"Propeller" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... missile, whose nose is pointed with guncotton and filled with high explosives—and which the world knows as the torpedo—launches forth from the submarine, and speeding under the drive of a propeller at the stern steers its way into the side of the battleship or great steamship. The torpedo plunges into the bowels of the vessel. There is a tremendous explosion, and the water-tight compartments of the vessel ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... their plane was a short jaunt, and the ground soon was covered. Then Bob unlocked the big double doors and rolled them back, and the three trundled the plane out to the skidway where Jack spun the propeller while Bob manipulated the controls. As the machine got under way, Jack ran alongside and was helped in ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... applied himself with his accustomed energy to the practical working out of another favorite idea. The principle of the Ericsson propeller was first suggested to the inventor by a study of the means employed to propel the inhabitants of the air and deep. He satisfied himself that all such propulsion in Nature is produced by oblique action; though, in common with all practical men, he at first ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... machine. There was a loud hiss as it lay for a moment across the hot engine, and it whisked itself into the air again, while the huge flat body drew itself together as if in sudden pain. I dipped to a vol-pique, but again a tentacle fell over the monoplane and was shorn off by the propeller as easily as it might have cut through a smoke wreath. A long, gliding, sticky, serpent-like coil came from behind and caught me round the waist, dragging me out of the fuselage. I tore at it, my fingers sinking into the smooth, glue-like surface, and for an instant I disengaged ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... body to the bed, locked the door, and returned to the promenade deck saloon. For the throb of the propeller had ceased. An ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... cry. The crowd dropped back rapidly to either side. Ducroy lifted his hat in parting salute, cried "Bon voyage!" and scuttled clear like a startled rooster before a motor-car. And the motor and propeller broke loose with a mighty roar comparable only, in Lanyard's fancy, to the chant of ten ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... less distinct, and the numerous lights of the port came closer and closer together, faded into a dim halo and merged at length into the black sweep of the horizon. So passed Egypt from the sight of many; with the gurgling monotone of the propeller, they reeled off the knots of water which separated a past of careless happy-go-lucky days from a future of ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... foot high. There was a short piece of line fast to it, and the whale had a big hole in his side. He's been wounded, probably by a steamer's propeller after he was harpooned up north, or else that's the wound of a bomb gun. I could see it ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum
... feet as neatly as son would bite the end off a banana. The submarine heard the explosion, of course, from below, and came to the surface to see the "damned Yankee" sink, only to find the rudderless, sternless boat steaming full speed in a circle with her one remaining propeller, and to be greeted by a salvo of four-inch shells that made her duck promptly. The man killed saw the torpedo coming and ran aft to throw overboard some high explosives stowed there—but he didn't ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... assists the fish in all its motions. In some instances it acts like the rudder of a ship, and enables it to turn sideways; and when moved from side to side with a quick vibratory motion, fishes are made, in the same manner as the "screw" propeller makes a steamship, to dart forward with a celerity proportioned to the muscular force ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... post-mortem,' said Pyecroft, lighting his pipe. 'My slumbers were broken by the propeller ceasing to revolve, and by vile language from ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... submerged rocks, among which it delights to live, by means of its strong legs; or swimming by powerful strokes of its great tail, the appendages of whose sixth joint are spread out into a broad fan-like propeller: seize it, and it will show you that its great claws are no mean weapons of offence; suspend a piece of carrion among its haunts, and it will greedily devour it, tearing and crushing the flesh by means of its ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... the colored man grasped the rear supports of the long, tail-like part of the monoplane while Tom stepped to the front to twist the propeller blades. The first two times there was no explosion as he swung the delicate wooden blades about, but the third time the engine started off with a roar, and a succession of explosions that were deafening, until Tom switched in the muffler, thereby cutting down the noise. Faster and faster the ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton
... once, twice, or thrice around the pond. "When more water being introduced into the boiler or pot and steam was generated, she was again ready to start on another expedition." The boat was a yawl about eighteen feet in length and six feet beam. She was started at the buoy with a small oar when the propeller was used. The boiler was a ten or twelve gallon iron pot. This boat with a portion of the machinery was abandoned by Fitch, and left to decay on the muddy shore. Shortly after this he died in Kentucky in 1798. Had he lived, or, had the fortune like Fulton, to find ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... doubt of each other, but my heart was beating like a steamer propeller when it lifts ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... together, working side by side to cranks at right angles; recently three pairs together, working to cranks placed 120 deg. apart. The system affords the opportunity of adding yet more engines to the same propeller to an indefinite extent. (3) The three cylinder intermediate-receiver compound engine, with one high and two low-pressure cylinders, the steam passing from the high-pressure cylinder into the receiver, and thence into the two ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... Green, (or Brownarms, or Broadshoulders, I forget which), was quaffing a cup of the cold element. Having drained it he spat out the last mouthful, and along with it a lively creature like a small shrimp, with something like a screw-propeller ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... the tomfoolery is that expert typists engage on after they have typed a document, I have never been able to discover. As long as they are at play on their machines these whirr like the propeller of a Handley-Page. They get down millions of words a minute. But when they have got the job apparently done, they simmer away to nothing. They perform mysterious rites with ink-eraser. They scratch feebly with knives. They hold up to the light, they tittivate, they ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... we had to take all chances. We lashed down the safety valves, heaped quick-burning combustibles into the already raging fires, and brought the boilers to a pressure that would have been unsafe under ordinary circumstances. The propeller churned the mud and water furiously, but the ship did not stir. We piled on oiled cotton waste, splints of wood, anything that would burn faster than coal. It seemed impossible that the boilers could stand the pressure we were crowding upon ...
— The Monitor and the Merrimac - Both sides of the story • J. L. Worden et al.
