United States or El Salvador ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The sun, as round and red as an August moon, was by this time peering above the water-line. The town had drifted behind us, and we were entering among the group of islands. Sometimes we could almost touch with our boat-hook the shelving banks on either side.
It struck the ship aslant, on her port side, a few feet abaft the funnel and close to the water-line, passing through the engine-room and out through her bottom.
Tom was relieved from his post at the wheel, which Dick Sand took charge of again. The breeze freshened. The "Pilgrim," making a slight turn to starboard, glided rapidly over the surface of the sea, leaving behind her a very flat track, which bore witness to the purity of her water-line. "We are well under way, Mrs. Weldon," then said Dick Sand, "and, now, may God preserve this favorable wind!"
The Princeton, of 673 tons, was launched in April, 1842, and her propeller, of six blades, of thirty-five feet pitch, and of fourteen feet diameter, was driven by a semi-cylinder engine of two hundred and fifty horse-power, and all her machinery placed below the water-line.
That proposition came like a torpedo itself; it struck, too, below the water-line of John Rhinds's hard-won composure. "Why do you ?" he stammered. Then the wretch forced himself to be cool again. "No, my young friend, I am sorry to say that that would not be practicable. You see, a submarine craft is full of secrets.
Then suddenly the light paused, and a smile crept over the boy's face. The white beams had revealed to him a shelf of marble two feet above the water-line and at least ten feet across, skirting the lower edge of the west wall. He saw defeat turned into victory! "Will that elephant mind his trainer?" Bruce demanded of the manager. "Huh! Will he? Well, you'd better guess he will!" stormed the man.
There were eight-hour intervals in this work, during which Nosey slept or ate his meals or played a mouth-organ in the lee of one of the turret-guns on deck, according to the hour of the day. He slept in a hammock slung in an electric-lit passage far below the water-line; the passage was ten feet wide, and there were six hammocks slung abreast along the entire length of it.
The axes crashed through the carved woodwork, furniture was hurled to one side, great holes were cut in the cabin floor, and the ship's planking was laid bare in a dozen places below the water-line. Then the augurs were set to work, and in a few minutes a dozen streams of water, spurting up like fountains, were rushing and gurgling into the ship.
The little vessel had been beached by the stern, with a slack chain hooked to her sides at the water-line, and a long hawser rove through a rough fiddle-block of enormous size, and leading to a capstan set far above high-water mark and made fast by the bight of a chain to an anchor buried in the sand up to the heavy wooden stock.
Lieutenant Procope, following the example of many Arctic explorers, had the precaution to have the ice beveled away from the keels, so that there should be no risk of the ships' sides being crushed by the increasing pressure; he hoped that they would follow any rise in the level of the ice-field, and when the thaw should come, that they would easily regain their proper water-line.
Word Of The Day