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Actions and Reactions Page 12

by Rudyard Kipling


  A. C. BELT & SON, READING

  SAFETY WEAR FOR AERONAUTS

  Fickers! Flickers! Flickers!

  HIGH LEVEL FLICKERS "He that is down need fear no fall," Fear not! You will fall lightly as down!

  Hansen's air-kits are down in all respects. Tremendous reductions in prices previous to winter stocking. Pure para kit with cellulose seat and shoulder-pads, weighted to balance. Unequalled for all drop-work.

  Our trebly resilient heavy kit is the ne plus ultra of comfort and safety.

  Gas-buoyed, waterproof, hail-proof, nonconducting Flickers with pipe and nozzle fitting all types of generator. Graduated tap on left hip.

  Hansen's Flickers Lead the Aerial Flight 197 Oxford Street

  The new weighted Flicker with tweed or cheviot surface cannot be distinguished from the ordinary suit till inflated.

  Fickers! Flickers! Flickers!

  APPLIANCES FOR AIR PLANES

  What "SKID" was to our forefathers on the ground, "PITCH" is to their sons in the air.

  The popularity of the large, unwieldy, slow, expensive Dirigible over the light swift, Plane is mainly due to the former's immunity from pitch.

  Collison's forward-socketed Air Van renders it impossible for any plane to pitch. The C.F.S. is automatic, simple as a shutter, certain as a power hammer, safe as oxygen. Fitted to any make of plane.

  COLLISON 186 Brompton Road Workshops, Chiswick LUNDIE do MATTERS Sole Agts for East'n Hemisphere

  STARTERS AND GUIDES

  Hotel, club, and private house plane-starters, slips and guides affixed by skilled workmen in accordance with local building laws.

  Rackstraww's forty-foot collapsible steel starters with automatic release at end of travel--prices per foot run, clamps and crampons included. The safest on the market.

  Weaver & Denison Middleboro

  AIR PLANES AND DIRIGIBLE GOODS

  REMEMBER Planes are swift--so is Death Planes are cheap--so is Life

  Why does the plane builder insist on the safety of his machines? Methinks the gentleman protests too much.

  The Standard Dig Construction Company do not build kites.

  They build, equip and guarantee dirigibles. Standard Dig construction Co. Millwall and Buenos Ayres

  HOVERS

  POWELL'S Wind Hovers

  for 'planes lying-to in heavy weather, save the motor and strain on the forebody. Will not send to leeward. "Albatross" wind-hovers, rigid-ribbed; according to h.p. and weight.

  We fit and test free to 40 east of Greenwich Village L. & W. POWELL 196 Victoria Street, W.

  REMEMBER We shall always be pleased to see you.

  We build and test and guarantee our dirigibles or all purposes. They go up when you please and they do not come down till you please.

  You can please yourself, but--you might as well choose a dirigible.

  STANDARD DIRIGIBLE CONSTRUCTION CO. Millwall and Buenos Ayres

  GAYER AND HUNT Birmingham and Birmingham Eng. Ala. Towers. Landing Stages, Slips and Lifts public and private

  Contractors to the A. B. C., South-Western European Postal Construction Dept. Sole patentees and owners of the Collison anti-quake diagonal tower-tie. Only gold medal Kyoto Exhibition of Aerial Appliances, 1997.

  AIR PLANES AND DIRIGIBLES

  C. M. C. Our Synthetical Mineral BEARINGS

  are chemically and crystal logically identical with the minerals whose names they bear. Any size, any surface. Diamond, Rock-Crystal, Agate and Ruby Bearings-cups, caps and collars for the higher speeds. For tractor bearings and spindles-Imperative. For rear propellers-Indispensable. For all working parts-Advisable.

  Commercial Minerals Co. 107 Minories

  RESURGAM! If you have not Clothed YOURSELF in a NORMANDIE RESURGAM

  YOU WILL PROBABLY NOT BE INTERESTED IN OUR NEXT WEEK'S LIST OF AIR-KIT.

  RESURGAM AIR-KIT EMPORIUM HYMANS & GRAHAM 1198 Lower Broadway, New York

  REMEMBER!

  It is now nearly, a generation since the Plane was to supersede the Dirigible for all purposes. * TO-DAY none of the Planet's freight is carried en plane. * Less than two per rent of the Planet's passengers are carried en plane.

