Band of Acadians by John Skelton

one of those encyclopedias.”
    As this work progressed, everyone was optimistic except Frank. He realized their fire pumps weren’t powerful enough to stop a determined attack. “It’s certain that Drucour would have defeated us had he pressed his attack,” he told Hector. “We haven’t tried to do anything with that red rock yet. I’d like to look into that.”
    â€œWell, I must admit you were right with that coal tinkering. And the fire pump you made is impressive. Go ahead, Frank. If the red rock can be used to make something useful, we’d better find out. Just don’t take too many people to do your tests. There are lots of other chores to be done around here.”
    Frank was excited to begin. He thought carefully about the scope of his project, then chose ten boys to use picks and shovels to pry pieces of the red stone from the surrounding bedrock. He banged some of this freed stone with a hammer and found it was harder than limestone but not so hard that he couldn’t pound it into fine powder. “It’s a lot softer than quartz,” he told his workers. That done he got the boys to round up some coal and heated the powder. “It worked with the gypsum and limestone.”
    To his astonishment this resulted in a glossy black powder. “Actually, I shouldn’t be surprised that something turns black when it’s heated.” He found the black substance had a strong taste, was quite a bit heavier than most rocks, and proved handy as a dye. Other than that he could see little use for it. He decided more heat might produce something more useful. Frank believed that the heaviness of the black powder was evidence there might be a metal hiding in the stone, and he knew liberating metals from rock took a lot of heat. Nola and the boys helped him to build a brick box around the powder, to add charcoal, and to fan the fire by blowing on it with a small bellows made from deer leather. When the powder turned white-hot, they saw something materialize that was truly remarkable.
    â€œHey, Hector, come over here!” Frank cried. “Have a look at this. See that metal in the bottom of the pot? It’s iron. I’m very happy to say our red rock is made of iron!”
    â€œIron, huh?” Hector said. “We certainly could use more of that metal around here. We need axes, saws, hammers, shafts for wheels, all sorts of things.”
    â€œYes, iron’s useful for that, but it isn’t something that we can use to defend ourselves. I’m going to continue my experiments.”
    Excited with this first success, Frank wondered what other things he could do with the black powder. “I’ll try adding sea salt and heat that mixture to see what will happen,” he said to Nola.
    It seemed a simple matter to evaporate a few batches of sea water, but getting everything set up took more time than Frank expected. It was almost a full week before he had a small pile of dry salt.
    The first heating of this new combination was a disappointment — nothing happened. “I’d better start keeping notes, or I’m going to lose my way,” he mumbled to himself.
    Nola overheard this mumbling and jumped in. “I can do that.”
    Frank knew he would probably have to do some spell-checking of her work, but was thankful and accepted her offer. Also, he mused, she was pleasant company. He decided to cover the ingredients with sand so that air couldn’t affect the reaction. And he tried again. Slowly, this test batch got hotter and hotter, but still there was nothing promising. Frustrated, he decided to remove the sand cover, add charcoal, and try once more. No sooner had this batch reached an orange colour than he saw red smoke rise. Delighted, he got his crew to help him build a condenser. “We’ve got to capture that red smoke!”
    When the condenser was ready and had done its work, Frank realized they had actually made