Latest / The H. G. Wells Library / The War in the Air Chapter 1 Parts 4-6

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The War in the Air Chapter 1 Parts 4-6 · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter one, Parts four, five, and six of War in
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  Speaker 1: the Air. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings
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  Speaker 1: were in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer,
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by Frank Booker. It
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  Speaker 1: is curious how that revival began. It was like the
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  Speaker 1: coming of a breeze on a quiet day. Nothing started it.
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  Speaker 1: It came. People began to talk of flying with an
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  Speaker 1: air of never having for one moment dropped the subject.
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  Speaker 1: Pictures of flying and flying machines returned to the newspapers.
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  Speaker 1: Articles and illusions increased and multiplied in the serious magazines.
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  Speaker 1: People asked in mono rail trains, when are we going
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  Speaker 1: to fly? A new crop of investors sprang up in
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  Speaker 1: a night or so, like Fungi, the Aero Club announced
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  Speaker 1: the project of a great flying exhibition in a large
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  Speaker 1: area of ground that the removal of slums in Whitechapel
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  Speaker 1: had rendered available. Dancing Wave soon produced a sympathetic ripple
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  Speaker 1: in the bun Hill establishment. Grubb routed out his flying
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  Speaker 1: machine model again, tried it in the yard behind the shop,
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  Speaker 1: got a kind of flight out of it, and broke
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  Speaker 1: seventeen panes of glass and nine flower pots in the
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  Speaker 1: greenhouse that occupied the yard next but one, and then,
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  Speaker 1: springing from nowhere, sustained one knew not how came a persistent,
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  Speaker 1: disturbing rumor that the problem had been solved and a
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  Speaker 1: secret was known. Bert met it one early closing afternoon,
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  Speaker 1: as he refreshed himself in an inn near Nutfield, whither
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  Speaker 1: his motor bicycle had brought him there, smoked and meditated
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  Speaker 1: a person in Khaki, an engineer who presently took an
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  Speaker 1: interest in Bert's machine. It was a sturdy piece of apparatus,
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  Speaker 1: and it had acquired a kind of documentary value in
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  Speaker 1: those quick changing times. It was now nearly eight years old,
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  Speaker 1: its points discussed, the soldier broke into a new topic
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  Speaker 1: with my NeXT's going to be an aeroplane. So far
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  Speaker 1: as I can see, I've had enough of roads and ways.
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  Speaker 1: They talk, said Bert. They talk, and they do, said
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  Speaker 1: the soldier. The thing's coming. It keeps on coming, said Bert.
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  Speaker 1: I shall believe it when I see it. It won't
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  Speaker 1: be long, said the soldier. The conversation seemed degenerating into
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  Speaker 1: an amiable wrangle of contradiction. I tell you they are flying,
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  Speaker 1: the soldier insisted, I see it myself. We've all seen it,
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  Speaker 1: said Bert. I don't mean to flap and smash up.
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  Speaker 1: I mean real safe, steady, controlled flying against the wind,
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  Speaker 1: good and right. You ain't seen that, Oh you have aldershot.
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  Speaker 1: They tried to keep it a secret. They got it
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  Speaker 1: right enough. You bet our war office isn't going to
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  Speaker 1: be caught napping. This time. Bert's incredulity was shaken. He
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  Speaker 1: asked questions, and the soldier expanded, I tell you they
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  Speaker 1: got nearly a square mile fenced in a sort of valley,
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  Speaker 1: fences of barb wire ten feet high, and inside they
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  Speaker 1: do things, chaps about the camp now and then we
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  Speaker 1: get a peep. It isn't only us neither. Here's the Japanese.
