As the projectile contained no explosive charge, the damage was not great, but the scare that was thrown into the occupants of that room was of considerable magnitude.
One of the most anxious moments that I ever experienced was during some experiments made by me at Maxim in throwing aerial torpedoes from a four-inch cannon.
These torpedoes were about four feet in length, charged with a very powerful high explosive, and armed with a detonating fuze. We had successfully fired several of them into a sand-butt where they exploded with great violence. There were six of them: five had been fired and the sixth was loaded into the gun, ready to be discharged, when a passenger train on the Jersey Central Railroad hove in sight, and was passing us about a thousand feet away as the gun was fired.
We had no idea of there being any danger to the train, as its position was well away from the line of fire, and each of the preceding projectiles had behaved so well. But, this time, the torpedo glanced from the sand-butt, and went after that train. We stood paralyzed with dread as we saw it pass over the train, close to the roof of a car, and strike in the swamp just beyond it, perhaps a couple of hundred feet behind the track. An inverted cone of black earth shot up, followed by a dull sound.
In imagination we had witnessed a frightful catastrophe, the wreck of a passenger train, with fearful loss of life, and all the horror of our own resultant predicament. Now that the danger was past, the even tenor of our way did take on a new relish. What objects we are, after all, of the mercy of chance!
At the same place, I was one day on the point of beginning an experiment, for which I required a small quantity of dry guncotton. Before going for it to the guncotton dry-house, I instituted a search for a suitable vessel in which to carry it. For some mysterious reason I had much difficulty in finding anything just adapted to my purpose, and the hunt delayed me a matter of five minutes or more. Finally, however, I secured a satisfactory vessel, and hurried out of the door in the direction of the dry-house.... I had covered less than a rod of the distance when the dry-house blew up.
In this instance, surely, a benign Providence interfered to save me from destruction.