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Occasionally one of our men finds them more than usually interesting. There is a loud report, the click of a bolt, and the pungent smell of burnt cordite. Then all is still again. The tangent-sight on the standard of their machine-gun is always at 200, and they have not altered the range for three months.
But they were not quicker than the alert and prepared Ned Napier. A small round object shot downward from his hands. The glare of flame as the missile struck true and the thunderous roar that hurled the big bag of the Cibola sideways told that the cordite bomb had done its work well. Bob was speechless. Ned and Alan were already in hurried consultation.
It was interesting to watch these weapons at work. Their gunners would wait until they saw a flash from "Long Tom" or "Puffing Billy" and then fire, their shells getting home first by two or three seconds, owing to the greater velocity imparted by cordite charges. Soon after ten o'clock the enemy's artillery fire from different directions grew brisker.
Maxim-Nordenfeldt automatic recoil guns used at the battle of the Atbara. The latter cannon, however, only used cordite, whereas the 5-inch howitzer shells are filled with a picric compound resembling M. Turpin's melinite. For over ten years Russia has had 100-lb. howitzer batteries in the field, firing high explosives.
The acrid smell of cordite drifted over them, while without cessation there came the solemn boom boom boom of the heavier guns way back. Like the motif of an opera, the field-guns and light howitzers cracked and snorted, permeating everything with one continuous blast of sound; while the sonorous roar and rumble of the giant pieces behind slower, as befitted them completed the mighty orchestra.
She was called Barbara, and loved a baker over the way, and when she should have been regarding the soup, she was throwing glances to the baker in his shop, so she had to go! "Poor Barbara" and lucky baker, to receive such cordite glances! A dainty lady of Saxon type, with face like china, hair fine gold, and eyes of Neapolitan violet, looked over my shoulder whilst I sketched.
That night he dines with the wardroom, bein' of the kind I've told you as we were a 'appy ship? that likes it, and the wardroom liked it too. This ain't common in the service. They had up the new Madeira awful undisciplined stuff which gives you a cordite mouth next morning.
Those women have won the vote. Not the most frantic outbursts of militancy after this war can prevent them getting it. The girls who have faced death and wounds so gallantly in our cordite factories there is a not inconsiderable list of dead and wounded from those places have killed for ever the poor argument that women should not vote because they had no military value.
The author evidently does not think that this path is a profitable one to pursue, and we agree with him; so he turns his attention to the question of energy. Energy is the capacity for doing work. It is often, of course, latent, as, for example, in a cordite cartridge, which is a peaceful, harmless thing until the energy stored up in it is realised with the accompanying explosion and work is done.
And there was nothing pretty anywhere. The little brown bird of a woman was asking in a kind, interested way if he were a stranger to Edinburgh, and he was telling her how long he had been in Broxburn and what he did there, and when he mentioned cordite she made the clucking, concerned noise that elderly ladies always made when they heard that his work lay among high explosives.
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