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  Speaker 1: You bet they got it too, and the Germans. The
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  Speaker 1: soldier stood with his legs very wide apart and filled
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  Speaker 1: his pipe thoughtfully. Bert sat on the low wall against
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  Speaker 1: which his motorcycle was leaning. Funny thing. Fight no'll be,
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  Speaker 1: he said. Flyin's going to break out, said the soldier
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  Speaker 1: when it does come, when the curtain does go up,
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  Speaker 1: I tell you you'll find every one on the stage
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  Speaker 1: busy such fighting too. I suppose you don't read the
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  Speaker 1: papers about this sort of thing. I'll read em a bit,
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  Speaker 1: said Bert Well, if you noticed what one might call
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  Speaker 1: the remarkable case of the disappearing inventor. The inventor who
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  Speaker 1: turns up in a blaze of publicity, fires off a
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  Speaker 1: few successful experiments and vanishes. Can't say I have, said
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  Speaker 1: Bert Well, I have Anyhow you get anybody come along
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  Speaker 1: who does anything striking in this line, and you bet
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  Speaker 1: he vanishes, just goes off quietly out of sight. After
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  Speaker 1: a bit, you don't hear anything more of them. See
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  Speaker 1: they disappear, gone no address. First, Oh, it's an old story.
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  Speaker 1: Now there was those Wright brothers out in America. They glided,
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  Speaker 1: they glided miles and miles. Finally they glided off stage.
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  Speaker 1: Why it must be nineteen hundred and four or five.
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  Speaker 1: They vanished. Then there was those people in Ireland. Now
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  Speaker 1: I forget their names. Everybody said they could fly. They went.
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  Speaker 1: They ain't dead, that I've heard tell. But you can't
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  Speaker 1: say they're alive. Not a Featherum? Can you see? Then
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  Speaker 1: that chap who flew around Paris and upset in the
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  Speaker 1: Seine de Booley? Was it of get there was a
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  Speaker 1: grand fly in spite of the accident. But where's he
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  Speaker 1: got to? The accident didn't hurt him, Eh, he's gone
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  Speaker 1: to cover. The soldier prepared to light his pipe. Looks
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  Speaker 1: like a secret society got hold of him, said Bert.
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  Speaker 1: Secret society is he nah? The soldier lit his match
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  Speaker 1: and drew secret society, he repeated, with his pipe between
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  Speaker 1: his teeth and the match flaring. In response to his words,
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  Speaker 1: or department, that's more like it. He threw his match
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  Speaker 1: aside and walked to his machines. I tell you, sir,
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  Speaker 1: he said, there isn't a big power in Europe, or Asia,
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  Speaker 1: or America or Africa that hasn't got at least one
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  Speaker 1: or two flying machines hidden up its sleeve at the
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  Speaker 1: present time. Not one real workable flying machines, and the spying,
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  Speaker 1: the spying and maneuver to find out what the others
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  Speaker 1: have got. I tell you, sir, a foreigner, or for
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  Speaker 1: the matter of that, an unaccredited native can't get within
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  Speaker 1: four miles of Lydd nowadays. Not to mention our little
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  Speaker 1: circus at Aldershot and the experimental camp at Galway. No well,
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  Speaker 1: said Bert, I'd like to see one of 'em anyhow,
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  Speaker 1: jest to help believing. I'll believe when I see that.
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  Speaker 1: I'll promise you you'll see him fast enough, said the soldier,
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  Speaker 1: and led his machine to the road. He left Bert
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  Speaker 1: on his wall, grave and pensive, with his cap on
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  Speaker 1: the back of his head and a cigarette smoldering in
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  Speaker 1: the corner of his mouth. If what he says is true,
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  Speaker 1: said Bert, me and Grubb, we've been wasting our blessed
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  Speaker 1: old time. Besides in current expense with that Greenhouse five.
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  Speaker 1: It was, while this mysterious talk with the soldiers still
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  Speaker 1: stirred in Bert's smallway's imagination, at the most astounding incident
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  Speaker 1: in the whole of that dramatic chapter of human history,
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: the coming of flying occurred. People talked glibly enough of
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: epoch making events. This was an epoch making event. It
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  Speaker 1: was the unanticipated and entirely successful flight of mister Alfred
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  Speaker 1: Butteridge from the Crystal Palace to Glasgow and back in
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  Speaker 1: a small, businesslike looking machine heavier than air, an entirely
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  Speaker 1: manageable and controllable machine that could fly as well as
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  Speaker 1: a pigeon. It wasn't one felt a fresh step forward
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  Speaker 1: in the matter, so much as a giant stride, a
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  Speaker 1: leap mister Butteridge remained in the air altogether for about
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  Speaker 1: nine hours, and during that time he flew with the
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  Speaker 1: ease and assurance of a bird. His machine was, however,
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  Speaker 1: neither bird like nor butterfly like, nor had it the
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  Speaker 1: wide lateral expansion of the ordinary aeroplane. The effect upon
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  Speaker 1: the observer was rather something in the nature of a
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  Speaker 1: bee or a wasp. Parts of the apparatus were spinning
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  Speaker 1: very rapidly and gave one a hazy effect of transparent wings.
