Detractor

“ Some companies have adopted mechanical appliances, whereby a man can place a detonator upon a line of rails or remove it while standing at a distance away from the track, thus enabling him to attend to more than one line without danger to himself. The cost of detonators often amounts to a considerable sum; and an apparatus called an economizer has been introduced, whereby the explosion of one detonator removes the second from the rails before the wheels reach it. ”

“ As soon as a signal arm is raised to " danger," the fogman places upon one of the rails of the track to which the signal applies two detonators, or in the case of a new and improved class of detonator which contains two separate charges in one case, one detonator, and at the same time exhibits a red flag or light to the driver of an approaching train. The engine of a train passing over the detonators explodes them, the noise so made being sufficient to apprise the driver that the signal, though invisible to him, is at danger, and he then should act in the same way as if he had seen the signal. ”

“ Detonators are also of great service both in fine or bad weather, in cases of a wash away, a failure of works, or obstruction on the line, when a hand-signal may not be seen, but a detonator must be heard. ”

“ In a destroyer one lives rather like a pig, and one dies with extraordinary suddenness. Yet the destroyer officers and men have their reward in a battle, for then they drink deep of the wine of life. I would sooner any day take the risks of destroyer work, tremendous though they are, just for the fun which one gets out of it. It was great to see our boys round up Fritz’s little lot. While you were in your turret, and the Sub. yonder in control of a side battery, Fritz massed his destroyers like Prussian infantry and tried to rush up close so as to strafe us with the torpedo. ”

“ Everyone on the Terror listened intently. From the broad stretch of water before them, borne on a wind which had shifted and was coming down the river, the faint puffing of a motor boat could be heard.
“That’s the Dartaway!” exclaimed Jerry. “I know her exhaust!”
“I hope you’re right!” said the chief grimly. “Put a little more speed on,” he said to the engineer, and the Terror leaped ahead under the influence of more gasolene and an advanced spark.
A minute later they rounded a turn in the river and saw the Dartaway just as her engine came to a stop. ”

“ The detachment consists of six drivers, six gunners, a corporal, and a sergeant, who is the gun-commander. But my gun, the first of the 2nd battery, is also accompanied by the section-commander, the battery-leader, a trumpeter, and the Captain's orderly with his two horses. In all, eighteen men and nineteen horses. Of the eighteen men, seventeen are serving their time. For nearly a year now they have led the same life; each day they have executed the same manœuvres together. One detachment, therefore, is a real entity, and forms a little society by itself, with its habits, likes and dislikes. ”

“ Detonating caps are therefore made of this, and one such cap put into the middle of that cartridge of dynamite and set fire to, by any means, would convert the cartridge itself into a detonator, and explode it with a shattering effect.
“A human being,” I continued, “sometimes illustrates this principle figuratively—I mean the violent explosion of a large cartridge by means of a small detonator. Take, for example, a schoolmaster, and suppose him to be a dynamite cartridge. His heart is a detonating cap. The schoolroom and boys form a galvanic battery. ”

“ Dastral altered the controls a little, and, banking slightly, the hornet came round smartly upon her new course, which, for the rest of the journey to the coast, was almost due east.
The continuous roar of the engines and the whir-r-r of the propeller made conversation almost impossible, except for a few short, jerky sentences, uttered in a loud, shrill voice, and accompanied by corresponding gestures.
The world beneath them was waking up now, for the two aviators could see the smoke ascending from the chimneys of a few scattered farmhouses and cottages. ”

“ He cursed, and ran like a cat under the scaffolding, up to the great silvery fin of the ship. Of course, he should have thought that if there was no circuit alarm on the fence there surely would be one around the ship. Far away a roar of voices rose up, and shouts, the pummel of running feet. Frantically he thrust a dynamite charge under one of the fins of the ship, then ran to a second and laid another charge. A rifle cracked somewhere, and another, and he darted into the piles of boxes, unreeling the detonator wire as he ran. There were hoarse shouts all about him now. ”

