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Instead of the bicycle frame, he built a triangular keel of pine strips and strengthened it with tightly strung piano wires, the whole frame, though sixty feet long, weighing but 110 pounds. Hung between the rods, being suspended by piano wires as in a spider-web, was the motor, basket, and propeller-shaft.

One minute they were in the midst of a cumulus cloud; the next, through it. Now they saw the faint outline of the earth, now sky; now the earth was screened by cloud, but above were the blue heavens. "Guess how fast we're making it now?" cried John, one eye on the dial which connected with the propeller-shaft. "A hundred miles," ventured Mr. Giddings. "Hundred and thirty," guessed Paul and Bob.

At 6 a.m. we converted a large coir-spring into a fender, and slipped it under the port quarter, where a pressured floe with twenty to thirty feet underfoot was threatening try knock the propeller and stern-post off altogether. At 9 a.m., after pumping ship, the engineer reported a leak in the way of the propeller-shaft aft near the stern-post on the port side.

Then he went for a voyage to recruit, and the ship broke her propeller-shaft in a storm and became helpless. That didn't improve the state of his nerves. Then he went down the Mediterranean, and after a month or two, back he came, no better than when he started. But here he is, I expect."

Aft of the steering-wheel was the gasoline motor, connected with the propeller-shaft and also with the driving-wheels; it was so arranged that either could be thrown out of gear or both operated at once.

The crab, which had quickly righted, now backed, still holding the crushed propeller in its iron grasp, and as it moved away from the Scarabaeus, it extracted about forty feet of its propeller-shaft; then, opening its massive jaws, it allowed the useless mass of iron to drop to the bottom of the sea. Every man on board the Scarabaeus was wild with amazement and excitement.

The Hunley was about forty feet long, six in diameter, and shaped like a cigar. Its motive power came from seven men turning cranks attached to the propeller-shaft. When working their hardest these men could drive the boat at a speed of about four miles an hour. Several attempts to use the Hunley were unsuccessful, each time it sank, drowning its crew of from eight to ten men.

"Isn't man's courage utter madness?" he thought. Could any one, from captain to the lowest sailor, prevent the propeller-shaft from snapping at any moment? The screw was constantly rising and buzzing in the air. Who could sight a vessel in time to prevent the collision that would inevitably smash in the thin walls of the great hollow body?

She was even admitted into the great tube of the propeller-shaft. She was everybody's pet, and all soon became acquainted with her mother's position in the world and manner of life. When Ingigerd, after about fifty hours of rest in bed, finally appeared on deck, wrapped in Frederick's overcoat, the passengers and crew fairly celebrated the event.

Now the propeller-shaft of industrial society is fractured, our ship is wallowing in the trough of the seas, and the men who should put things right for us do not even know that it is the main shaft on which they should concentrate.