna nodded Yes, a thing I had gotten used to.
Sir Vladimir was standing between Sir Conrad and me, but I was sure that Sir Conrad was looking directly at me.
"Then mount up! There's work to be done!" The look in Sir Conrad's eyes left no room for argument, or even comment. I mounted my horse, checked my sword, bow and arrows, and followed Sir Conrad and Sir Vladimir out the gate at a gallop.
I heard Novacek yell, "Stop! There are sixteen of them!"
Sir Vladimir turned and said, "What of it? We have God on our side!"
But I don't think Sir Conrad heard him.
Anna had her head to the ground as she ran, sniffing like a hound, which slowed her down some. We would never have stayed with her otherwise, and even so Sir Vladimir and I were hard-pressed to meet her pace.