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Go on." "Well, sir, I built a boat on the plan given, and spent a holiday one year on the Broads. It drew very little water, and was easily managed. However, you know all that. But what I was thinking about was a design for a larger boat of the kind, with a propeller attached to it which could be worked by lever." "By a lever?"
There was no jar, no shock, no thumping of cylinders and pounding of rapidly revolving cranks; the motion of the engine was rotary, and the propeller shafts, spinning at 2,000 revolutions per minute, made no more vibration than a windmill whirling in the breeze. To stop the Turbina was an easy matter; Mr. Parsons had only to turn off the steam.
Having had the plank replaced in the bilge, and re-coppered and overhauled the propeller, we were let out of dock at 1 P.M. These repairs were done with a very bad grace by the Spanish officials, who seemed in a great hurry to get rid of us, lest the affair of our being docked should compromise them!
"Oh! very well," cried the boy, merrily; "then we'll go by sea." It was the day following this conversation that Carey Cranford's energy found vent, despite the heat, in a fresh way. The Chusan was tearing along through the dazzlingly bright sea, churning up the water into foam with her propeller and leaving a cloud of smoke behind.
A few bergs were in sight. The pack was denser than it had been on the previous days. Older ice was intermingled with the young ice, and our progress became slower. The propeller received several blows in the early morning, but no damage was done. A platform was rigged under the jib-boom in order that Hurley might secure some kinematograph pictures of the ship breaking through the ice.
During the day the work on the fore screw had been actively carried on, but it had had to be taken on board to adjust the twisted blades. Of the piles and accumulators and the machinery that drove the ship nothing was damaged. When night fell Robur and his men knocked off work. The fore propeller not been got into place, and to finish it would take another three hours.
Suddenly the door opened again, and this time it was not the steward's face which appeared, but the old sailor's. "Any better, sir?" he said, hoarsely. "No; worse," replied the doctor. "So it is on deck, sir," whispered the man. "Main shaft broke short off, and propeller gone. They've been trying to hyste a bit o' sail so as to get steering way on, but everything's blew to rags."
Ducroy lifted his hat in parting salute, cried "Bon voyage!" and scuttled clear like a startled rooster before a motor-car. And the motor and propeller broke loose with a mighty roar comparable only, in Lanyard's fancy, to the chant of ten thousand rivetting locusts.
A bright laugh flashed in the hazel eyes, and the white teeth showed in a smile. "I'll try since you wish it," she said over her shoulder, as she turned away. The throb of the propeller has almost ceased; faint, too, is the vibration of the slowed-down engines. It is a perfect morning, cloudless in its dazzling splendour.
The machine crashed on our side of the lines. He had taken off the iron crosses on the wings, and a bit of the propeller, as mementoes. Such a kid!... A few days later, when I went to the tent again, I asked about him. "How's that boy who brought down his first 'Hun'?" The squadron commander said: "Didn't you hear? He's gone west. Brought down in a dog-fight.
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