... dreary field. Like some dead moth The thing remained. Chagrin commenced to sizzle, And certain people cried, "A thillingth loth." Others, "Hey, Mister Airman, it's a swizzle!" Then a stern man came out, and with a cloth Lightly, as one well used to such a feat, Swaddled the brute's propeller and its seat. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 14, 1914 • Various
... alight as he described the fight. They had maneuvered round each other for a long time. Then he shot his man en passant. The machine crashed on our side of the lines. He had taken off the iron crosses on the wings, and a bit of the propeller, as mementoes. He showed me these things (while the squadron commander, who had brought down twenty-four Germans, winked at me) and told me he was going to send them home to hang beside his college trophies... I guessed he was less than nineteen years old. Such a kid!... A few days later, when I ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... for the steam-swiler Royal Bloodhound t' jerk that yelpin' tramp, had she lost her propeller—as well she might, poor helpless lady o' fashion! in that slob-ice—'twould be easy enough t' rip her through a league o' the floe t' open water, with a charge or two o' ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... he could hear the rattle and shriek of winch-engines and the far-off muffled roar of the whistle, rumbling its triumph of returning life. Already the great propeller engines themselves had been tested, after their weeks of idleness, languidly stretching and moving like an awakening sleeper, slowly swinging their solemn tons forward through their projected cycles and then as solemnly ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... Goldwing was off Colchester Reef Light. The Missisquoi was still headed to the west; and Corny was beginning to feel triumphant, though he was not confident enough to say much. The steamer was three miles distant; but Dory was satisfied by this time that she had stopped her propeller, and was only waiting for the schooner to get a little farther to the southward, where she could not dodge in among the ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic
... propeller has recently been patented by J. Kalmanson of Brooklyn, N. Y. Greater speed and marked saving in fuel is claimed for the invention, which may be attached ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... on this very blessed day of 1902 is riding to her buoys off Sausalito in San Francisco Bay, complete in every detail (bar a broken propeller shaft), not a rope missing, not a screw loose, not a plank started—a ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... His hard luck was becoming amusing and he wondered how long it would last. He had counted on that hundred dollars to get away from Nome, hoping to shake misfortune from his heels, but a match in the hands of a child, like that broken propeller shaft, had worked havoc with his plans. Well, it was ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... least, with some misgiving. Gently the machine rose into the air. The sensation was delightful. The fresh air of the morning came with a stinging rush to my face. Below I could see the earth sweeping past as if it were a moving-picture film. Above the continuous roar of the engine and propeller Norton indicated to Kennedy the automatic balancing of the gyroscope as it bent ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... it possible to have silenced the sound of engines, the whir of a propeller, so that there should be no auditory indication ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... had ventured over the lines, flying high, and English planes had swept up to intercept them. One was rising then not far away, climbing fast, like a fish-hawk with prey in its claws. Its color, its framework, its propeller, and its aviator showed distinctly against the sky. The buzzing, high-pitched drone of its motor ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... shut off suddenly, as a tugboat, loaded with a political club and a brass band, that had been to see a New York Senator off to Europe, crossed their bows, going to Hoboken. There was a long silence that reached, without a break, from the cut-water to the propeller-blades of the Dimbula. ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... was induced by this nobleman to abandon the profession of an artist, and enter upon that of a civil engineer. This nobleman being devoted to mechanical investigations, proved a very congenial acquaintance to Fulton. He was engaged at the time on a scheme of steam navigation by a propeller, modeled after the foot of a water fowl. His plan did not commend itself to Fulton's judgment, and he addressed him a letter, setting forth its defects, and advancing some of the views upon which ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... after we'd had the engine going all night we found we was still in the same position and for a mighty good reason—one of the blades of the propeller had snapped off and there we were,—practically just where we'd been the night before and with no chance doing anything but drift about and wait for help. Melville ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... this unimportant subject was cut short by a crash from the engine-room of the yacht, followed by a hissing noise as of escaping steam, and the propeller, which was being driven at many thousands of revolutions per minute, began suddenly to ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... enough," replied the other. "I had observed some bolts through the hub of the propeller. I also had several bullets in my pocket, and a good-sized chunk of lead that had been used for filling some holes in a piece of iron back there in the camp at Peremysl. What could be easier than to take out the loose bolt I noticed and fill the hole plumb ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... the propeller Ajax, in the middle of winter. The almanac called it winter, distinctly enough, but the weather was a compromise between spring and summer. Six days out of port, it became summer altogether. We had some thirty passengers; among them ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... rower, 'I know what you're after, sir—it's Jack Everett's launch, commonly called "Squirm". She's got a four-bladed propeller, and one blade is broken ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... Marsh. "A hydroplane can rise from the surface of the water just like a wild duck might. The propeller starts to working, the machine is sent swiftly along, and soon leaves the water, to soar upward as the planes are moved accordingly. There they go; now, keep tab on ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... propeller began to whirl, Tom took another step or two forward. An airplane was a new puzzle to him, and he was so interested in watching it get under way that he forgot his trust, forgot he had prisoners to watch, forgot everything but the mystery of that piece of mechanism, that ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... Felt Safer when the Dogs were Muzzled Starboard Watch on the Bridge Olav Bjaaland, a Member of the Polar Party 136 In the Absence of Lady Partners, Ronne Takes a Turn with the Dogs An Albatross In Warmer Regions A Fresh Breeze in the West Wind Belt The Propeller Lifted in the Westerlies The "Fram's" Saloon Decorated for Christmas Eve Ronne at a Sailor's Job The "Fram" In Drift-ice Drift-ice in Ross Sea A Clever Method of Landing The "Fram" under Sail Cape Man's Head on the Barrier Seal-hunting The "Fram" The Crew of the "Fram" in the Bay ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... engine, and is controlled by an electric wire from shore. The Sims is driven by electricity from a dynamo on shore through a cable to an electric engine in the torpedo. The Brennan is driven and controlled by means of two fine steel wires wound on reels in the torpedo, the reels being geared to the propeller shafts. The wires are led to corresponding reels on shore, and these are rapidly revolved by means of an engine. A brake on each shore reel controls the torpedo. The speed of all these torpedoes is about 19 knots, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... remained on the instrument board. He pushed another button, and the propeller began swinging in a lazy circle; he pressed down with his right foot, and the 'copter lifted a foot ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... enough to swear what it is. I'm not trying to rob you like you robbed me. I just want what's coming to me. Not a cent more. If you give me that I'll throw your webbing over. If you don't I'll trail them every inch of the way to Legonia and cut them into ribbons with the propeller. It's up ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... not land there," he explained. "The Germans followed. A mist had closed about us, hiding us from my friends below. I heard only my propeller; and that, by now, sounded faint to me, for I was weakening; one shot had hit my shoulder and another ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... in addition to engines. The latter are a sine qua non in polar navigation, whilst sails allow of economy in the consumption of coal, and always remain as a last resort should the coal-supply be exhausted or the propeller damaged. ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... down towards the landing, just hoping that they might in some way be of service. The yacht had lost her headway but the propeller was still churning, and I could see that she was turning around to her mooring. Then I heard them putting the yawl overboard. Lights were breaking out of some of the fish-house windows, and lanterns swung on the little dock, and at last I dimly saw the rowboat coming. I ran down also, ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... death. And oh, my Prince, I shall soon be very, very old. I don't dare look in the mirror to-night, for fear of seeing how old I've grown since morning. I remember a word they used on shipboard when the waves threw the big propeller out of the water and the full power of the engines was wasted on air. They called it "racing." It was bad for the ship to have this energy go for nothing. It racked her and made her tremble and groan. I've been racing ever since you went, churning the ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... silence; then came a sudden explosion of orders. Half a dozen motorcycles sprang into crackling life; there was the unmistakable din of a powerful aeroplane engine, which, with no muffler, is noisy enough to wake the dead. Then came the whirring of its propeller. They were sure that if they only dared to raise their heads, they would see the ...
