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Updated: June 2, 2025
At my suggestion, instead of carrying eight of the very large Bakdorf torpedoes, which are nineteen feet long, weigh half a ton, and are charged with two hundred pounds of wet gun-cotton, we had tubes designed for eighteen of less than half the size. It was my design to make myself independent of my base.
They roared with laughter, and ever afterwards called him "Himalayas." The Indian whallahs go up to the hills "Jhill-o! Johnnie, Jhill-o!" They pass by the spot where the gun-cotton kills; They shiver and huddle they feel the night chills "Jhill-o! Johnnie, Jhill-o!" With creaking and jingle of harness and pack "Jhill-o! Johnnie, Jhill-o!"
There, powerful cranes raised it, and held it suspended over the mouth of the cylinder. It was a fearful moment! What if the chains should break under its enormous weight? The sudden fall of such a body would inevitably cause the gun-cotton to explode!
"Not at all dangerous, at least not worth speaking of," replied the manager; "nitro-glycerine by itself is indeed very dangerous, being easily exploded by concussion or mere vibration; but when mixed with infusorial earth and thus converted into dynamite, it is one of the safest explosives in existence not quite so safe, indeed, as gun-cotton, but much more so than gunpowder.
The freshets had uptorn from the banks the tallest trees, which in places formed a timber-floor; and the surf-boat gallantly charged, till she leaked, the huge trunks, over which she had often to be lifted. Nothing would be easier than to clear away these obstacles; a few pounds of gun-cotton would remove snags and sawyers, and dredging by boats would do the rest.
"How very awful!" said my mother. "Pray, Mr Firebrand, what is gun-worsted I mean cotton." The young lieutenant smiled rather broadly as he explained, in a glib and slightly sing-song tone, which savoured of the Woolwich Military Academy, that, "gun-cotton is the name given to the explosive substance produced by the action of nitric acid mixed with sulphuric acid, on cotton fibre."
The beggars are blazing away from every crevice about them." Strachan wisely asked no questions, but watched and followed. The Arabs had evidently gathered in considerable numbers about the pile of boulders among which the gun-cotton mine was buried. Reece had forbidden any one to molest them from the balcony, not wishing to drive them away.
When the high explosives, such as dynamite and gun-cotton, appeared, the idea suggested itself that they might be used in the shells with vastly greater effect than gunpowder, which had been employed.
It is also soluble in alcohol and ether. One end of the glass tube was, of course, open to the external air; and at the other end of it he placed an aspirator, a contrivance for causing a current of the external air to pass through the tube. He kept this apparatus going for four-and-twenty hours, and then removed the dusted gun-cotton, and dissolved it in alcohol and ether.
The account of the feeding of Fafnir, to which admission can be had on payment of ten oboli, beginning with a puree of kerosene, followed by a half-dozen cartridges on the half-shell, an entree of nitro-glycerine, a solid roast of cannel-coal, and a salad of gun-cotton, with a mayonnaise dressing of alcohol and a pinch of powder, topped off with a demi-tasse of benzine and a box of matches to keep the fires of his spirit going, is one of the most moving things I have ever read, and yet it may be said without fear of contradiction that until this guide-book was prepared very few of the Stygian tourists have imagined that there was such a sight to be seen.
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