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The War in the Air Chapter 1 Parts 1-3 · The H. G. Wells Library

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Speaker 1: Chapter one, Parts one, two and three 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 volunteer,
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Speaker 1: please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by Frank Booker, The
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Speaker 1: War in the Air, Chapter one of Progress and the
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Speaker 1: Smallways Family. The Air Progress, said mister Tom Smallways. It
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Speaker 1: keeps on. You'd hardly think it could keep on, said
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Speaker 1: mister Tom Smallways. It was long before the War in
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Speaker 1: the Air began that mister Smallways made this remark. He
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Speaker 1: was sitting on the fence at the end of his
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Speaker 1: garden and surveying the great bun Hill gas works with
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Speaker 1: an eye that neither praised nor blamed. Above the clustering gasometers,
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Speaker 1: three unfamiliar shapes appeared, thin wallowing bladders that flapped and
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Speaker 1: rolled about and grew bigger and bigger, and rounder and rounder.
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Speaker 1: Balloons in course of inflation. For the South of England,
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Speaker 1: aero clubs set the afternoon ascent. It goes up every Saturday,
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Speaker 1: says his neighbor, mister Stringer, the Milkman. It's only yesterday,
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Speaker 1: so to speak, when all London turned out to say
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Speaker 1: balloon go over and now every little place in the
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Speaker 1: country has its weekly outings uppings. Rather, it's been the
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Speaker 1: salvation of them gas companies. Last Saturday, I got three
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Speaker 1: barrel loads of gravel off my petateres, said mister Tom Smallways.
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Speaker 1: Three barrel loads. What they dropped as ballast, some plants
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Speaker 1: was broke and some was buried. Ladies, I say, goes up.
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Speaker 1: I suppose you gotta call them ladies, said mister Tom Smallways. Still,
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Speaker 1: it ain't hardly my idea of a lady flying about
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Speaker 1: in the air and throwing gravel at people. It ain't
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Speaker 1: what I've been accustomed to consider lady like. Whether or no.
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Speaker 1: Mister Stringer nodded his head approvingly, and for a time
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Speaker 1: they continued to regard the swelling bulks with expressions that
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Speaker 1: had changed from indifference to disapproval. Mister Tom Smallways with
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Speaker 1: a green grocer by trade and a gardener by disposition.
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Speaker 1: His little wife Jessica, saw to the shop, and Heaven
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Speaker 1: had planned him for a peaceful world. Unfortunately, Heaven had
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Speaker 1: not planned a peaceful world for him. He lived in
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Speaker 1: a world of obstinate and incessant change, and in parts
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Speaker 1: where its operations were unsparingly conspicuous. Vicissitude was in the
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Speaker 1: very soil he tilled. Even his garden was on a
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Speaker 1: yearly tenancy, and overshadowed by a huge board that proclaimed
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Speaker 1: it not so much a garden as an eligible building site.
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Speaker 1: He was horticulture under notice to quit the last patch
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Speaker 1: of country in a district flooded by new and other things.
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Speaker 1: He did his best to console himself to imagine matters
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Speaker 1: near the turn of the tide. You'd hardly think you
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Speaker 1: could keep on, he said. Mister Smallway's aged father could
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Speaker 1: remember bun Hill as an idyllic Kentish village. He had
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Speaker 1: driven Sir Peter Bone until he was fifty, and then
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Speaker 1: he took to drink a little and driving the station bus,
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Speaker 1: which lasted until he was seventy eight. Then he retired.
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Speaker 1: He sat by the fireside, a shriveled, very very old coachman,
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Speaker 1: full charged with reminiscences and ready for any careless stranger.
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Speaker 1: He could tell you of the vanished estate of Sir
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Speaker 1: Peter Bone, long since cut up for building, and how
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Speaker 1: that magnate ruled the countryside when it was a countryside
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Speaker 1: of shooting and hunting, and of caches along the high
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Speaker 1: road of how where the gas work is was a
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Speaker 1: cricket field, And of the coming of the Crystal Palace.
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Speaker 1: The Crystal Palace was six miles away from bun Hill,
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Speaker 1: a great facade that glittered in the morning, and was
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Speaker 1: a clear blue outline against the sky in the afternoon,
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Speaker 1: and of a night a source of gratuitous fireworks for
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Speaker 1: all the population of bun Hill. And then had come
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Speaker 1: the railway, and then villas and villas, and then the
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Speaker 1: gas works and the water works, and a great ugly
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Speaker 1: sea of workmen's houses, and then drainage, and the water
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Speaker 1: vanished out of the Otterbourne and left it a dreadful ditch.
