Jules Verne

“ The houses clustered on the smaller hills shaded with orange-trees and standing amid beautiful gardens, some of European, some of Arab design, and past them flowed the pleasant, cooling streams from the water-works. ”

“ But although he thought she was now Sarcany's wife, how could he forget her? Had he ceased to love her because she was the daughter of Silas Toronthal? No! After all, was Sava responsible for her father's crime? But it was that crime that brought Stephen Bathory to his death! Hence a continual struggle within him, of which Pierre alone could tell the innumerable vicissitudes.
The doctor felt this. And to give the young thoughts another direction, he constantly spoke to him of the act of justice they were to work out together. The traitors must be punished, and they should be. ”

“ The sea will become very rough off Gozo or Malta, and it may hinder us a good deal. I don't propose to run into Valette, but to find a shelter till daylight under the western coast of either of the islands.”
“Do as you think best,” was the reply.
The yacht was then about thirty miles to the westward of Malta. On the island of Gozo, a little to the north-west of Malta and separated from it only by two narrow channels formed by a central islet, there is a large light-house with a range of twenty-seven miles. ”

“ During the night the doctor and Pierre in their rooms aft, and Point Pescade and Matifou in their cabins forward, could sleep without being inconvenienced by the movement of the vessel, which rolled a little like all fast boats. But although sleep did not fail the two friends, the doctor and Pierre bad too much anxiety to take any rest. In the morning when the passengers went on deck, more than 120 miles bad been run in the twelve hours since they had left Antekirtta. The wind was in the same direction, with a tendency to freshen. ”

“ Her engines could develop nearly fifteen hundred horse power effective. Her boilers were on the Belleville system—in which the tubes contain the flame and not the water—and possessed the advantage of consuming little coal, producing rapid vaporization, and easily raising the tension of the steam to nearly thirty pounds without danger of explosion. The steam, used over again by the reheaters, became a mechanical agent of prodigious power, and enabled the yacht, although she was not as long as the dispatch boats of the European squadrons, to more than equal them in speed. ”

“ Electricity was to play an important part in the defensive system, not only in firing the torpedoes with which the channel was armed, but even in discharging the guns in the batteries. The doctor had learned how to obtain the most marvelous results from this agent to which the future belongs. ”