  We design, equip guarantee Dirigibles for all purposes.

  Standard Dig Construction Company MILLWALL and BUENOS AYRES

  BAT-BOATS

  FLINT & MANTEL SOUTHAMPTON FOR SALE

  at the end of Season the following Bat-Boats:

  GRISELDA, 65 knt., 42 ft., 430(nom.) Maginnis Motor, under-rake rudder. MABELLE, 50 knt., 40 ft., 310 Hargreaves Motor, Douglas' lock-steering gear. IVEMONA, 50 knt., 35 ft., 300 Hargreaves (Radium accelerator), Miller keel and rudder.

  The above are well known on the South Coast as sound, wholesome knockabout boats, with ample cruising accommodation. Griselda carries spare set of Hofman racing vans and can be lied three foot clear in smooth water with ballast-tank swung aft. The others do not lift, clear of water, and are recommended for beginners.

  Also, by private treaty, racing B.B. Tarpon (76 winning flags) 120 knt., 60 ft.; Long-Davidson double under-rake rudder, new this season and unstrained. 850 nom. Maginnis motor, Radium relays and Pond generator. Bronze breakwater forward, and treble reinforced forefoot and entry. Talfourd rockered keel: Triple set of Hofman vans, giving maximum lifting surface of 5327 sq. ft.

  Tarpon-has been lifted and held seven feet for two miles between touch and touch.

  Our Autumn List of racing and family Bats ready on the 9th January.

  AIR PLANES AND STARTERS

  HINKS MODERATOR Monorail overhead starter for family and private planes up to twenty-five foot over all

  Absolutely Safe

  Hinks & Co.. Birmingham

  J. D. ARDAGH

  I AM NOT CONCERNED WITH YOUR PLANE I AFTER IT LEAVES MY GUIDES, BUT TILL THEN I HOLD MYSELF PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR LIFE, SAFETY, AND COMFORT. MY HYDRAULIC BUFFER-STOP CANNOT RELEASE TILL THE MOTORS ARE WORKING UP TO BEARING SPEED, THUS SECURING A SAFE AND GRACEFUL FLIGHT WITHOUT PITCHING.

  Remember our motto, "Upward and Outward," and do not trust yourself to so-called "rigid" guide-bars J. D. ARDAGH, BELFAST AND TURIN

  ACCESSORIES AND SPARES

  CHRISTIAN WRIGHT & OLDIS ESTABLISHED 1924 ACCESSORIES and SPARES Hooded Binnacles with dip-dials automatically recording change of level (illuminated face).

  All heights from 50 to 15,000 feet L2 10 0 With Aerial Board of Control certificate L3 11 0 Foot and Hand Foghoms; Sirens toned to any club note; with air-chest belt-driven horn motor L6 8 0 Wireless installations syntonised to A.B.C. requirements, in neat mahogany case, hundred mile range L3 3 0

  Grapnels, mushroom--anchors, pithing-irons, winches, hawsers, snaps, shackles and mooring ropes, for lawn, city, and public installations.

  Detachable under-cars, aluminum or stamped steel.

  Keeled under-cars for planes: single-action detaching-gear, turning car into boat with one motion of the wrist. Invaluable for sea trips.

  Head, side, and riding lights (by size) Nos.00 to 20 A.B.C. Standard. Rockets and fog-bombs in colours and tones of the principal clubs (boxed). A selection of twenty L2 17 6 International night-signals (boxed) L1 11 6

  Spare generators guaranteed to lifting power marked on cover (prices according to power).

  Wind-noses for dirigibles--Pegamoid, cane-stiffened, lacquered cane or aluminum and flux for winter work.

  Smoke-ring cannon for hail storms, swivel mounted, bow or stern.

  Propeller blades: metal, tungsten backed; paper-mache wire stiffened; ribbed Xylonite (Nickson's patent); all razor-edged (price by pitch and diameter).

  Compressed steel bow-screws for winter work.

  Fused Ruby or Commercial Mineral Co. bearings and collars. Agate-mounted thrust-blocks up to 4 inch.

  Magniac's bow-rudders--(Lavales patent grooving).

  Wove steel beltings for outboard motors (nonmagnetic).

