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The aerenoid in which we were going to make our journey differed in appearance considerably from those which I saw floating about us. Cigar-shaped, with windows in its sides and roof like a steamer's portholes, it more nearly resembled a submarine boat than an airship, as it rested on a platform built in the side of the balcony for the purpose.
A long cigar-shaped affair was slipping along near enough to the surface so that we could just make it out murderous, deadly, aimed right at the heart of the yacht. "A torpedo!" exclaimed Arnold. "Cast off!" We moved off from the yacht as swiftly as the speedy little open motor-boat would carry us, not a minute too soon. The torpedo struck the yacht almost exactly amidships.
Beaumanoir called to mind the quiet confidence in Poluski's voice when describing the potency of that curious cigar-shaped bomb which so narrowly escaped being hurled at the mutineers during the fight. "There is a lot more in Poluski's make-up than one would give him credit for at a glance," said he. "I understand he was really a firebrand in his youth," remarked the Princess.
During the evening I met at the hotel a Confederate naval officer who was going to attempt that night to carry havoc among the blockading squadron by means of a cigar-shaped vessel of a very curious description. This vessel was a screw steamer of sixty feet in length, with eight feet beam.
It shone clear on the grid the segment of star-field with a tiny cigar-shaped blob. Clear enough to be unmistakable. The Planetara! Here now, over the Moon, almost directly overhead, poised at what the altimeter scale showed to be a fraction under thirty thousand miles. The men gazed in awed silence. The Planetara coming.... But the altimeter needle was motionless.
Estra and Myrin, walking very slowly, took them to a side street, where two of the cigar-shaped cars were standing. Billie and Smith got in with Estra, while Van Emmon and the doctor were given seats beside the Venusian woman. The two cars were connected by telephone, so that in effect the two parties were one.
Could that be the Madeira I had read about in the distance, and that the Bay of Funchal of which I had seen pictures in books; and that the little nautilus or "Portuguese man-of-war" floating by the side of the vessel, now almost becalmed, with its cigar-shaped shell boat and pink membraneous sail all glowing with prismatic colouring?
Imagine a great bag of yellow oiled silk, cigar-shaped, fully inflated with hydrogen gas, but swaying in the morning breeze, and tugging at its restraining ropes: a vast bubble eighty-two feet long, and twelve feel in diameter at its greatest girth. Such was the balloon of Santos-Dumont's first air-ship.
A little forward of the motor is suspended to the keel the cigar-shaped gasoline reservoir, and strung along the top rod are the batteries which furnish the current to make the sparks for the purpose of exploding the gas in the motor.
A ladder having then been lowered to Edestone, he climbed up it, ascended the gangway, and disappeared into the interior of the great cigar-shaped object, it all the time remaining absolutely stationary. But he was not long lost to view. In a few minutes he re-appeared on the top deck and a man by his side energetically waved a large flag. And as the two stood there, the airship began to move.
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