— The Boy Scouts In Russia • John Blaine
... painfully. The visual effect of one propeller seen through another—that was identification. It was not a type of signaling an unauthorized ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... slowly across the long swell of the Caribbean. The wrinkled undulations sparkled with reflected light in a dazzling pattern of blue and silver, and then faded to green and purple in the shadow of the ship. A wave of snowy foam curled up as the bows went down and the throb of the propeller quickened as the poop swung against the sky. Then the lurching hull steadied and the clang of ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... "Things have come to a pretty pass when I have to keep track of you through the society column. I didn't see the paper. Dyckman brought me word last night at Vineyard Haven, and we broke a propeller blade on the Amphitrite trying to get ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... dives inside. Hissing softly, "162" comes to rest as level as a rule. From her North Atlantic Winter nose-cap (worn bright as diamond with boring through uncounted leagues of hail, snow, and ice) to the inset of her three built-out propeller-shafts is some two hundred and forty feet. Her extreme diameter, carried well forward, is thirty-seven. Contrast this with the nine hundred by ninety-five of any crack liner and you will realize the power that must drive a hull through ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling
... interior of a handsome electric launch, the Lady Cooper, built for the "E P S," or Electric Power Storage Company. An electric motor in the after part of the hull is coupled directly to the shaft of the screw propeller, and fed by "E P S" accumulators in teak boxes lodged under the deck amidships. The screw is controlled by a switch, and the rudder by an ordinary helm. The cabin is seven feet long, and lighted by electric lamps. Alarm signals are given ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... approaching the steamer in the fog, which appeared to have stopped her propeller, and to be resting motionless on the long swells, hardly disturbed by a breath of air. By this time the smokestack of the Bronx was vomiting forth dense clouds of black smoke. The steamers of the navy used anthracite coal, which burns without ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... movements were not deliberate. I hurried down to the steps, and leaped into the launch. Before I had fairly landed in her sternsheets the slim little craft darted away from the jetty with a sudden swirl of her propeller and the hard, rapid puffing of the exhaust in her vaguely gleaming brass ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... ahead toward the forlorn neutral. Our destroyer nipped past us with that high-shouldered, terrier-like pouncing action of the newer boats, and went ahead. A tramp in ballast, her propeller half out of water, threshed along through the ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... advantage of the northerly breeze. The ship was in contact with the ice occasionally and received some heavy blows. Once or twice she was brought up all standing against solid pieces, but no harm was done. The chief concern was to protect the propeller and rudder. If a collision seemed to be inevitable the officer in charge would order "slow" or "half speed" with the engines, and put the helm over so as to strike floe a glancing blow. Then the helm ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... by a storage battery. There was also a chamber to be filled with the lifting gas. The cylinder was so arranged that it would float on it's long axis if thrown into the water. A trap door hermetically sealed gave access to the interior. A small propeller, worked by ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood
... vain, for its work of destruction goes on. Captain Semmes places sharp-shooters in the quarter boats to pick off the officers; in vain, for none are injured. He views the surrounding devastation—a sinking ship, rudder and propeller disabled, a large portion of the crew killed or wounded, while his adversary is apparently but slightly damaged. He has completed the seventh rotation on the circular tract and is conscious of defeat. He seeks ...
— The Story of the Kearsarge and Alabama • A. K. Browne
... long, and fitted with twin screws driven by compound engines, one pair to each propeller. These engines are of the usual type, constructed by Messrs. Yarrow. Each has two cylinders with cranks at 90 deg.. The framing, and, indeed, every portion not of phosphor-bronze or gun metal, is of steel, extraordinary precautions being taken to secure lightness. Thus the connecting rods have ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various
... at the rope yanked the knot loose. The boat slid into the water and the next instant was being tossed about in the breakers, the man with the oar forcing her head around, aided by the powerful gasoline engine that turned the propeller. The craft came near to capsizing, but kept upright, and a little later was beyond the surf, into deep water, speeding out to the nets ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the Coast • Victor Appleton
... had termed it, certainly commanded a very extensive view. Immediately underneath was a wilderness of roofs. Farther along were the railway tracks that Yates objected to; and a line of masts and propeller funnels marked the windings of Buffalo Creek, along whose banks arose numerous huge elevators, each marked by some tremendous letter of the alphabet, done in white paint against the somber brown of the big building. Still farther to the west was a more ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... sea is as tetchy as petrol. Trailing fingers are terminals which ignite living flames, and the propeller of the little boat creates an avengeful commotion of light which trails far astern. Blobs of light are cast off from her bows as she rounds the familiar sandspit ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... the fish, and quick as lightning, wrapped itself round and round it in a knot, doubling the weight, and adding to the resistance by lashing round and round with a flattened tail, whose effect was like that of a screw propeller reversed. ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... that we paid our visit to Frascati, not proudly motoring now, but traversing the Campagna on the roof of a populous tram-car, which in its lofty narrowness was of the likeness of an old-fashionable lake propeller. The morning was, like most other mornings in Rome, of an amiability which the afternoons often failed of; but none of us passengers for Frascati doubted its promise as we gathered at the tram-station and tried for tickets at the little booth in a wall sparely containing the official who bade ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... mate, repeating the command to the dock hands. Slowly the great propeller began to churn the green water astern into white. The bow of the great vessel slowly swung, and majestically she headed on her way out to the mouth of the bay. Clouds of white gulls followed her, dipping and soaring. Once more her whistle saluted ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... Navy, Daniel L. Braine, superintending the ceremonies, and a future Admiral, Winfield Scott Schley, commanding the funeral convoy, is not surprising, for to Ericsson it owed not only the bomb-proof floating fortresses of the ocean, but the screw propeller, first applied in the construction of the United States man-of-war "Princeton," with propelling machinery under the water line out of the reach of shot. The first steam fire-engine ever constructed in the United States was also the work ...
