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"Yes; but there's only dark, and cold, and hurry, down here; and how do I know whether the other plates are doing their duty? Those bulwark-plates up above, I've heard, ain't more than five-sixteenths of an inch thick -scandalous, I call it." "I agree with you," said a huge web-frame, by the main cargo-hatch.
Having cut them to length, take a hand plane and shave the last six inches of the rear end or shaftment so that the diameter is reduced to a trifle more than five-sixteenths of an inch at the extremity. Now comes the process of straightening your shafts. By squinting down the length of the dowel you can observe the crooked portions.
Thus nock them all and sandpaper them smooth throughout, rounding the nocked end gracefully. To facilitate this process I place one end in a motor-driven chuck and hold the rapidly revolving shaft in a piece of sandpaper in my hand. When finished the diameter should be a trifle under three-eighths of an inch at the center and about five-sixteenths at the nock.
"I have seen one or two men who looked equally tall, but they stooped and were not well-proportioned, whereas your nephew has a wonderfully fine natural carriage. What is his measure?" he added, turning to Eustace. "Well, really, my lord, I cannot tell; mine is six feet two and five-sixteenths, and I much prefer it to anything so out of the way as his, poor fellow."
If possible, you should select these dowels yourself, to see that they are straight, free from cross-grain, and of a rigid quality. For hunting bows drawing over sixty pounds, the dowels should be three-eighths of an inch in diameter; for lighter bows five-sixteenths dowels should be used. They come in three-foot lengths and bundles of two hundred and fifty.
For more than seven years these experiments have continued, and at this stage of our progress the best flight arrow is made of Japanese bamboo five-sixteenths of an inch in diameter, having a foreshaft of birch the same diameter and four inches long. The nock is a boxwood plug inserted in the rear end, both joints being bound with silk floss and shellacked.
This pine must be about five-sixteenths of an inch broad by about three-thirty-seconds of an inch thick, cut to taper for inner dressing either before or after fixing to ribs. These are not too easily bent, but not nearly so difficult as the ribs; but do not put on too much pressure, or snap is the result.
The eggs are two in number, and oblong in form, of a pure white, half an inch in length, by about five-sixteenths of an inch in breadth. The phaon comet is considerably larger, but very similar to the former, except that the whole of its tail is of a crimson-red. The blue-tailed sylph has a wide range along the temperate regions of the Cordilleras.
As far as that huckster account is concerned, that paltry five-sixteenths of beggar-man's cheese, I can happily dub it so. Ha, ha! a cheese with cloves and pepper in it; upon my word, a cheese in which, to put the matter plainly, one could breed maggots. As far as that ridiculous cheese is concerned, it might happen to the cleverest fellow in the world to be puzzled over it!
The top of a wave was trying to get in from the outside, but as the plate did not open in that direction, the defeated water spurted back. "Not bad for five-sixteenths of an inch," said the bulwark-plate. "My work, I see, is laid down for the night"; and it began opening and shutting, as it was designed to do, with the motion of the ship.