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  Speaker 1: But parts, including two peculiarly curved wing cases, if one
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  Speaker 1: may borrow a figure from the flying beetles, remained expanded stiffly.
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  Speaker 1: In the middle was a long rounded body, like a
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  Speaker 1: body of a smart and on this mister Butteridge could
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  Speaker 1: be seen sitting astride, much as a man bestrides a horse.
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  Speaker 1: The wasp like resemblance was increased by the fact that
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  Speaker 1: the apparatus flew with a deep, booming hum, exactly the
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  Speaker 1: sound made by a wasp at a windowpane. Mister Butteridge
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  Speaker 1: took the world by surprise. He was one of those
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  Speaker 1: gentlemen from nowhere. Fate still succeeds in producing for the
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  Speaker 1: stimulation of mankind. He came, it was variously said, from
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  Speaker 1: Australia and America, and the south of France. He was
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  Speaker 1: also described, quite inco directly as the son of a
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  Speaker 1: man who had amassed a comfortable fortune in the manufacture
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  Speaker 1: of gold nibs and the Butteridge fountain pens. But this
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  Speaker 1: was an entirely different strain of butteridges. Some years, in
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  Speaker 1: spite of a loud voice, a large presence, an aggressive swagger,
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  Speaker 1: and an implacable manner, he had been an undistinguished member
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  Speaker 1: of most of the existing aeronautical associations. Then one day
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  Speaker 1: he wrote to all the London papers to announce that
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  Speaker 1: he had made arrangements for an ascent from the Crystal
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  Speaker 1: Palace of a machine that would demonstrate satisfactorily that the
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  Speaker 1: outstanding difficulties in the way of flying were finally solved.
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  Speaker 1: Few of the papers printed his letter. Still fewer were
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  Speaker 1: the people who believed in his claim. No one was excited,
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  Speaker 1: even when a fracas on the steps of a leading
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  Speaker 1: hotel in Piccadilly, in which he tried to horsewhip a
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  Speaker 1: prominent German musician upon some personal account, delayed his promise
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  Speaker 1: to s the quarrel was inadequately reported, and his name
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  Speaker 1: spelt variously Betteridge and Betridge until his flight. Indeed, he
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  Speaker 1: did not and could not contrive to exist in the
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  Speaker 1: public mind. There were scarcely thirty people on the lookout
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  Speaker 1: for him, in spite of all his clamor. When about
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  Speaker 1: six o'clock one summer morning, the doors of the big
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  Speaker 1: shed in which he had been putting together his apparatus opened.
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  Speaker 1: It was near the big model of the Megatherium in
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  Speaker 1: the Crystal Palace grounds, and his giant insect came droning
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  Speaker 1: out into a negligent and incredulous world. But before he
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  Speaker 1: had made his second circuit of the Crystal Palace towers,
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  Speaker 1: Fame was lifting her trumpet. She drew a deep breath
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  Speaker 1: as the startled tramps who slept on the seats of
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  Speaker 1: Trafalgar Square were roused by his buzz and awoke to
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  Speaker 1: discover him circling the Nelson Column. And by the time
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  Speaker 1: he had got to Birmingham, which place he crossed about
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  Speaker 1: half past ten, her deafening blast was echoing throughout the country.
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  Speaker 1: The despaired of thing was done. A man was flying
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  Speaker 1: securely and well. Scotland was agape for his coming Glasgow.