— Thirteen Chapters of American History - represented by the Edward Moran series of Thirteen - Historical Marine Paintings • Theodore Sutro
... years old with rotten boilers and perishing frames. And all unwittingly he became reminiscent and drifted into the story of a gale in the Bristol Channel with the empty ship rolling till she showed her bilge keels, the propeller with its boss awash thrashing the sea with lunatic rage, and then the three of us swaying and sweating on the boiler-tops, a broken main-steam pipe lying under our feet. And it had to be done, for the tide and the current were ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... insupportable rolling and pitching!" etc. The construction of the invention introduced in this glowing manner will be understood from Figs. 1 and 2. A is the plunger cylinder, shown with its side broken away in Fig. 2. In Fig. 1, G is the rudder, H the propeller, and I the tube through which sea water passes to the pump. In Fig. 2, C is the smokestack, M M are compartments in which water may be admitted to increase the weight, and hence the depth of flotation of the plunger, the same ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... was thrusting up over the glassy lake when, next morning, the big tug with a slow thudding of her propeller, moved from her anchorage. At Clark's orders they passed on down the channel, and just where the lake began to broaden was a cluster of white tents. Two Indians were warming their fingers at a rekindled fire. Clark stared hard, and lifted ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... when at rest and when in motion," Pettigrew declared, "may not inaptly be compared to the blade of an ordinary screw propeller as employed in navigation. Thus the general outline of the wing corresponds closely with the outline of the propeller, and the track described by the wing in space IS TWISTED UPON ITSELF propeller fashion." Numerous attempts to apply the newly discovered ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... dewy richness of the air, the stars hanging in golden clusters from a black vault, the fiery eye of some larger planet rolling and flashing among them as the revolving beacon of a lighthouse. Here the muffled throb of the propeller, and the rushing hiss of water as the prow of the great steamer sheared through the placid surface, furrowing up on either side a long line of phosphorescent wave. Such a contrast he who stood alone in the darkness, leaning over ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... In that instant Rick divined Scotty's plan, he hoped, and turned to gauge his distance. The plane was on the upper step now, almost air-borne. Even as he watched, the pontoons pulled away. But Scotty held the plane on the water, roaring propeller pointed right at ...
— The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine
... in the west, was like a slender shaving thrown up from a bar of gold, and the Arabian Sea, smooth and cool to the eye like a sheet of ice, extended its perfect level to the perfect circle of a dark horizon. The propeller turned without a check, as though its beat had been part of the scheme of a safe universe; and on each side of the Patna two deep folds of water, permanent and sombre on the unwrinkled shimmer, enclosed within their straight and diverging ridges a few white ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... between some of the toes, enough to be of great help in swimming. His tail is of greater use in swimming than is Paddy's. It is bare and scaly, but instead of being flat top and bottom it is flattened on the sides, and he uses it as a propeller, moving it ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... but had managed to cling to the chimney, so that he had not reached the ground, and there he clung, while the motor of his airship was banging away, and revolving the propeller blades dangerously close ...
— Tom Swift and his Photo Telephone • Victor Appleton
... every one is to prepare for the worst. The propeller's smashed and we can't live in this sea. Be quick!" cried the pale-faced sailor, hurrying onward. In an inconceivably short space of time the passages and saloons were crowded with rushing passengers. Pandemonium ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... this a shout arose from everybody on board the Summer Shelter. The propeller of the Dunkery Beacon was stirring the water at her stern, and she was moving away, her bow turned southward. Burke leaned over the rail, shouted to his men to get on board and haul up the boat, and then he gave orders to ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... to where the water was swirling, and the next moment he threw in the clutch of his motor. The propeller churned the water to foam, ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis
... comfortably in the big chair behind his desk. "But weren't there an unusually large number of policies issued?" he asked. His big hands toyed with a little silver airplane propeller, a souvenir of his long-standing interest in the problems of commercial aviation. "You know," he went on, leaning forward on his elbows and replacing the propeller neatly on the base of his fountain pen stand, "this is a matter of interest to ...
— The Last Straw • William J. Smith
... ever for his friend, reproaching himself unmercifully for that he had suffered him to go alone—or at all. Quain had a wife and children; that thought proved insupportable.... Had he missed the catboat altogether? Or had he gained it only to find the motor disabled or the propeller fouled with the wiry eel-grass that choked the shoals? In either instance he would be at the mercy of the wind, for even with the sail close-reefed he would have no choice other than to fly before the fury. Or had the boat possibly ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... keeps," stated the skipper, with conviction. "If her bilge-keel doesn't cooper him, her port propeller will!" ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... the depth indicator, but found small comfort. It read off a depth of about sixty feet, but this only meant the lift of the bow. However, the propeller guard only occasionally struck the bottom now, proving to Ross that, could he expend a very little more weight, the boat would rise to the surface, where, even though he might not pump, his periscope and conning-tower could be seen. He panted after his labors until ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... exactly understand how that works," said Jack. "The plans don't call for any opening the stern of the Annihilator for a propeller to project from, and there is no provision for a tube, such as we used to send compressed air from the Flying Mermaid. Nor is there anything in front to pull the ...
