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In the upward travel the bomb-thrower decided to have a parting shot. The airship was steadied momentarily to enable the range to be taken, the automatic detonator was set going and the bomb slipped into the launching tube. But for some reason or other the missile jambed. The situation was desperate. In a few seconds the bomb would burst and shatter the airship.
The bomb-thrower reads the altitude of his airship as indicated by his barometer or other recording instrument, and by means of a table at his command ascertains in a moment the time which will elapse before the bomb strikes the ground. The automatic detonator is set in motion and the bomb released to explode approximately at the height to which it is set.
And it was a tragical and terrible coincidence that the bomb-thrower, driven mad by want, should be guillotined there, in the very centre of want's dominion. But daylight had come at last, for it was nearly half-past four. The distant noisy crowd could feel that the expected moment was drawing nigh. A shudder suddenly sped through the atmosphere.
The impression made on a cartridge by the hammer of a pistol, or a single hair found on the clothing of a suspected person, may serve as valid proof of crime. "Until lately, however, science was powerless against the bomb-thrower. A bomb explodes into a thousand parts, and its contents suddenly become gaseous. You can't collect and investigate the gases.
The redoubtable revolutionary Huang Hsin, who had proved useful as a propagandist and a bomb-thrower in earlier days, but who was useless in serious warfare, although he assumed command of the Nanking garrison which had revolted to a man, and attempted a march up the Pukow railway in the direction of Tientsin, found his effort break down almost immediately from lack of organization and fled to Japan.
In 1893 the Governor of Illinois, John P. Altgeld, pardoned the three prisoners, basing his action mainly on the ground that no proof had been brought forward to show that they were in any way acquainted with the unknown bomb-thrower.
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