Then, there was a box on the kitchen wall, with a mouthpiece and a
cylindrical tube on a cord. Sometimes a bell would ring out of the box,
and the woman would go to this instrument, take down the tube and hold
it to her ear, and talk into the mouthpiece. There was another box from
which voices would issue, of people conversing, or of orators, or of
singing, and sometimes instrumental music. None of these were objects
made by savages; these people probably traded with some fairly high
civilization. They were not illiterate; he found printed matter,
indicating the use of some phonetic alphabet, and paper pamphlets
containing printed reproductions of photographs as well as verbal text.
There was also a vehicle on the farm, powered, like the one he had seen
on the road, by an engine in which a hydrocarbon liquid-fuel was
exploded. He made it his business to examine this minutely, and to study
its construction and operation until he was thoroughly familiar with it.
It was not until the third day after his arrival that the chickens began
to die. In the morning, Hradzka found three of them dead when he went to
feed them, the rest drooping unhealthily; he summoned the man and showed
him what he had found.
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