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The booms were tearing at the blocks, the rudder was banging to and fro, and the whole ship creaking, groaning, and jumping like a manufactory.
I took hold of the tiller to try it, but either the helm was frozen immovable or the rudder was jammed in its gudgeons or in some other fashion fixed. Had she been damaged below? was she taking in water?
For years he had been, in fact, perfectly independent, and yet he felt now like a pilot whose boat had lost its rudder. Before him lay a prison, and the closing act of the great tragedy of which he himself had been the hero. Fate had fallen on his house, had marked it for destruction as erewhile that of Tantalus.
He paced the room, he threw himself back into his chair, rose once more, drew long breaths of cool air at the windows, and knelt at the prie-Dieu in the inmost corner. A violent tempest had arisen within. The sails and yards of the soul-ship were strained, and it was fleeing without a rudder. At last he undressed quickly and got into bed. He could not sleep, but tossed from side to side.
If he was successful, at an enormous deprivation, in cutting out of his beggarly income some chance rouble, he would take Sonka into her room, but this was not at all a joy either for him or for her: after a momentary happiness the physical possession of each other they cried, reproached each other, quarreled with characteristic Hebraic, theatrical gestures, and always after these visits Sonka the Rudder would return into the drawing room with swollen, reddened eyelids.
But, by what seemed nothing short of a series of interpositions on the part of a merciful Providence, in every case, just at the moment when a broach-to seemed imminent and inevitable, I felt the rudder take a fresh grip on the water, and we were again safe until the next sea overtook us.
'The machine, with its new curvature, never failed to respond promptly to even small movements of the rudder. The operator could cause it to almost skim the ground, following the undulations of its surface, or he could cause it to sail out almost on a level with the starting point, and, passing high above the foot of the hill, gradually settle down to the ground.
"He's gaining pretty fast. Although he keeps below us, it looks as if he wanted to communicate with us." The second aeroplane suddenly shot forward and upward at a much greater rate of speed. John, still watching through his glasses, saw the man release the steering rudder for an instant, snatch a rifle from the floor of his plane, and fire directly at Lannes.
Captain Purnall prefers an overlifted to an underlifted ship; but no two captains trim ship alike. "When I take the bridge," says Captain Hodgson, "you'll see me shunt forty per cent of the lift out of the gas and run her on the upper rudder. With a swoop upward instead of a swoop downward, as you say. Either way will do. It's only habit. Watch our dip-dial!
His eyes were on the barograph that delicate instrument, the trembling hand of which registered their height. Tom had tilted the deflection rudder to send them up, but as he watched the needle he saw it stationary. They were not ascending, though the great airship was straining to mount to an upper current where there might be calm.
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