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  Speaker 1: He reached by one o'clock, and it was related that
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  Speaker 1: scarcely a shipyard or factory in that busy hive of
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  Speaker 1: industry resumed work before half past two. The public mind
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  Speaker 1: was just sufficiently educated on the impossibility of flying to
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  Speaker 1: appreciate mister Butteridge at his proper value. He circled the
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  Speaker 1: university buildings and dropped to within shooting distance of the
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  Speaker 1: crowds of west End Park and on the slope of
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  Speaker 1: Glamoor Hill. The thing flew quite steadily at a pace
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  Speaker 1: of about three miles an hour in a wide circle,
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  Speaker 1: making a deep hum that would have dropped his full
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  Speaker 1: rich voice completely had he not provided himself with a megaphone.
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  Speaker 1: He avoided churches, buildings and mono rail cables with consummate ease.
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  Speaker 1: As he conversed me, name's Buttridge, he shouted, b U
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  Speaker 1: T T E R I g E got it me,
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  Speaker 1: mother was scotch. Having assured himself that he had been understood,
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: he rose amidst cheers and shouting and patriotic cries, and
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  Speaker 1: then flew up very swiftly and easily into the southeastern sky,
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  Speaker 1: rising and falling with long, easy undulations in an extraordinarily
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  Speaker 1: wasp like manner. His return to London, he visited and
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  Speaker 1: hovered over Manchester and Liverpool and Oxford on his way,
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  Speaker 1: and spelt his name out to each place. Was an
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  Speaker 1: occasion of unparalleled excitement. Everyone one was staring Heavenworth. More
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  Speaker 1: people were run over in the streets upon that one
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  Speaker 1: day than in the previous three months, and a County
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  Speaker 1: Council steamboat, the Isaac Walton, collided with a pier of
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  Speaker 1: Westminster Bridge and narrowly escaped disaster by running ashore. It
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  Speaker 1: was low water on the mud on the south side.
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  Speaker 1: He returned to the Crystal Palace grounds, that classic starting
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  Speaker 1: point of aerodynamic adventure about sunset, re entered his shed
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  Speaker 1: without disaster and had the doors locked immediately upon the
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  Speaker 1: photographers and journalists who had been waiting his return. Look here,
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  Speaker 1: you chaps, he said, as his assistant did so. I'm
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  Speaker 1: toy to death and saddle sore. I can't give you
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  Speaker 1: a word to talk. I'm too done. My name's Butteridge,
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  Speaker 1: b U T T E R I G E get
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  Speaker 1: at right. I'm an Imperial Englishman and I'll talk to
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  Speaker 1: you all to morrow. Foggy snapshots still survived to record
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  Speaker 1: that incident. His assistant struggles in a sea of aggressive
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  Speaker 1: young men, carrying note books or upholding cameras and wearing
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  Speaker 1: bowler hats and enterprising ties. He himself towers up in
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  Speaker 1: the doorway, a big figure with a mouth an eloquent
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  Speaker 1: cavity beneath a vast black mustache, distorted by his shout
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  Speaker 1: to these relentless agents of publicity. He towers there the
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  Speaker 1: most famous man in the country. Almost symbolically, he holds
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  Speaker 1: and gesticulates with a megaphone in his left hand. Tom
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  Speaker 1: and Bert Smallways both saw that return. They watched from
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  Speaker 1: the crest of bun Hill, from which they had so
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  Speaker 1: often surveyed the pyrotechniques of the Crystal Palace. Bert was excited.
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  Speaker 1: Tom kept calm and lumpish, but neither of them realized
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  Speaker 1: how their own lives were to be in hated by
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  Speaker 1: the fruits of that beginning. Perhaps old grubble mind a
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  Speaker 1: sharper bid now, he said, and put his blessed model
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  Speaker 1: in the fire. Not that that can save us if
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: we don't tie it over with Steinard's account. Bertonew enough
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  Speaker 1: of things, and the problem of aeronautics to realize that
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: this giant imitation of a bee would to use his
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: own idiom give the newspapers fits. The next day it
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: was clear the fits had been given, even as he
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  Speaker 1: had said. Their magazine pages were black with hasty photographs.
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  Speaker 1: Their prose was convulsive. They foamed at the headline. The
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  Speaker 1: next day. They were worse before the week was out.
