Rota

“ Whether the road be one mile or one hundred miles in length, the effect of diurnal rotation is the same; and, whether the road be long or short, the tendency to run off, as you cross a given parallel at a stated rate of speed, is the same; for the tendency to fly off the track is in proportion to the speed of the train, and not at all in proportion to the length of the road. ”

“ The man who sits in the lookout of the rotary controls the nozzle, changes it from side to side so as to avoid buildings.
These rotaries are giants. Where the great flange or wing ploughs—the ordinary snow-fighting artillery of a railroad—fail, they come into service. Theirs is ever a mighty task to perform. We have seen a rotary spend sixty minutes in going sixty feet through a heavy drift, a drift three miles long and twenty deep. Snow can drift, and wet snow can pack, pack until you almost begin to think of dynamite as a resource. ”

“ The axis about which the daily rotation takes place is an imaginary straight line passing through the centre of the earth, and its extremities are called poles, hence the names of the North and the South pole. ”

“ In fact, the discovery of the true axis of rotation will be a complete key to the improvement of naval architecture, as all the forces, which are so constantly and variously acting, are estimated by the distances from the axis of rotation to the points where they are applied. ”

“ Now, as this bisecting of the angle can go on indefinitely before the rotating line can touch the stationary line at all its points, it follows that before such contact the rotating line will have a length which cannot be stated in figures, and which defies all human computation. It can be mathematically demonstrated that a line so rotating, and increasing its length in the inverse ratio of its angle with the meridian, will have its end always receding from the meridian and approaching a line parallel to the meridian at a distance of 1.5708. ”

“ The north pole of the heavens is the point of the celestial sphere towards which the northern end of the axis about which the earth rotates is directed. It therefore follows that this axis must be constantly changing its position. The character of the movement of the earth, so far as its rotation is concerned, may be illustrated by a very common toy with which every boy is familiar. When a peg-top is set spinning, it has, of course, a very rapid rotation around its axis ”

“ Since rotary motion is the form in which the power is commonly transmitted and applied, it would be desirable to get the motion in this form originally, and many attempts have been made to make rotary engines. ”

“ An infinitely small rotation about any axis is conveniently represented geometrically by a length AB measures along the axis and proportional to the angle of rotation, with the convention that the direction from A to B shall be related to the rotation as is the direction of translation to that of rotation in a right-handed screw. ”

“ A product like is a versor of which the axis is perpendicular to and and the amount of rotation twice that which would carry to It is evident that any versor may be thus expressed, and that either or may be given any direction perpendicular to the axis of rotation. If we have for the resultant of the successive rotations This may be applied to the composition of any two successive rotations, being taken perpendicular to the two axes of rotation, and affords the means of determining the resultant rotation by construction on the surface of a sphere. ”

“ In the roadstead—on board a ship which had arrived that very morning from South America—on the stroke of four o'clock, a petty officer had given a prolonged whistle, followed by cleverly executed trills, which signified in the language of the sea: "Man the launch!" Then a murmur of joy was heard in the ship, where the sailors were penned, on account of the rain, in the gloom of the spar-deck. For there had been a fear for a time that the sea might be too rough for communication with Brest, and the men had been waiting anxiously for this whistle which set their doubts at rest. ”

“ Everything is of a blue-green, of a blue of night, of a colour of infinite depth; the moon, which at first sails high in the heaven, throws little flickering reflections on the sea, as if everywhere, on the immense empty plain, mysterious hands were agitating silently thousands of little mirrors.
The half-hours pass one after another, undisturbed, the breeze steady, the sails very lightly stretched. The sailors of the watch, in their linen clothes, are asleep on the bare deck, in rows, all on the same side, fitted in one with another, like rows of white mummies. ”

“ My saviours, who were Dutchmen, had lifted me from the spar, and were plying me with spirits as I lay more dead than alive in the stern-sheets. I looked up. The sails of the brig, flapping against the wind, towered above me, and her dark hull as she swung over us hid the sun. The boat pulled round her stern to reach the lee-ladder. As we passed I glanced up, and my eyes fell on two words, painted in gilt letters—
“Scheldt. Rotterdam.”
Chapter Thirty One. The highwayman on the Delft road. ”

