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Updated: May 28, 2025
The invaders were prepared also, and, before the American fliers had come within striking distance, they found themselves opposed by a score of military hydroplanes that rose presently, with a great whirring of propellers, from the decks of the German battle-ships.
"Of course I am not anxious to throw money away, but I want to make a success of this, and win the prize, not so much because of the cash, as to show how your equilibrizer works, and to prove that it is possible to make an airship flight across the continent. "So, if bigger hydroplanes are going to make it more certain for us to survive an accident, put them on." "I will," promised the aviator.
The hydroplanes, which were attached to the airship near the points where the starting wheels were made fast, could be lowered into place by means of levers in the cabin. The hydroplanes were really water-tight hollow boxes, large and buoyant enough to sustain the airship on the surface of the water.
Generations hence, when the last turbine comes puffing into port, taking its place like a dingy collier in the midst of ether-driven hydroplanes some youth on the waterfront, perhaps, will turn his back on the crowd, and from his own tossing emotions at sight of the old steamer emotions which defy mere brain and scorn the upstart memory will catch the coherent story of it all, and his expression will be the song of steam.
And if I had time I told him all I saw was the German, French, Belgian, and English armies in the field, Belgium in ruins and flames, the Germans sacking Louvain, in the Dover Straits dreadnoughts, cruisers, torpedo destroyers, submarines, hydroplanes; in Paris bombs falling from air-ships and a city put to bed at 9 o'clock; battle-fields covered with dead men; fifteen miles of artillery firing across the Aisne at fifteen miles of artillery; the bombardment of Rheims, with shells lifting the roofs as easily as you would lift the cover of a chafing-dish and digging holes in the streets, and the cathedral on fire; I saw hundreds of thousands of soldiers from India, Senegal, Morocco, Ireland, Australia, Algiers, Bavaria, Prussia, Scotland, saw them at the front in action, saw them marching over the whole northern half of Europe, saw them wounded and helpless, saw thousands of women and children sleeping under hedges and haystacks with on every side of them their homes blazing in flames or crashing in ruins.
Then he found himself going from section to section, viewing the splendid assortment of aircraft on exhibition and for sale. To a devotee of aeronautics the display was most fascinating. There were monoplanes, biplanes, and hydroplanes. In one section were samples of the various accessories of the craft. Dave was looking over a splendid passenger monoplane when some one hailed him.
I only hope it isn't too rough to make a safe landing." Paul took a telescope from the rack, and, going out on the deck, looked down. The next moment he reported: "It's fairly calm. Just a little swell on." "Then we'd better get ready to lower the hydroplanes," went on Dick, with a look at the aviator. "That's the best thing to do," decided Mr. Vardon. "We'll see how they'll work in big water."
Pontoons, or hydroplanes, in this case, I might state, were hollow, water-tight, wooden boxes, so fitted near the wheels of the airship, that they could be lowered by levers in case the craft had to descend on water. They were designed to support her on the waves. Several days of hard work passed. The aircraft was nearing completion.
A muffled report, as our implacable enemy dropped a depth-charge somewhere astern of us, added point to the conversation, and showed me that our appearance on the surface could have but one end. At 3 p.m. the second coxswain, who was working the hydroplanes, fell off his stool in a dead faint.
Then, via Alexander of Macedon, "one of the greatest sons of earth," as Bishop Thirlwall had called him Alexander, with whose deplorable capacity for "unbending" a scholar like Eames was perfectly familiar he would switch the conversation into realms of military science, and begin to expatiate upon the wonderful advance which has been made since those days in the arts of defensive and offensive warfare the decline of the phalanx, the rise of artillery, the changed system of fortifications, those modern inventions in the department of land defences, sea defences and, above all, aerial defences, parachutes, hydroplanes. . . .
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