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  Speaker 1: They were not so much published as carried screaming into
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  Speaker 1: the streets. The dominant fact in the uproar was the
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  Speaker 1: exceptional personality of mister Butteridge and the extraordinary terms he
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  Speaker 1: demanded for the secret of his machine, For it was
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  Speaker 1: a secret, and he kept his secret in the most
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  Speaker 1: elaborate fashion. He built his apparatus himself in the safe
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  Speaker 1: privacy of the Great Crystal Palace sheds, with the assistance
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  Speaker 1: of inattentive workmen, and the day next following his flight,
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  Speaker 1: he took it to pieces single handed, packed certain portions,
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  Speaker 1: and then secured unintelligent assistance in packing and dispersing the
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: rest sealed. Packing cases went north and east and west
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: to various pantotechnicons, and the engines were boxed with peculiar care.
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  Speaker 1: It became evident These precautions were not inadvisable in view
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  Speaker 1: of the violent demand for any sort of photograph or
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: impressions of his machine. But mister Butteridge, having once made
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  Speaker 1: his demonstration, intended to keep his secret safe from any
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: further risk of leakage. He faced the British public now
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  Speaker 1: with the question whether they wanted his secrets or not.
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  Speaker 1: He was, he said, perpetually, an imperial Englishman, and his
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  Speaker 1: first wish and his last, was to see his invention
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  Speaker 1: the privilege and monopoly of the Empire. Only. It was
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  Speaker 1: there the difficulty began. Mister Butteridge, it became evident, was
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  Speaker 1: a man singularly free from any false modesty, indeed from
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: any modesty of any kind, singularly willing to see interviewers
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: answer questions upon any topic except aeronautics, volunteer informations, criticisms,
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: and autobiographic supply portraits and photographs of himself, and generally
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: spread his personality across the terrestrial sky. The published portraits
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: insisted primarily upon an immense black mustache, and secondarily upon
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: a fierceness behind the mustache. That general impression upon the
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: public was that Buttridge was a small man, no one big,
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: it was felt, could have been so virulently aggressive an expression,
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: though as a matter of fact, Butteridge had a height
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  Speaker 1: of six feet two inches and a weight altogether proportionate
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  Speaker 1: to that. Moreover, he had a love affair of large
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: and unusual dimensions and irregular circumstances, and the still largely
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: decorous British public learnt with reluctance and alarm that a
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: sympathetic treatment of this affair was inseparable from the exclusive
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: acquisition of the priceless secret of aurial stability by the
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: British Empire. The exact particular the similarity never came to light,
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: but apparently lady, in a fit of high minded inadvertence,
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: had gone through the ceremony of marriage with one quotes
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: the unpublished discourse of mister Butteridge, a white livid skunk,
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: And this zoological aberration did, in some legal and vexatious manner,
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: mar her social happiness. He wanted to talk about the business,
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: to show the splendor of her nature in the light
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: of its complications. It was really most embarrassing to oppress
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: that has always possessed a concer considerable turn for reticence,
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: that wanted things personal, indeed in the modern fashion, yet
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: not too personal. It was embarrassing, I say, to be
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: inexorably confronted with mister Butteridge's great heart, to see it
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: laid open and relentless self vivisection and its pulsating dissepiments,
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: adorned with emphatic flag labels. Confronted they were, and there
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: was no getting away from it. He would make his appalling,
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: viscous beat and throb before the shrinking journalists. No uncle
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: with a big watch and a little baby ever harped
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: upon it so relentlessly. Whatever evasion they attempted he set aside.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: He gloried in his love, he said, and compelled them
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: to write it down. That is, of course a private affair,
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: mister Butteridge. They would object, The injustice sorr is public.