  Radium batteries, all powers to 150 h.p. (in pairs).

  Helium batter
ies, all powers to 300 h.p. (tandem).

  Stun'sle brakes worked from upper or lower platform.

  Direct plunge-brakes worked from lower platform only, loaded silk or fibre, wind-tight.

  CATALOGUES FREE THROUGHOUT THE PLANET

  THE FOUR ANGELS As ADAM lay a-dreaming beneath the Apple Tree, The Angel of the Earth came down, and offered Earth in fee. But Adam did not need it, Nor the plough he would not speed it, Singing:--"Earth and Water, Air and Fire, What more can mortal man desire?" (The Apple Tree's in bud.) As Adam lay a-dreaming beneath the Apple Tree, The Angel of the Waters offered all the Seas in fee. But Adam would not take 'em, Nor the ships he wouldn't make 'em, Singing:--"Water, Earth and Air and Fire, What more can mortal man desire?" (The Apple Tree's in leaf.) As Adam lay a-dreaming beneath the Apple Tree, The Angel of the Air he offered all the Air in fee. But Adam did not crave it, Nor the flight he wouldn't brave it, Singing:--"Air and Water, Earth and Fire, What more can mortal man desire?" (The Apple Tree's in bloom.) As Adam lay a-dreaming beneath the Apple Tree, The Angel of the Fire rose up and not a word said he. But he wished a fire and made it, And in Adam's heart he laid it, Singing.--"Fire, fire, burning Fire, Stand up and reach your heart's desire!" (The Apple Blossom's set.) As Adam was a-working outside of Eden-Wall, He used the Earth, he used the Seas, he used the Air and all; And out of black disaster He arose to be the master Of Earth and Water, Air and Fire, But never reached his heart's desire! (The Apple Tree's cut down!)

  A DEAL IN COTTON

  Long and long ago, when Devadatta was King of Benares, I wrote some tales concerning Strickland of the Punjab Police (who married Miss Youghal), and Adam, his son. Strickland has finished his Indian Service, and lives now at a place in England called Weston-super-Mare, where his wife plays the organ in one of the churches. Semi-occasionally he comes up to London, and occasionally his wife makes him visit his friends. Otherwise he plays golf and follows the harriers for his figure's sake.

  If you remember that Infant who told a tale to Eustace Cleever the novelist, you will remember that he became a baronet with a vast estate. He has, owing to cookery, a little lost his figure, but he never loses his friends. I have found a wing of his house turned into a hospital for sick men, and there I once spent a week in the company of two dismal nurses and a specialist in "Sprue." Another time the place was full of schoolboys--sons of Anglo-Indians whom the Infant had collected for the holidays, and they nearly broke his keeper's heart.

  But my last visit was better. The Infant called me up by wire, and I fell into the arms of a friend of mine, Colonel A.L. Corkran, so that the years departed from us, and we praised Allah, who had not yet terminated the Delights, nor separated the Companions.

  Said Corkran, when he had explained how it felt to command a native Infantry regiment on the border: "The Stricks are coming for to-night-with their boy."

  "I remember him. The little fellow I wrote a story about," I said. "Is he in the Service?"

  "No. Strick got him into the Centro-Euro-Africa Protectorate. He's Assistant-Commissioner at Dupe--wherever that is. Somaliland, ain't it, Stalky?" asked the Infant.

  Stalky puffed out his nostrils scornfully. "You're only three thousand miles out. Look at the atlas."

  "Anyhow, he's as rotten full of fever as the rest of you," said the Infant, at length on the big divan. "And he's bringing a native servant with him. Stalky be an athlete, and tell Ipps to put him in the stable room."

  "Why? Is he a Yao--like the fellow Wade brought here--when your housekeeper had fits?" Stalky often visits the Infant, and has seen some odd things.

  "No. He's one of old Strickland's Punjabi policemen--and quite European--I believe."

  "Hooray! Haven't talked Punjabi for three months--and a Punjabi from Central Africa ought to be amusin'."

  We heard the chuff of the motor in the porch, and the first to enter was Agnes Strickland, whom the Infant makes no secret of adoring.

  He is devoted, in a fat man's placid way, to at least eight designing women; but she nursed him once through a bad bout of Peshawur fever, and when she is in the house, it is more than all hers.