— Through Space to Mars • Roy Rockwood
... robber in front, and his quick leap around, Jack determined on the boldest and the riskiest move he could have made. But it was also the safest. Instead of striking out at once for the shore, he slipped around behind the motor boat, and clung to the stern as it swept along, clear of the propeller, but hidden by the shadow from the ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters - or Jack Danby's Bravest Deed • Robert Maitland
... explosive. The idea of being invited to make terms with rebels was evidently very objectionable to him. I suppose he must have had strict and binding orders from somebody. He did not say any of the things he wanted to. The launch's propeller gave a few turns in the water. Then the boat slipped up to the shore. The sailor with the boathook held her fast while the Admiral stepped out of her. Bob received him most courteously. The Admiral glared at Bob. The riflemen, crouched behind their mud bank, scowled at the Admiral. The ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... circling. No Boche planes were in sight now, I had been told, but there were many of ours. And sometimes one came swooping down, its occupants curious, no doubt, as to what might be going on, and the hum of its huge propeller would make me falter a bit in my song. And once or twice one flew so low and so close that I was almost afraid it would strike me, and I would dodge in what I think was mock alarm, much to ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... too, and was puzzled by an aeroplane propeller that had been stationed close to one corner of the pool, just beyond the stern of the little sailing-craft. Perhaps there would be an aeroplane wreck in addition to a shipwreck. Now he had something besides food to think of. And he wondered what the Montague girl ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... with us. We arranged to make Hamilton our starting-point; and on Monday, the 11th of May, 1868, our little company filed out of that city towards St. Catherine's, where we were to take passage in a "propeller" for Milwaukee. Thus our ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... was sent overboard. He dived and found the propeller. Bessie heard his report. The screw was twisted around with rope—knotted and tied so that, even with a knife he would have to make many descents to clear it. Without a diving suit it was impossible for the man to stay under water more than half a minute at a time, and, as it turned out, he was ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the March - Bessie King's Test of Friendship • Jane L. Stewart
... the introduction of the spark is the explosion of the compressed vapor, which sends the piston downward. The motion turns the shaft, and that turns the boat's propeller." ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson
... noiseless was our progress, that, say seated at table, it never entered one's head that we were moving or were anywhere save on the solid land. I had been used to steamers all my life, and it was difficult immediately to adjust myself to the absence of the propeller-thrust vibration. ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... 16th of February, the Resolute cast anchor near Greenwich. She was a screw propeller of eight hundred tons, a fast sailer, and the very vessel that had been sent out to the polar regions, to revictual the last expedition of Sir James Ross. Her commander, Captain Bennet, had the name of being a very amiable ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... or down, and this part at the back is to govern the side-to-side movements. When the machine stands on the ground it rests on these three little wheels, which are like bicycle wheels. Here sits the aviator, and directly back of him is the powerful little engine which sets the propeller whirling at the rear. The machine makes a noise like a swift-running motor boat or a motorcycle. It starts off on its wheels and rapidly increases its speed until it rises from the ground and sails away gracefully into the upper air. ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... weighed, the propeller begins to turn, and the vessel steers a course northwards through the Bosporus. With my field-glasses I settle down on a bench in the stern and take farewell of the Turkish capital. How grand, how unforgettable is this scene! The white, graceful minarets shoot ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... of my model aeroplanes I placed an equilibrator to keep it balanced. The device was attached to a crosspiece fastened just below the propeller between the main frame uprights. A stick was made to swing on a bolt in the center of the crosspiece to which was attached a weight at the lower end and two lines connecting the ends of the planes at the upper end. These are shown in Fig. 1. ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... [U.S.]; wanigan^, wangan [U.S.], wharf boat. balloon; airship, aeroplane; biplane, monoplane, triplane^; hydroplane; aerodrome; air balloon, pilot balloon, fire balloon, dirigible, zeppelin; aerostat, Montgolfier; kite, parachute. jet plane, rocket plane, jet liner, turbojet, prop-jet, propeller plane; corporate plane, corporate jet, private plane, private aviation; airline, common carrier; fighter, bomber, fighter-bomber, escort plane, spy plane; supersonic aircraft, subsonic aircraft. Adv. afloat, aboard; on board, on ship board; hard a lee, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Christy rang the bell to go ahead. He had no one in the pilot-house with whom he could consult except the two quartermasters, for Paul was in charge of the engine, and he could no more leave it than the midshipman could leave the wheel. The propeller began to turn, and the ship gathered headway. To add to the responsibility of the young commander, his mother and sister had just come on board, and were now seated on the sofa ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... "The propeller gathered in the net, and it rendered her practically unmanageable. Shore batteries found her and pounded her unremittingly. She bumped into the bank, edged off, and found herself in the channel again still some hundreds of yards from the mouth ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... of the Fram occupy only half the size of our wardroom, the petrol tanks have not needed replenishment since they left Norway, and their propeller can be lifted by three men. They kept fresh potatoes from Norway to the Barrier. (Some of them must surely be renegade Irishmen.) They have each a separate cabin 'tween-decks in the Fram, and are very comfortable. They are using for transporting their stores to the hut, eight teams of five dogs ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... got rid of his incubus, and rolls forth words of command; the propeller churns up the water behind, hawsers fly through the air, and the steam winch starts with a ringing metallic clang, while the vessel works herself broadside in ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... the cockpit. Something whirred. The propeller went over.... Canalejas shot with painstaking accuracy, twice. The motor caught with ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... out of the short funnel of the working engine on the boatyard scow. It was a clumsy-looking craft—-a mere floating platform, with engine, propeller, tiller and a derrick arrangement, but it had done a lot of good work at and about ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... round-faced and rather green boy, fell under the influences of a large, plump, and very talkative lady who made the portage just behind us. She so absorbed and fascinated the lad that he let the engine run itself into some cramp of piston or wheel. There was a sudden crunching sound and the propeller stopped. The boy minimized the accident, but the captain upon arrival told us it would be necessary to unload from the boat while the engine was ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... sunshine, on the weed-grown path, she continued to talk to him. It revealed itself that she understood a good deal. As he was to assume heavier responsibilities, he was to receive higher wages. It was his experience which was to be considered, not his years. This was a new point of view. The mere propeller of wheel-barrows and digger of the soil—particularly after having been attacked by rheumatism—depreciates in value after youth is past. Kedgers knew that a Mr. Timson, with a regiment of under gardeners, ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... abnormal, enormous /Nosco, notum cognosco cognitum know / notation, incognito *Novus new novelty, renovate *Nuntio announce denounce, renunciation *Opus, operis work magnum opus, inoperative *Pater father patrician, patrimony Patior, passus suffer impatient, passion Pello, pulsum drive propeller, repulse Pendeo, pensum hang pendulum, appendix Pendo, pensum weigh compendium, expense Pes, pedis foot expedite, biped Peto seek impetus, compete *Plaudo, plausum clap, applaud explode, plausible *Plecto, plexum ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... wish a moment later, and it was rather more than she bargained for since the sea cow, in an effort to get rid of the rope that was twisted about its flipper, turned about with a swirl in the water, not unlike that made by the propeller of a motor boat, and came head-on for the craft it was ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope