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: I do not care either I am up against institutions
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: or individuals. I do not care if I am up
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: again against the universal all. I am pleading the cause
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  Speaker 2: of a woman, a woman I love, sir, A noble
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: woman misunderstood. I intend to vindicate her, sir, to the
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: four winds of heaven. I love England, he used to say,
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: love England, but Puritanism sir, I abhor it fills me
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: with loathing, it raises my gorge. Take my own case,
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: he insisted relentlessly upon his heart, and upon seeing proofs
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  Speaker 2: of the interview, if they had not done justice to
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: his erotic bellowings and gesticulations, he stuck in in a large,
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: inky scrawl, all and more that they had omitted. It
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: was a strangely embarrassing thing for British journalism. Never was
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: there a more obvious or uninteresting affair. Never had the
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: world heard the story of erratic affection with less appetite
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: or sympathy. On the other hand, it was extremely curious
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: about mister Butteridge's invention. But when mister Butteridge could be
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: deflected for a moment from the cause of the lady
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: he championed, then he talked chiefly, and usually with tears
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: of tenderness in his voice, about his mother and his childhood.
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  Speaker 2: His mother, who crowned a complete encyclopedia of maternal virtue
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: by being largely Scotch. She was not quite neat, but
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: nearly so.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: I owe everything in me to me, mother, he asserted, everything. Eh,
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  Speaker 1: And I ask any man who's done anything, you'll hear
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: their same story. All we have we owe to women.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: They are the species. Or a man is but a dream.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: He comes and goes, a woman's soul leads us upwards
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: and on. He was always going on like that. What
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: in particular he wanted from the government for his secret
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: did not appear, nor what beyond a money payment could
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: be expected from a modern state in such an affair.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: The general effect upon judicious observers, indeed, was not that
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: he was treating for anything, but that he was using
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: an unexampled opportunity to bellow and show off to an
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: attentive world. Rumors of his real identity spread abroad. It
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: was said that he had been the landlord of an
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: ambitious hotel in Cape Town, and had there given shelter
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: to and witnessed the experiments, and finally stolen the papers
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: and plans of an extremely shy and friendless young inventor
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: named Palliser, who had come to South Africa from England
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: in an advanced stage of consumption and died there. This,
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: any rate, was the allegation of the more outspoken American press,
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: but the proof or disproof of that never reached the public.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: Mister Butteridge also involved himself passionately in a tangle of
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: disputes for the possession of a great number of valuable
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: money prizes. Some of these had been offered so long
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: ago as nineteen o six for successful mechanical flight. By
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: the time of mister Butteridge's success, a really very considerable
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: number of newspapers, tempted by the impunity of the pioneers
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: in its direction, had pledged themselves to pay, in some
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: cases quite overwhelming sums to the first person to fly
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: from Manchester to Glasgow, from London to Manchester one hundred miles,
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: two hundred miles in England and alike. Most had hedged
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: a little with ambiguous conditions, and now offered resistance. One
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: or two paid at once and vehemently called attention to
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: the fact, and mister Butteridge plunged into litigation with the
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: more recalcitrant, while at the same time sustaining of vigorous
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: agitation and canvas to induce the government to purchase his invention.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: Flight an unknown man and insult a noble woman whose
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: boat they are not fitted to unlatch. They are nations,
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: not blinded to science, not given over to hand and
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: foot to a feat novocracies and degenerate decadence in sort.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: Mark my words, there are other nations this speech it
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: was that particularly impressed Bert. Smallways. If them Germans or
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: them Americans get hold of this, he said impressively to
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: his brother. The British Empire's done. It's you p the union, Jack,
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: so to speak, won't be worth the papers written on Tom.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: I suppose you couldn't let his hand this morning, said
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: Jessica in his impressive pause. Everybody in bun Hill seems
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: wanting early potatoes at once. Tom can't carry half of them.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: We're living in a volcano, said Bert, disregarding the suggestion
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: at any moment war may come. Such a war, he
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: shook his head portentously. You'd better take this law first, Tom,
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: said Jessica. She turned briskly on Bert. Can you spare
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: us a morning, she asked? I dare say I can,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: said Bert. The shop's very quiet this morning. Though all
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: is danger to the empire worries me. Something frightful work
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: will take it off your mind, said Jessica, And presently
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: he too, was going out in the world of change
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: and wonder. Bowed beneath a load of potatoes and patriotic
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: insecurity that merged at last into a very definite irritation
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: at the weight and want of style of the potatoes,
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: and a very clear conception of the entire detestableness of Jessica.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: End of Chapter one, Parts four, five, and six.