  "You didn't send rugs enough," she began. "Adam might have taken a chill."

  "It's quite warm in the tonneau. Why did you let him ride in front? "

  "Because he wanted to," she replied, with the mother's smile, and we were introduced to the shadow of a young man leaning heavily on the shoulder of a bearded Punjabi Mohammedan.

  "That is all that came home of him," said his father to me. There was nothing in it of the child with whom I had journeyed to Dalhousie centuries since."

  "And what is this uniform?" Stalky asked of Imam Din, the servant, who came to attention on the marble floor.

  "The uniform of the Protectorate troops, Sahib. Though I am the Little Sahib's body-servant, it is not seemly for us white men to be attended by folk dressed altogether as servants."

  "And--and you white men wait at table on horseback?" Stalky pointed to the man's spurs.

  "These I added for the sake of honour when I came to England," said Imam Din Adam smiled the ghost of a little smile that I began to remember, and we put him on the big couch for refreshments. Stalky asked him how much leave he had, and he said "Six months."

  "But he'll take another six on medical certificate," said Agnes anxiously. Adam knit his brows.

  "You don't want to--eh? I know. Wonder what my second in command is doing." Stalky tugged his moustache, and fell to thinking of his Sikhs.

  "Ah!" said the Infant. "I've only a few thousand pheasants to look after. Come along and dress for dinner. We're just ourselves. What flower is your honour's ladyship commanding for the table?"

  "Just ourselves?" she said, looking at the crotons in the great hall. "Then let's have marigolds the little cemetery ones."

  So it was ordered.

  Now, marigolds to us mean hot weather, discomfort, parting, and death. That smell in our nostrils, and Adam's servant in waiting, we naturally fell back more and more on the old slang, recalling at each glass those who had gone before. We did not sit at the big table, but in the bay window overlooking the park, where they were carting the last of the hay. When twilight fell we would not have candles, but waited for the moon, and continued our talk in the dusk that makes one remember.

  Young Adam was not interested in our past except where it had touched his future. I think his mother held his hand beneath the table. Imam Din--shoeless, out of respect to the floors--brought him his medicine, poured it drop by drop, and asked for orders.

  "Wait to take him to his cot when he grows weary," said his mother, and Imam Din retired into the shadow by the ancestral portraits.

  "Now what d'you expect to get out of your country?" the Infant asked, when--our India laid aside we talked Adam's Africa. It roused him at once.

  "Rubber -nuts -gums -and so on," he said. "But our real future is cotton. I grew fifty acres of it last year in my District."

  "My District!" said his father. "Hear him, Mummy!"

  "I did though! I wish I could show you the sample. Some Manchester chaps said it was as good as any Sea Island cotton on the market."

  "But what made you a cotton-planter, my son?" she asked.

  "My Chief said every man ought to have a shouk (a hobby) of sorts, and he took the trouble to ride a day out of his way to show me a belt of black soil that was just the thing for cotton."

  "Ah! What was your Chief like?" Stalky asked, in his silkiest tones.

  "The best man alive--absolutely. He lets you blow your own nose yourself. The people call him"--Adam jerked out some heathen phrase--"that means the Man with the Stone Eyes, you know."

  "I'm glad of that. Because I've heard from other quarters" Stalky's sentence burned like a slow match, but the explosion was not long delayed. "Other quarters!" Adam threw out a thin hand. "Every dog has his fleas. If you listen to them, of course!" The shake of his head was as I remembered it among his father's policemen twenty years before, and his mother's e
yes shining through the dusk called on me to adore it. I kicked Stalky on the shin. One must not mock a young man's first love or loyalty.

  A lump of raw cotton appeared on the table.

  "I thought there might be a need. Therefore I packed it between our shirts," said the voice of Imam Din.

  "Does he know as much English as that?" cried the Infant, who had forgotten his East.

  We all admired the cotton for Adam's sake, and, indeed, it was very long and glossy.

  "It's--it's only an experiment," he said. "We're such awful paupers we can't even pay for a mailcart in my District. We use a biscuit-box on two bicycle wheels. I only got the money for that"--he patted the stuff--"by a pure fluke."

  "How much did it cost?" asked Strickland.

  "With seed and machinery--about two hundred pounds. I had the labour done by cannibals."

 

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