... enough. Within their steel-incased quarters every bolt and rivet sounded the overstrain forced upon it. In the engine-room the oiler could no longer move from the throttle. Every few minutes now, despite his watchfulness, a jarring shiver spread through the hull as the propeller, thrown high, raced wildly in mid-air before he could ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... favorable wind such as was blowing at the moment, or to steady the yacht in a cross sea, the captain would have set a foresail and jib. To help the propeller was good seamanship, but to bank the engine- room fires and depend wholly on sails was the last thing he would think of. Hence, the Aphrodite straightway taught him a sharp lesson. While Stump was ruminating on the exact, form of some scathing remark for Royson's benefit, a sudden stoppage of the ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... sailing-bottoms, the use of iron is likely to supersede that of timber, is a question for the speculative. At present, our commercial activity affords ample employment for both. There can be no doubt, however, that in connection with the steam-engine, and that admirable invention of modern date, the screw-propeller, iron ship-building is destined to attain and enjoy an enlarged existence; to the full maturity of which its present condition, healthful and prosperous as it appears, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... a naphtha tank and a propeller," said Elizabeth, "although I don't know. It seems to me my brother Raleigh told me they'd had a naphtha engine put in last winter after the freshet, when the House-boat was carried ten miles down the river, and had to be towed back ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... When you swim, you push the water back and down with your arms and legs, and this pushes your body forward and up. When a bird flies up into the air, it pushes its body up by beating the air down with its wings. When an airplane whirs along, its propeller fans the air backward all the time. Street-car tracks are kept shiny by the wheels, which slip a little as they tend to shove the track backward in making the car move forward. Automobile tires wear out in much the same way,—they slip and are worn ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... the theory of the dirigible balloon—that is, one that might be controlled and made to go in any direction desired, by means of a motor and propeller carried by a buoyant gas-bag. His plan was to build a balloon, cigar-shaped, of sufficient capacity to a little more than lift his machinery and himself, this extra lifting power to be balanced by ballast, so that the balloon ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... rapid striking of the air by means of the lightly built elastic wings. Many an insect has over two hundred strokes of its wings in one second. Hence, in many cases, the familiar hum, comparable on a small scale to that produced by the rapidly revolving blades of an aeroplane's propeller. For a short distance a bee can outfly a pigeon, but few insects can fly far, and they are easily blown away or blown back by the wind. Dragon-flies and bees may be cited as examples of insects that ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... brute of a modern man-of-war lay just without the reef, now quite inert, now giving a flap or two with her propeller. Nearer hand, and just within, a big white boat came skimming to the stroke of many oars, her ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... approached the island the form of a mountain became clear in the star-light; then the twinkling of lights at its base revealed the location of a city. When within half a mile of the shore, the water in the harbor became too shallow for large vessels, so the screw propeller of the Moltke ceased revolving and the ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... minute of the attack they knew; and just before midnight they were standing at the window looking out into the night, while the vice-chief held his watch in hand. In the hush the faint sound of a dirigible's propeller high up in the heavens, muffled by the fog, was drowned by the Gray guns ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... saw, dad. I heard a noise and went back there to investigate. I found him sneaking around, looking at the electric propeller plates. I went to grab him just as he stumbled over a hoard. At first I thought it was one of the old gang. I'm almost sure he was trying to ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton
... that the propeller had stopped churning. Steve gazed dazedly from fog to compass and from compass to chart, and finally shook his ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... do with Bertram and Eunice? I am undecided whether to place them in the vicinity of a volcano, which, unknown to Bertram, has eruptive tendencies, or to send them up in an aeroplane and break the propeller in mid-Atlantic just as the rescue party (including the husband)—What? Do I understand anything about aeroplanes? Certainly not; but ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 25th, 1920 • Various
... that an error in one may be corrected somewhat by the others. Take at least three sights in close succession. At the same time have the log read and enter it in your notebook. An equally good method in fair weather is to secure the distance run from the revolutions of the propeller. ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper
... embodying the same principle as that later developed by Lord Kelvin in the well-known apparatus of the present day, a machine for cutting files automatically, various types of steam-engines, and finally his work in connection with the introduction of the screw-propeller as a means of propulsion for steam vessels. These are some of the important lines of work on which Ericsson was engaged during the twelve years of his life in London. In connection with some he was undoubtedly a pioneer, and deserves credit as an original inventor; in connection with others, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... Onondaga, and the Keokuk have independent screw-propellers, which will enable them to turn on their own centres and to manoeuvre much more rapidly and effectively in action than vessels which, having but one propeller, cannot change their direction without changing their position, and are obliged to make a long circuit to change it at all. This subject is beginning to receive in Europe ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... they boarded their steamer, and immediately the lines were thrown off and the steamer had turned her prow seaward, Bobby nearly shouted with joy, and every throb of the steamer's engine, and every turn of the propeller, brought fresh delight to his heart, for they were beating away the miles ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... saloon and the electric bells, and she was rigged either to sail or steam as might be most convenient. On the present occasion, as there was not the slightest hurry and no danger of a lee-shore, it was determined that they should not avail themselves of the steam-power, so the propeller was hoisted up and everything got ready for that most delightful thing, a ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... hunt for her luck. Wellington was to be the first port, I fancy. It doesn't matter, because in latitude 44 d south and somewhere halfway between Good Hope and New Zealand the tail shaft broke and the propeller dropped off. ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... the "Newbern" was a small and old propeller, not fitted up for passengers, and in those days the great refrigerating plants were unheard of. The women who go to the Philippines on our great transports of to-day cannot realize and will scarcely believe what we ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... Propeller 6 Brande's Dictionary of Science, &c. 6 " Organic Chemistry 6 Chevreul on Colour 8 Cresy's Civil Engineering 8 Fairbairn's Information for Engineers 9 Gwilt's Encyclopaedia of Architecture 10 Harford's Plates from M. Angelo 10 Humphreys's Parables ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... nothing but longitudinal stability. My model flew like a bird for fifty or a hundred yards or so, and then either dived and broke its nose or, what was commoner, reared up, slid back and smashed its propeller. The rhythm of the pitching puzzled me. I felt it must obey some laws not yet quite clearly stated. I became therefore a student of theory and literature for a time; I hit upon the string of considerations that led me to what is called Ponderevo's ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... that life has had any hand in the shaping of its own destiny, then the ingenuity of the devices for turning the useless member to account affords one of the most exhilarating subjects of contemplation in the whole panorama of Nature. The fishes fitted it up at once as a twin-propeller, with results so satisfactory that the whale and the porpoise, coming long after, adopted the invention. And be it noted that these last and their kin are now the only ocean-going mammals in the world. The whole tribe of paddle-steamers, such as ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... sufficiently commodious to contain the operator and a sufficient amount of air to support him for thirty minutes. Water was admitted into a tank for the purpose of descending and two brass force-pumps ejected the water when the operator wished to rise. Propulsion was by an oar astern, working as the propeller of a vessel works to-day. Practically Bushnell in one attempt to destroy a British war-ship in the Hudson River was able to get under the British frigate Eagle without detection, but was unable to attach the mine which the ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... had sunk to the bottom of the tank, and backed into one of the corners. The keys of the machine clicked louder and faster. Her nose tilted upwards to an angle of about sixty degrees. The six-bladed propeller at her stem whirled round in the water like the flurry of a whale's fluke in its death agony. Her side-fins inclined upwards, and, like a flash, she leapt from the water, and began to circle round ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... and sent to Marseilles where they were loaded on a French freighter, the Saint Basil, and we left for Constantinople. As the planes were bulky but light, the boat was light and high in the water. Because of that the propeller was but halfway in the water and our progress was very slow. It took us 17 days to get to Constantinople. Hardly had we dropped anchor in the Bosphorus as a launch drew up and a French officer came ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... shut tight, and the pumps set to work, but it was no use. That forward compartment just filled up with water, and the 'Thomas Hyke' settled down with her bow clean under. Her deck was slanting forward like the side of a hill, and the propeller was lifted up so that it wouldn't have worked even if the engine had been kept going. The captain had the masts cut away, thinking this might bring her up some, but it didn't help much. There was a pretty heavy sea on, and the waves came rolling up ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... cast off the moorings, the chauffeur flew below to set his engine going; I took the wheel, pushed over the starting lever, the little propeller began to turn, and we were away on the first of the watery miles which stretch before us, ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... loaded to the 100 lb., and the ship was dispatched to Cronstadt. After making two voyages under similar circumstances to the two previous ones, the average consumption was 13.5 tons per day only. In this case it was the same ship, same boilers, same engines, same propeller, and same men, the only difference being the addition of a third cylinder and the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various
... you wasn't laughing then. I'll say you wasn't. I thought you was croaked. Cost something to repair the plane, too. I'm saying it did. Had to have a new propeller, and a new crank-case for the motor—cost the old man at the ranch close to three hundred dollars before I turned her over to him, ready to take the air again. That's including what he paid me, of course. But I guess you know what it cost, when ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... H. B. M. screw propeller "Reynard," immediately got up steam, thirty men and officers from our ship were transferred to the little American steamer "Spark," and both vessels started in ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... of a special and somewhat particular construction. On either side of the rudder and propeller posts—which are sided 24 inches (65 cm.)—is fitted a stout oak counter-timber following the curvature of the stern right up to the upper deck, and forming, so to speak, a double stern-post. The planking is carried outside these timbers, and the stern ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... arrival she was hauled out on the marine ways at Oakland creek, cleaned, caulked, and some new copper sheathing put on her bottom. She was also given a dash of black paint, had her engines and boilers thoroughly overhauled and repaired, and shipped a new propeller that would add at least a knot to her speed. Also, she had her stern rebuilt. And when everything was ready, she slipped down to the Black Diamond coal bunkers and took on enough fuel to carry her to San Pedro; ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... either on wheels or floating. Furthermore, not being able to replenish its gas, a Zeppelin had always to return to its base for supplies. But the gas balloon suited the smug character of the German. Unlike the aviator who threw himself into the air on a bundle of steel rods and rubber, a propeller and a petrol engine, the phlegmatic German took no risks with a balloon. He found, however, that Zeppelins were expensive freaks. They had a habit of catching fire in the air, because the tail created a vacuum and sucked back some escaping gas into the engine where ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... were mere motionless hulks, lying inert upon the bosom of the sunlit, shot-torn sea, the one with her rudder and propeller blown away by a torpedo that had all but sent her to the bottom, the other with her engines badly broken down, the result of Chinese officials having stolen and disposed of many parts, which had had to be roughly ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... of the world have not been done by men of large means. Want has been the great schoolmaster of the race: necessity has been the mother of all great inventions. Ericsson began the construction of a screw-propeller in a bath-room. John Harrison, the great inventor of the marine chronometer, began his career in the loft of an old barn. Parts of the first steamboat ever run in America were set up in the vestry of an old church in Philadelphia by Fitch. McCormick began ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... enormous red eyes were painted upon either side of her high, blunt bow, while just abaft the waist projected an enormous oar, or sweep, full forty feet in length—longer, in fact, than the vessel herself. It acted partly as a propeller, partly as a rudder. ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... length of the envelope was 179 feet, its diameter 27-1/2 feet. The screw was in front instead of behind as in all others previously constructed. The motor which weighed 220-1/2 lbs. was driven by electricity and developed 8-1/2 horse power. The propeller was 24 feet in diameter and only made 46 revolutions to the minute. This was the first time electricity was used as a motor force, and mighty possibilities ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... by the swish of the propeller as it ploughed slowly, deliberately, through the sea; the slap of the ripples under the prow, and an occasional harp-like sigh of the zephyr in the softly-vibrating shrouds; Paul Clitheroe had stolen out of ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... great steamer go ploughing through them as through a field of frosted cakes. The huge paddle-wheels make a perfect pudding of thousands of them, as they are dashed against the paddle-box and whipped into a froth like white of eggs or churned into a thick cream by the propeller blades. Sometimes the shoals are of great breadth, and then it veritably looks as though a crockery shop had been upset in the ocean, and ten thousand white dinner-plates had broken loose. Around the bays and harbors the Japanese boys at play drive them with paddles into shoals, and sometimes ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... gone nutty," is the indignant reply, delivered while disengaging a leg from its Teddy Bear trousering. "Why, I emptied my whole roller on a Boche this morning, point blank at not fifteen metres off. His machine gun quit firing and his propeller wasn't turning and yet the darn fool just hung up there as if he were tied to a cloud. Say, I was so sure I had him it made me sore—felt like running into him and yelling, 'Now, you ...