“ In the midst of absolute stillness, the lightest rustlings of the sails are audible—from time to time a negress, sleeping on deck, utters a groan; the vibrations of the human voice are startlingly loud.
All things lie in a tepid stupor. The atmosphere is sluggish with the dull torpor of a slumbering world.
The milky, phosphorescent sea reflects in its vast mirror the hot transparent night. One might fancy oneself between two mirrors, opposite one to the other, eternally reflecting each other, or imagine oneself suspended in vacancy, for no longer is there a distinguishable horizon. ”

“ More frequently I prefer to walk along the shore doing my miles in company with our towers, who plod along bending over like beasts of burden, with the rope passed over the shoulders. Osman and Renaud peer out of a port-hole after me as we walk along the track of gray earth shut in by the uninterrupted border of sorghos and by the river, the wind blowing sharply all the while. We are often obliged to [38] step aside suddenly because of a dead man—with one leg stretched out across the path—looking slyly up at us. ”

“ On the evening of the 8th of August we sailed from Rotterdam, but contrary winds obliged us to remain nearly two days at Marsluys, a town about two leagues from Rotterdam. Here our last guinea was expended, and we reflected with wonder that we had travelled eight hundred miles for less than thirty pounds, passing through lovely scenes, and enjoying the beauteous Rhine, and all the brilliant shews of earth and sky, perhaps more, travelling as we did, in an open boat, than if we had been shut up in a carriage, and passed on the road under the hills. ”

“ The deck officer who watches the vessel's course may do nothing which could distract his attention; but while ever ready to act and always unoccupied, he thinks, he dreams, he listens to the voices of the sea; and everything about him is of interest to him, the shape of the clouds, the aspect of skies and waters. He knows that a mere board's thickness is all that separates him and defends him from death. Such is the habitual state of mind which M. Loti has brought to the colouring of his books. ”

“ A dark mass having the form of a man in the gutter—by the side of a kind of deserted street overhung by ramparts. It is still dark. The rain still falls, fine and cold; and the winter wind continues to roar. It had "watched," as they say in the navy, and passed the night in groaning.
It was in the lower part of the town, a little below the bridge of Brest, at the foot of the great walls, in that locality where sailors commonly find themselves, who are without a home and who have had the vague intention, blind drunk as they were, of returning to their ship and have fallen en route. ”

“ Immediately we straighten our course, and taking advantage of the clearing, the Sèvre stands in for Brest, whistling no longer, but hastening and with every hope of reaching port. But the curtain slowly closes again and falls. We can see no longer, darkness comes, and we have to stand out for the open sea.
And for three long days we continue thus, unable to see anything. Our eyes are weary with watching.
This is my last voyage on the Sèvre, which I am due to leave as soon as we reach Brest. ”

“ I am now a long way from my home, and am compelled to cross by boat the whole breadth of the bay when I wish to see Chrysantheme; for the dock is situated on the shore, opposite to Diou-djen-dji. It is sunk in a little valley, narrow and deep, midst all kinds of foliage—bamboos, camellias, trees of all sorts; our masts and spars, seen from the deck, look as if they were tangled among the branches. ”

“ It was daylight, the everlasting day of those regions—a pale, dim light, resembling no other—bathing all things, like the gleams of a setting sun. Around them stretched an immense colourless waste, and excepting the planks of their ship, all seemed transparent, ethereal, and fairy-like. The eye could not distinguish what the scene might be: first it appeared as a quivering mirror that had no objects to reflect; and in the distance it became a desert of vapour; and beyond that a void, having neither horizon nor limits. ”

