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The motor lorries, with about a one and one-half ton of useful load, get about wherever there is a road, and the handy little steam tractors, which make light of dragging the heaviest guns up the steepest gradients, are valuable adjuncts to the defense. At the turns of bad zigzags, the Italians have a remarkable drill for men on the dragropes, and in fact all difficulties have been overcome.
Scott has a joke against his learned friend he looks round, and his dark eyes twinkle out the joke most expressively.... There was a slight twinkle as he said to the committee, 'Now I come to the question of gradients. It was amusing to see the five M.P.s twist in their chairs, and how readily the chairman told Mr. Scott the committee required to hear nothing further about gradients.
The line was somewhat circuitous, and the works were heavy; but on the whole the gradients were favourable, and it had the advantage of passing through a district full of manufacturing towns and villages, teeming hives of population, industry, and enterprise.
The gradients are steep according to the route-book, but unless there's something worse than meets the eye there, our car will get through all right." "I have already driven over the whole length of that road," said the Prince. "Not en automobile, but, no doubt, what a couple of horses can do, your twelve horse-power car can do better.
Thence onward a pathway skirts the sea at the foot of the clay-hills; passes the sunken wells; climbs up and down steepish gradients and so attains the plateau at whose extremity stands the lighthouse, the column, and a few white bungalows summer-residences of Cotrone citizens. A day of shimmering heat. . . . The ground is parched.
Men climbed down along the gradients leaping over other men, determined to jump down twelve feet into the arena in order to rescue the praefect from the jaws of the ferocious beast. But above in the imperial tribune the Cæsar sat snarling like the panther and rubbing his hands with glee. His trap had been over-successful, one by one the arch-traitors fell headlong into it.
But though there are steep gradients to be climbed, and the engine labours heavily, there is scarcely sufficient time to get any idea of the astonishing scenery from the windows of the train, and you can see nothing of the huge expanses of moorland stretching away from the precipices on either side.
"I never thought of that," said Bob. "Couldn't we hire a fellow from one of the steamboats?" "I fear that might get us into trouble: You know there are such things as gradients and sections to be prepared. But there's Watty Solder, the gas-fitter, who failed the other day. He's a sort of civil engineer by trade, and will jump at the proposal like a trout at the tail of a May fly." "Agreed.
Then there is a set of books, four in number, published by an Edinburgh house and illustrated by profile plans, covering about thirty thousand miles of road in England and Scotland. These show the exact gradients and supply information in regard to the surface of the roads and their general characteristics.
Under cold grey skies the column scaled the mountain ridges, and on the winter wind came a fierce storm of snow and hail. In order to conceal the march as far as possible from the enemy's observations the brigades had marched by country roads, and delayed by steep gradients and slippery tracks, it was not till the next morning that the supply waggons came up.
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