— Flying for France • James R. McConnell
... is 58 feet in diameter, or considerably larger than the ring in Astley's Circus. The screw engines were manufactured by Messrs. Watt and Company of Birmingham. They consist of four cylinders of 84 inches diameter and 4 feet stroke. The screw propeller is 24 feet in diameter and 37 feet pitch; and the engine-shaft is 160 feet long, or 12 feet longer than the height of the Duke of York's Column. The paddles and screw, when working together at their highest pitch, exert a force equal to 11,500 horsepower, which is sufficient to drive all the cotton-mills ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... found the end of the line and the smooth cylinder to which it was attached. Orvil passed very close, and Rick looked upward. He could see the white circle of water around the single propeller. ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... head propped up on cushions, serenely at ease though a very narrow margin intervened between water-line and gunwale. The performer of the Sonata, who was as deft at the paddle as she was at the piano, served as his pilot and propeller while the rest of us formed an escort which could be turned into a rescue party if occasion required. A stout, capacious rowboat followed immediately in the wake of the canoe. We went down the dark, placid current in the fine summer weather to the Battleground, and then looked into the ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... one of them the somewhat notorious Maharajah of Indorwana. Vanno retreated hastily, and went on toward the steps which led up to the Rock of Monaco; but he had not gone far when a combination of sounds stopped him: the whirr of a propeller and the throb of an engine. Carleton was evidently on the point of trying his machine, the curious invention which could be used, it was said, on land as well as in air ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... stout oars crack as the seamen bent their backs to offset it. And when at last the wider stream was entered, and the sails began to draw, the launch had passed out of sight; only the distant and diminishing chug of her propeller gave indication that she was ahead. With gathering speed as the night breeze gained strength, the boat sailed on, and until she had suddenly to haul up at a square bend in the river, she equalled the ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... aviation grounds is not far away. Look skyward at almost any hour of the day and you will see a plane, its propeller a roar or a hum according to its altitude. Sometimes it is circling in practice; again, it is off to the front. At break of day the planes appear; in the gloaming they return ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... paragraph appeared in all the Norwegian papers, copied from the American ones, giving an account of how Hjalmar Olsen, in the teeth of a gale, and at the risk of his own ship, had saved the passengers and crew of an ocean steamer, the propeller of which had been injured off the American coast. Two steamers had passed without daring to render assistance, the weather was so terrific. Olsen had remained by the vessel for twenty-four hours. ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... frowns and dives inside. Hissing softly, "162" comes to rest as level as a rule. From her North Atlantic Winter nose-cap (worn bright as diamond with boring through uncounted leagues of hail, snow, and ice) to the inset of her three built out propeller-shafts is some two hundred and forty feet. Her extreme diameter, carried well forward, is thirty-seven. Contrast this with the nine hundred by ninety-five of any crack liner, and you will realize the power that must drive a hull through all weathers at more than ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... through a foolish accident. Everything the papers write about a battle in the air is nonsense. A part of his propeller broke off and, due to the jerk, the wire braces of the fuselage snapped. The fuselage then broke off. Aside from the great personal loss we have suffered, I feel the moral effect of his death on the enemy ...
— An Aviator's Field Book - Being the field reports of Oswald Boelcke, from August 1, - 1914 to October 28, 1916 • Oswald Boelcke
... a breath of air when they went on deck after dinner, and with the exception of the throbbing and humming of the engine and propeller, and soft whish of the sea as it was divided and swept along the sides, all was wonderfully still. But the silence was soon after broken by a sharp call from somewhere forward, a clear musical voice ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... record the details of the first high speed twin screw steamer built for the service. Of this vessel, named the Tynwald, we give a profile and an engraving of stern, showing the method of supporting the brackets for propeller shafting. ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various
... wonderful man. It is also used to remove grain in breweries from a lower to a higher level. The name has been recently applied to the very important introduction in steam navigation—the propelling screw. (See SCREW-PROPELLER.) ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... Australia. He was for a short time one of the members for the Port Phillip electorate, but resigned, as he found faithful discharge of the duties to be incompatible with his office. He patented the boomerang screw propeller, and was the author of many educational and other works, including a translation of the Lusiad of Camoens. Although a strict martinet in his official duties, and subject to a choleric temper, he was strenuous in his devotion to the advancement of Australia, among whose makers he must ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... Harry paid little attention to the others as they drew on their gloves, and carefully inspected their propellers. A man had been almost killed on the grounds a few days before, when a propeller blade had torn loose under the terrific strain of its 1200 revolutions a minute, and the boys were not anxious for anything like that to happen to ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... and watery moon that evening, with wind-driven clouds scurrying across its face and quenching its light every few minutes. The steamer pitched so that her propeller was frequently ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... must seek to raise himself in the air by another mode of operation altogether, if he wish to guide himself at the same time. Some time ago I bought a play thing, very much in vogue at that time, called a Stropheor. This toy was composed of a small rotating screw propeller, which revolved on its own support when the piece of string wound round it was pulled sharply. The screw was rather heavy, weighing nearly a quarter of a pound, and the wings were of tin, very broad and thick. This machine, however, was rather too eccentric for parlour ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... the bell rang for turning on the gasoline motor. Within a few seconds the big engines were throbbing. Again the propeller shafts began to turn. Now, all hands could feel the motion as the "Pollard" skimmed lazily along over the ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham
... the propulsion of a launch. The propellers hitherto practically applied in steam navigation are the paddle-wheel and the screw. The experience of modern steam navigation points to the exclusive use and advantage of the screw propeller where great speed of shaft is obtainable, and the electric engine is pre-eminently a high-speed engine, consequently the screw appears to be most suitable to the requirements of electric boats. By simply fixing the propeller ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... lifted on a slender pedestal, sufficiently high above the surface of the wing for the vanes to be free of the central propeller. Then, automatically, the vanes became invisible, and the Mayther lifted from the sandy beach as lightly, and far more straightly, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... by Horace L. Hundley in 1863. This boat was twenty feet long, three and one-half feet wide, and five feet deep. Her motive power consisted of eight men whose duty it was to turn the crank of the propeller shaft by hand until the target had been reached. When this primitive craft was closed for diving there was only sufficient air to support life for half an hour. Since the torpedo was attached to the boat itself there ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... boats. The other boats are missing, but there is hope that they are safe, as the storm was not severe, and the lake is now quite calm. The rescued passengers think that some may have been picked up by a propeller whose lights they ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March |
