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Down the river for scores of miles the mist was heavy, and those who moved within it and on the waters of the Nile could not see fifty feet ahead. Yet through this heavy veil there broke gently a little fleet of phantom vessels, the noise of the paddle-wheels and their propellers muffled as they moved slowly on.
Then the sheets were hauled home, the yards hoisted, and the ship became a high and lonely pyramid, gliding, all shining and white, through the sunlit mist. The tug turned short round and went away towards the land. Twenty-six pairs of eyes watched her low broad stern crawling languidly over the smooth swell between the two paddle-wheels that turned fast, beating the water with fierce hurry.
In a moment the gang-plank was drawn aboard; the lines were cast off; the great paddle-wheels began to turn; the swift current laid hold upon us and the Gladiateur, slipping away from the bank, headed for the channel-arch of the Pont-du-Midi. The bridge was thronged with our friends of Lyons come down to say good-bye to us.
Then came the Great Britain, the greatest of them all, differing from the others in two respects first, in being built of iron instead of wood; and second, in being propelled by the Archimedean screw instead of by the old paddle-wheels; and, alas! she has differed from them all in a third respect, inasmuch as neither the same good-luck attended her as in general fell to the lot of the ships of the Cunard Line, nor the same irretrievable bad fortune as was met by the President and the Columbia; for, after having made several voyages very successfully, she, to the amazement of all mankind, very quietly went ashore in Dundrum Bay, on the east coast of Ireland, from whence, after spending a most uncomfortable winter, she was brought back to Liverpool, and now lies in the Bramley-Moore Dock there, like a huge mass of iron suffering under premature rust.
He merely adapted a steam-engine to a vessel armed with paddle-wheels. The combination was his invention. "There is another example on record. Cyrus H. McCormick, the Father of the Reaping and Mowing Machine, took out the first successful patent in 1837, and is justly acknowledged the world over as the inventor of this great machine.
As the boat quarters the falling stream like a puzzled hound, all the old names spurt up again under the paddle-wheels 'Hicks' army Val Baker El Teb Tokar Tamai Tamanieb and Osman Digna! Her head swings round for another slant: 'We cannot land English or Indian troops: if consulted, recommend abandonment of the Soudan within certain limits. That was my Lord Granville chirruping to the advisers of His Highness the Khedive, and the sentence comes back as crisp as when it first shocked one in '84.
During this visit to the Thames the little flotilla went up to Woolwich, where we were welcomed by the English authorities with that frank cordiality with which they have almost always received me. We were shown both the arsenal and the dockyard. In the dockyard basin a steam corvette with paddle-wheels was lying, which had a new arrangement of which I had heard a great deal.
Sulkily he resigned himself to the inevitable, waiting and watching, while the boat slid and blundered clumsily, paddle-wheels churning the filthy waters over side, to the floating bridge; while the winches rattled, and the woman, sitting up briskly in the driver's seat of the motor-car, bent forward and advanced the spark; while the chain fell clanking and the car shot out, over the bridge, through the gates, and away, at a very considerable, even if lawful, rate of speed.
And all the while the thick-lipped leviathan is rushing through the deep, leaving tons of tumultuous white curds in his wake, and causing the slight boat to rock in the swells like a skiff caught nigh the paddle-wheels of an ocean steamer.
Now, the first part of my invention consists of an apparatus so constructed as to offer a very extended surface or plane of a light yet strong construction, which will have the same relation to the general machine which the extended wings of a bird have to the body when a bird is skimming in the air; but in place of the movement or power for onward progress being obtained by movement of the extended surface or plane, as is the case with the wings of birds, I apply suitable paddle-wheels or other proper mechanical propellers worked by a steam or other sufficiently light engine, and thus obtain the requisite power for onward movement to the plane or extended surface; and in order to give control as to the upward and downward direction of such a machine I apply a tail to the extended surface which is capable of being inclined or raised, so that when the power is acting to propel the machine, by inclining the tail upwards, the resistance offered by the air will cause the machine to rise on the air; and, on the contrary, when the inclination of the tail is reversed, the machine will immediately be propelled downwards, and pass through a plane more or less inclined to the horizon as the inclination of the tail is greater or less; and in order to guide the machine as to the lateral direction which it shall take, I apply a vertical rudder or second tail, and, according as the same is inclined in one direction or the other, so will be the direction of the machine.
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