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It was air tight, warmed and illuminated with coal gas, and the oxygen for breathing was got from chlorate of potash, while the carbonic acid produced by the lungs and gas-burners was absorbed with caustic potash to keep the air pure. This bullet-car was fired from a colossal cast-iron gun founded in the sand.
Then as its character became plain to the ear she stopped short, amazed and concerned. Striking a match on the box she held in her hand, she turned on and lighted, above the parlour table, one of the two gas-burners, which, being defective, first whistled as if astonished, and then went on purring comfortably like a cat. Mr Verloc, against his usual practice, had thrown off his overcoat.
She could see the whole of it, though part of the audience was shut off. The ring was well lighted by an overhead cluster of patent gas-burners. The front row of the men she had squeezed past, because of their paper and pencils, she decided to be reporters from the local papers up-town. One of them was chewing gum.
He rang again and bade the servant bring a screw-driver and take down the coat-hooks from the wardrobe; the garments hanging there seemed to be men struggling in the agonies of asphyxia. The slender thread of sound from the gas-burners seemed to be changed to low, mournful cries, as of a woman over the dead.
Our guide lighted some of the gas-burners, of which there are many hundreds, to help us see them; but it required close scrutiny, even then. It must have been out of the question, when the whole means of illumination were only a few smoky torches or candles.
In many well-lighted libraries, the heat itself from the numerous gas-burners is sufficient to injure them, and there is besides a sulphuric acid escaping from the coal-gas fluid, in combustion, which is most deleterious to bindings. The only remedy appears to be, where libraries are open evenings, to furnish them with electric lights.
This system of continuous feed, through a tube, has been applied to the firing of small articles of pottery, and might possibly be well adapted, among other things, to the production of gas-burners.
It was the common practice to twine the electric wires around the disused gas-fixtures, fasten them with tape or string, and connect them to lamp-sockets screwed into attachments under the gas-burners elaborated later into what was known as the "combination fixture."
Lorrimer ordered in oysters, and from oysters to ale they pleasantly alternated for the space of two hours. Cloud-compelling cigars varied at intervals the monotony of the proceedings. At length the young gentleman from New York vanquished his last "fried in crumb," and victory perched upon his knife. Just then the gas-burners began to meander queerly before his eyes.
Edwin remained in busy idleness at the right-hand counter; Stifford was tidying the contents of drawers behind the fancy-counter. And the fizzing gas-burners, inevitable accompaniment of night at the period, kept watch above. Under the heat of the stove, the damp marks of Darius Clayhanger's entrance disappeared more quickly than the minutes ran.
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