“ And we begin our regular little walk up and down the wooden deck of the Sèvre. We know by heart all the little hollows where the water collects, all the angle blocks in which one's feet may be caught, all the rings over which one may stumble.
The sky is overcast for our last walk together, the moon hidden, and the air damp. In the distance, from the direction of Recouvrance, come as usual the eternal songs of the sailors.
We speak of many things. I give Yves much advice, and he, very submissive, makes many promises; and it is very late when he leaves me to seek his hammock. ”

“ Around, above, and beneath us cling and hang, on every possible point, clumps of trees and fresh green woods, with the delicate and varying foliage of the temperate zone. We can see, at our feet, the deep roadstead, foreshortened and slanting, diminished in appearance till it looks like a sombre rent in the mass of large green mountains; and farther still, quite low on the black and stagnant waters, are the men-of-war, the steamboats and the junks, with flags flying from every mast. ”

“ As the Leopoldine faded out of vision, Gaud, as if drawn by a magnet, followed the pathway all along the cliffs till she had to stop, because the land came to an end; she sat down at the foot of a tall cross, which rises amidst the gorse and stones. As it was rather an elevated spot, the sea, as seen from there, appeared to be rimmed, as in a bowl, and the Leopoldine, now a mere point, appeared sailing up the incline of that immense circle. The water rose in great slow undulations, like the upheavals of a submarine combat going on somewhere beyond the horizon ”

“ I watched the receding lights of Rotterdam till they flickered out in the distance. The night was misty and too dark to make out anything on shore. My thoughts went back to the last time, nearly a year before, when I had been on that river. I saw it then, in flood of moonlight as I stepped on the boat deck of the giant liner Rotterdam. The soft strains of a waltz floated up from the music room, adding enchantment to the windmills and low Dutch farmhouses strung out below the level of the water. ”

“ For the first time that day I hear footsteps approaching, [116] resounding in the silence on the pavement of the esplanade. My servants, Osman and Renaud, are coming for me according to instructions; they are the only human beings for whom the gate of the walls below has orders to open.
It is icy cold as we cross the Marble Bridge in the twilight to return to our home, and the moisture is gathering in clouds over the lake, as it does every night.
After supper we go on a man hunt in the dark, through the courts and rooms of the place. ”

“ It was as it were intoxicated, this mournful town, at having by chance a real summer's day, an evening clear and warm; it was full of noise and movement and people, of white head-dresses and sailors singing.
CHAPTER LXXII 5th July, 1881.
At Sea.—We are returning from the Channel. The Sèvre is proceeding very slowly in a thick fog, blowing every now and then its whistle which sounds like a cry of distress in this damp shroud which envelops us. The grey solitudes of the sea are all about us and we feel them without seeing them. It seems as if we were dragging with us long veils of darkness ”

“ I can recall passages in etchings of those dim, night-palaces of Venice, up which the sad-lighted sea sends faint, equivocating shivers, that give me the exact sensation of lines of Loti. They rise to mind from depths of consciousness. And without volition. Now that Loti is traveling and writing of what he sees no more, and Whistler’s etching needle is stilled, there are two joys fewer in the world for me. ”

“ There was commotion this night in Brest: the patrols were kept busy.
In the Rue de Sept Saints and in the Rue de Saint Yves, singing and shouting went on until the morning; it was as if barbarians had been loosed there, bands escaped from ancient Gaul; there were scenes of rejoicing that recalled the boisterousness of primitive times.
The sailors sang. And the women, their fingers itching for the pieces of gold—agitated, dishevelled in this great excitation of the sailors' homecoming—mingled their shrill voices with the deep voices of the men. ”

“ The groups of speechless and anxious women had rapidly formed on the cliff. Gaud, pale and trembling, was there, by the side of her Yann's father.
“I'm almost sure,” said the old fisher, “I'm almost sure it's them! A red rail and a topsail that clews up—it's very like them anyhow. What do you make it, Gaud?
“No, it isn't,” he went on, with sudden discouragement; “we've made a mistake again, the boom isn't the same, and ours has a jigger sail. Well, well, it isn't our boat this time, it's only the Marie-Jeanne. ”