“ If there's a piece left, I think I will stay where I am; for I am in a good position to observe the range, and watch the effect of the shot. I say, hadn't you better get behind the wood-pile again?"
"No, no," interrupted the Trapper; "the whole battery went at the word, Bill, and there isn't a gun or a gun-carriage left in the casement. Ye've wasted a gill of the yarb, and a quarter of a pound of the berry; and ye must hurry up with another outfit of bottles, or we'll have nothin' but water to drink at the dinner." ”

“ Firing by electricity is generally safer and more satisfactory than by the use of ordinary caps and powder fuses. The explosion is more certain and its exact time is under the control of the operator. Fig. 121 shows a section through an electric blasting cap or 300detonator, commonly called an electric fuse. Delayed action electric detonators are made by inserting a slow-burning substance between the platinum bridge and the detonating substance. The time of delay is controlled by the depth of the slow-burning substance. ”

“ Our Destroyer Service is perhaps as efficient, and as dashing, as anything ever seen in the way of organised human activity. It is long established, and its very perfection seems almost to stand in the way of our wonder at its achievement. The performance of our trawlers and drifters, on the other hand, is the more astonishing because it was an afterthought, the work of a service called into being—suddenly created, as it were, out of nothing—to meet the need of a grave moment which no imagination could well have provided against. ”

“ So, while breakfast was laid for the Intelligence officer, Dastral got his men together, including Mac and Jock. Afterwards the eight men who were going into action carefully laid their plans, arranging a code of signals and the method of attack, should they succeed in reaching their destination. Then they went over to the sheds, examined and tested the machines, saw them loaded up with bombs and drums of ammunition. The guns, compasses, etc., were then shipped and everything was ready. ”

“ I mean the other C.B. which is usually given from Buckingham Palace."
"You're a sport, Fisker. I never had an observer or aerial gunner who served me so well as you do. The credit is yours for the majority of the enemy's machines we've brought down this last six months. But, as you're game, and you've got far more brains than I have, we'll just spend the night inventing such a trap for the wily old Prussian as you've mentioned, and to-morrow, if we don't get the weather-gage of the Boche, then we'll never put our heads inside this old mess again. Are you agreed?" said Dastral. ”

“ Other accessory plant in use at most modern destructor stations includes machinery for the removal, crushing and various means of utilization of the residual clinker, stoking tools, air heaters or regenerators for the production of hot-air blast to the furnaces, superheaters and thermal storage arrangements for equalizing the output of power from the station during the 24-hours’ day.
The general arrangement of a battery of refuse cells at a destructor station is illustrated by fig. 5. The cells are arranged either side by side, with a common main flue in the Working of destructors. ”

“ Excellent!" exclaimed Dastral, immediately he saw the little single-seater monoplane, for he had flown a similar machine several times in France.
With the aid of a dark lanthorn he carefully went over her, and lovingly fingered every part of her, from the bullet-nosed fuselage which gave her her nickname, to her neat, trim little tail and rudder.
The noise of the A.A. guns became louder and louder outside, as though they had discovered one of the raiders. And Dastral was just itching to go up!
"Let me go up in her, Garner!" he said. "She's a beauty!" ”

“ And now, the decisive sentence:
“A magnetic detonator will also have the great advantage that the crew will not be able to save themselves on account of the quick sinking of the torpedoed ship. This greater loss of men will no doubt cause difficulties in the assignment of crews for the great American construction program.” ”

“ Thus, to review the whole class of ships of which we have been speaking, we may say that there are the destroyers, all the more recent of which are about 1000 tons but diminishing as we go backward in time to about 350 or 400; the flotilla leaders about twice the size of the largest destroyers; and the destroyer-destroyers nearly twice as large as the flotilla leaders: all are characterised by high speed and by guns just large enough for the work for which they are intended. All are armed, too, with the deadly torpedo for attack upon larger ships than themselves. ”

