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Updated: June 22, 2025
An' up overhead a huge cigar-shaped balloon, an' then an airplane sailin' swift an' buzzin' like a bee. Them was the first air-ships I ever seen. No wonder Jim wanted to " Anderson's voice broke a little at this juncture and he paused. All was still except the murmur of the running water and the song of the insects.
The watchers could then see that she was a large air craft for her type and carried two men, who were running back and forth in apparent panic on her suspended deck. Suddenly one of them swung himself into the rigging and began climbing up the distended sides of the big cigar-shaped gas bag. "What can he be going to do?" asked Captain Hazzard. "I think I know," said Frank.
He employed for his experiments a rotating arm, sweeping out a circle, the circumference of which was 200 feet. To the end of this arm he attached a cigar-shaped apparatus, driven by a screw, and arranged in such a manner that aero-planes could be attached to it at any angle. These planes were on a large scale, carrying weights of from 20 lbs. to 100 lbs.
Beyond was the open country, gradually thickening into scattered rows of crystal buildings. They were in the suburbs of Great New York. Within ten minutes the conveyor terminal would be reached. Hilary's eyes flicked speculatively to the tiny cigar-shaped boat in which the dead guard had flown down to them. Its smooth gray-gleaming surface was devoid of wings or other lifting devices.
It would, in other words, make a "sea-going submarine," which the usual form of cigar-shaped vessel was not, as it would not have sufficient surface buoyancy to enable it to rise with the seas and the seas would sweep over it as they would sweep over a partly submerged rock.
Immediately afterward the upper third of a long, cigar-shaped craft came up into view, water rolling from her dripping sides, which glistened brightly as the sun came out briefly from behind a fall cloud. In the conning tower, through the thick plate glass, the three people in the shore boat made out the carroty-topped head and freckled, good-humored, honest, homely face of Eph Somers.
His plan was to build a balloon, cigar-shaped, of sufficient capacity to a little more than lift his machinery and himself, this extra lifting power to be balanced by ballast, so that the balloon and the weight it carried would practically equal the weight of air it displaced.
In these works there may also be seen the frame of the famous Santos-Dumont air-ship, referred to later in this book. In general appearance the first Spencer air-ship was very similar to the airship flown by Santos-Dumont; that is, there was the cigar-shaped balloon, the small engine, and the screw propellor for driving the craft forward.
He pressed a lever. We peered out through the fronds of the palms. That uncanny little cigar-shaped thing actually started to move over the surface of the water. "Of course I could make it dive," explained Craig, "but I want you to see it work." Around the tank it went, turned, cut a figure eight, as Kennedy manipulated the levers. Then it headed straight toward the battleship. It struck.
From the window one looked upward to see, under a searchlight's play, the silken sheen of a cigar-shaped sort of aerial phantom which was dropping bombs on women and children, while never a shot is fired at those sturdy men behind armour.
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