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The familiar machinery had put on a grewsome strangeness which had its final touch from the roll lying on the table like something dead. A table had been set in front of the barrels under the bolting cloths, and the muslin funnels, empty of flour, hung down into the barrels with the effect of colossal legs standing in them.
He was dressed like a dissipated country gentleman, given to frequenting horse-fairs, in a rather greasy striped Caucasian jacket, a faded lilac silk-tie, a waistcoat with copper buttons, and grey trousers shaped like huge funnels, from under which the toes of unbrushed shoes could just be discerned.
Now, in the distance, a schooner was visible, caught in the calm, her sails sagging, east-bound, for Malta or Suez, probably. Great steamers occasionally slipped past along the horizon line, their funnels smoking, their decks almost level with the water from the loads of Russian wheat they were carrying from the Black Sea to the Straits. And the sun rose high in the heavens.
Leaving the now useless wheel, Eben rushed to the side of the boat and lifted up his voice in a series of ringing calls for help. He was heard on shore, and he saw men running to and fro. Several tugs were lying at their wharves, but no smoke issued from their funnels. What was he to do? He looked ahead, and the wild, boiling, leaping waters of the falls seemed terribly near.
The sun rose out of the water, the mist began to melt, and rolling back, uncovered a line of surf and a belt of rough hillside. Then volcanic cliffs, a sandy isthmus, and a cluster of masts and funnels got distinct, and Lister fixed the glasses on a white stripe across a cinder hill. His hand shook, but he steadied the glasses and saw the stripe was a row of huge letters.
But suddenly he felt a horror of it and went off, starting along the Boulevards. He walked straight before him without knowing why or whither. The falling darkness surprised him as if it were an unexpected phenomenon. Raising his eyes to the sky he felt astonished at seeing its azure gently pale between the slender black streaks of the chimney funnels.
As to the test of quality that I had obligingly invented for Dacres on the spur of the moment without his knowledge or connivance, it had some time ago faded into what he apprehended it to be a mere idyllic opportunity, a charming background, a frame for his project, of prettier sentiment than the funnels and the hand-rails of a ship. Mr. Tottenham had ten days to spend with us.
The English captain well knew what fate awaited him if he fell into the hands of a wicked German U-boat. Mighty clouds of smoke rose from her funnels, giving evidence of the active endeavors of the stokers in the boiler-room to bring the engines up to their highest speed, and before we had time to give the signal to stop, the steamer was in flight.
I am not much inclined to believe in such effects of the shock of water against blocks of granite, and in the erosion of siliceous matter. The holes narrowed toward the bottom, the funnels that are discovered in the raudales, as well as near so many other cascades in Europe, are owing only to the friction of the sand, and the movement of quartz pebbles.
Was it one of those weird affairs I remembered in our catalogues, colonial engines with grotesque fireboxes and elaborate funnels, for burning wood instead of coal? I looked round. Nobody in sight. Everybody was below. The Chief and Second were asleep, old Croasan was in his room with a bottle of gin, drinking steadily. In another moment I had gone down the gangway and was making for the shed.