“ When handling detonators for grenades, it should be remembered that the detonator by itself is capable of blowing the hand off, so it must be carefully handled, and if an igniter is accidentally fired it should be thrown a few yards clear of any one in the neighborhood. ”

“ The big nuclear pumps stood thirty feet high with their great jets at the top. The tractor had descended blow the level of the jet thrust. At the same instant, there was a forward motion and the tractor began to sweep toward the downstream wall of the bore.
"Drop us, fast," Alec commanded. "We're being sucked."
Number One crane operator slammed his release button and the tractor fell with a jarring crash to the floor of the catch basin. On the floor, its mass held it in place against the drag of the three huge pumps and the natural flow of the water. ”

“ The destroyer does so, and, lo! an army of workmen step on board with their tools, and with much hammering and drilling, the outward application of a steel plate, some oakum, and some white lead, her hurts are plastered and she is rendered seaworthy once more.
Sometimes the defects may be even more serious, as, for instance, when one of her charges, having been badly cut into in a thick fog or having unwisely sat down upon a mine, limps back into harbour with several compartments full of water and serious internal injuries as well. But the depôt ship is quite equal to the emergency. ”

“ Every type of aeroplane approaching was carefully scrutinised, and, with sundry circling dips, short nose-dives and smoke bombs, the Squadron-Commander told off various machines to fight them, for every type of machine has its own special capabilities and limitations. At the same time the heavens were eagerly scanned for a sight of the hated Fokker.
"Where is Himmelman? Where is Dastral?" every keen-eyed pilot was asking himself. ”

“ READY FOR A CRUISE
“They’re slowing up!” cried Jerry. “They’re going to stop! We’ll get ’em now!”
Sure enough the Dartaway was slackening speed. She was headed toward shore. The Terror was gaining rapidly now. Chief Dalton stood up and drew his revolver in preparation of capturing the motor boat thieves.
But now the Dartaway was so near shore that the men in her could almost leap to the bank. They could be seen turning the wheel so as to throw the craft parallel with the shore.
“They’re going to jump! We’ll lose ’em!” cried Ned. ”

“ This means that the view and range of fire of the passengers is obstructed in a forward direction by the wings, and in machines such as the U. S. training machine, the passenger, who is practically in the center of the wings, can not look directly upward nor directly downward. Moreover, as concerns gun fire, the propeller of a tractor obstructs the range straight ahead. In the tractor the tail is supported at the rear and on the same body which contains the motor and passengers; this body constitutes a stream-line housing for the machinery, seats, etc., and therefore has low wind resistance. ”

“ Then, leaving his map for a moment, he swept the horizon for any signs there might be of the enemy's 'planes.
So for nearly an hour the machines, playing at "follow-my-leader," swept round and round, watching and waiting in an altitude where, to put it mildly, it was cold enough to freeze a kettle of boiling water in ten minutes.
Cold? Yes, it was bitterly cold. Both Dastral and Fisker felt it through their thick leather, wool-lined coats.
They patrolled the country behind the German lines, and watched the smoke curling upwards from a dozen French villages in the enemy's possession. ”

“ Them traps save the trapper going round so often, but they're expensive, and heavy to carry, and you have got to be awful hard-hearted before ye kin use 'em. I tell ye, when I thought of all the sufferin' that Mink went through it settled me for steel traps. Since then, says I, if ye must trap, use a deadfall or a ketchalive, one or other; no manglin' an' tormentin' for days. I tell ye that thar new Otter trap that grabs them in iron claws ought to be forbid by law; it ain't human. ”

“ Saying which, the old man thrust his hand under one end of the division, and pulled out a bundle loosely tied with a string, which became unfastened as the Trapper lifted the roll from its place in the box, and, as he shook it open, and held its contents at arm's length up to the light, the startled eyes of Wild Bill, and the earnest gaze of the Trapper, beheld a woman's dress! ”