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"Now if happy chance should bring Overland Red on this freight, with his burro and outfit; I'll have one reason to offer for wanting to go with him. I've probably saved him some annoyance, indirectly, but rather effectively, I think." The great oil-burning locomotive roared in, casting heat-waves that smelled of steam, iron, and mechanical energy. The hot air sickened Winthrop.
The oil-burning vessels of the allied navies and merchant marines, the motor transport service of the armies, all made this necessary. In 1918 the production of oil in the United States was fourteen per cent greater than in 1914. In response to an urgent cable from Marshal Foch, which ran: "If you don't keep up your petrol supply we shall lose the war," a series of "gasless Sundays" was suggested.
In place of steel plows drawn by oil-burning tractors they scratched the ground with a wooden stick, and when the crop failed they starved to death by millions. With our steel ships we send bread to China to save them. If they had the wit to use their resources they could save themselves.
They went down the other side to Panboro and there linked up with an eastbound freight that the Hercules 0001 snatched over the mountain to Hammon at a pace slightly exceeding forty-five miles an hour at least twice the speed that any two oil-burning locomotives could attain. As for the Jandels, they were not in the same class at all with Tom Swift's locomotive!
A week had gone by since the Latin missive had been taken from the post-office by Emma Jane, and now, by means of much midnight oil-burning, by much cautious questioning of Miss Maxwell, by such scrutiny of the moods and tenses of Latin verbs as wellnigh destroyed her brain tissue, she had mastered its romantic message. If it was conventional in style, Emma Jane never suspected it.
I need hardly say that the under-bred woman overwhelmed us with civilities after that. The Volga steamers were then built after the type of Mississippi boats, with immense superstructures; they were the first oil-burning steamers I had ever seen, so I got the Captain's permission to go down to the engine-room.
"Some Mallet locomotives of the oil-burning type have achieved from eighty-five to ninety-five miles an hour with a heavy load behind them. They are very powerful machines. The Mogul mountain climbers are powerful, too, although they are not built for speed. "The electric Goliaths built for the C. M. & St. P., and the Jandels, are both very speedy under certain conditions.
"If you succeed in showing me that you can build and operate an electric locomotive that will speed two miles a minute on a level track and will get a heavy drag over the mountain grades, as I said, as surely as two engines of the coal-burning or oil-burning type, I will pay you a hundred thousand dollars bonus, besides buying all the engines you can build of this new type for the first two years.
Most of all, their courage was needed against fear of a region that could be deadly dangerous, but that to them seemed wonderful like nothing else. The shop smelled of paint, solvent and plastic, like most any other. Gimp, sitting in the Archer, beside the oil-burning stove, didn't say any more.
This does not mean that every resource should not be developed to its full degree, but it means that none of them should be wasted. We have a conservation board working on our oil problem. This is of the utmost importance to the future well-being of our people in this age of oil-burning engines and the general application of gasoline to transportation.
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