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Speaker 1: And then a second railway station, bun Hill South, and
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Speaker 1: more houses and more, more shops, more competition, plate glass shops,
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Speaker 1: a school board, rates, omnibuses, tram cars going right away
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Speaker 1: into London itself, bicycles, motor cars, and then more motor cars,
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Speaker 1: a Carnegie Library. You'd hardly think you could keep on,
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Speaker 1: said mister Tom. Smallways growing up among these marbles, But
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Speaker 1: it kept on even from the first The green grocer's shop,
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Speaker 1: which he had set up in one of the smallest
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Speaker 1: of the old surviving village houses in the tail of
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Speaker 1: the high Street had a submerged air, an air of
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Speaker 1: hiding from something they was looking for it. They had
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Speaker 1: made up the pavement of High Street. They leveled that
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Speaker 1: up so that one had to go down three steps
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Speaker 1: into the shop. Tom did his best to sell only
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Speaker 1: his own excellent but limited range of produce, but progress
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Speaker 1: came shoving things into his window. French artichokes, aubergines, foreign apples,
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Speaker 1: apples from the state of New York, apples from California,
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Speaker 1: apples from Canada, apples from New Zealand. Pretty looking fruit,
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Speaker 1: but not what I should call English apples, said Tom. Bananas,
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Speaker 1: unfamiliar nuts, grape fruits, mangoes. The motor cars that went
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Speaker 1: by Northwood and southward grew more and more powerful and efficient,
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Speaker 1: whizzed faster and smelt worse. There appeared great clangorous petrol
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Speaker 1: trolleys delivering coal and parcels in the place of vanishing
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Speaker 1: horse vans. Motor omnibuses ousted the horse omnibuses. Even the
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Speaker 1: Kentish strawberries going London ward in the night took to
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Speaker 1: machinery and clattered instead of creaking, and became affected in
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Speaker 1: flavor by progress and petrol. And then young Bert Smallways
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Speaker 1: got a motor bicycle. Two Bert, it is necessary to explain,
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Speaker 1: was a progressive small Ways. Nothing speaks more adequately off
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Speaker 1: the pitiless insistence of progress and the expansion in our
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Speaker 1: time than that it should get into the Smallway's blood.
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Speaker 1: But there was something advanced and enterprising about Young Smallways.
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Speaker 1: Before he was out of short frocks. He was lost
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Speaker 1: for a whole day before he was five, and nearly
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Speaker 1: drowned in the reservoir of the old Waterworks before he
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Speaker 1: was seven. He had a real pistol taken away from
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Speaker 1: him by a real policeman when he was ten, and
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Speaker 1: he learned to smoke not with pipes and brown paper
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Speaker 1: and cane, as Tom had done, but with a penny
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Speaker 1: packet of Boys of England American cigarettes. His language shocked
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Speaker 1: his father before he was twelve, and by that age,
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Speaker 1: what with touting for parcels to the station and selling
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Speaker 1: the bun Hill Weekly Express, he was making three shillings
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Speaker 1: a week or more and spending it on chips, comic cuts,
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Speaker 1: Alley Sloper's half Holiday cigarettes and all the concomitants of
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Speaker 1: a life of pleasure and Enlightenment, all of this without
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Speaker 1: hindrance to his literary studies, which carried him up to
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Speaker 1: the seventh standard. Had an exceptionally early age. I mention
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Speaker 1: these things so that you may have no doubt at
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Speaker 1: all concerning the sort of stuff Bert had in him.
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Speaker 1: He was six years younger than Tom, and for a
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Speaker 1: time there was an attempt to utilize him in the
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Speaker 1: green grocer's shop, when Tom, at twenty one, married Jessica,
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Speaker 1: who was thirty and had saved a little money in service.
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Speaker 1: But it was not Bert's forte to be utilized. He
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Speaker 1: hated digging, and when he was given a basket of
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Speaker 1: stuff to deliver, a nomadic instinct arose irresistibly. It became
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Speaker 1: his pack, and he did not seem to care how
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Speaker 1: heavy it was nor where he took it. So long
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Speaker 1: as he did not take it to its destination. Glamour
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Speaker 1: filled the world, and he strayed after it, basket and all.
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Speaker 1: So Tom took his goods out himself and sought employers
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Speaker 1: for Bert, who did not know of this strain of
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Speaker 1: poetry in his nature. And Bert touched the fringe of
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Speaker 1: a number of trades in succession. Draper's porter, chemist's boy,
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Speaker 1: doctor's page, junior assistant, gas fitter, envelope addresser, milk cart assistant,
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Speaker 1: golf caddie, and at last help her in a bicycle shop. Here,
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Speaker 1: apparently he found the progressive quality his nature had craved.
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Speaker 1: His employer was a pirate, souled young man named Grubb,
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Speaker 1: with a black smeared face by day and a music
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Speaker 1: hall side in the evening, who dreamt of a patent
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Speaker 1: lever chain. And it seemed to Bert that he was
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Speaker 1: the perfect model of a gentleman of spirit. He hired
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Speaker 1: out quite the dirtiest and unsafest bicycles in the whole
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Speaker 1: south of England, and conducted the subsequent discussions with astonishing verve.
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Speaker 1: Bert and he settled down very well together. Bert lived
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Speaker 1: in became almost a trick rider. He could ride bicycles
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Speaker 1: for miles that would have come to pieces instantly under
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Speaker 1: you or me, and took to washing his face after business,
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Speaker 1: and spent his surplus money upon remarkable ties and collars,
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Speaker 1: cigarettes and shorthand classes at the bun Hill Institute. He
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Speaker 1: would go round to Tom at times and look and
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Speaker 1: talk so brilliantly that Tom and Jesse, who both had
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Speaker 1: a natural tendency to be respectful to anybody or anything
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Speaker 1: looked up to him immensely. He's a go ahead champis
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Speaker 1: Bert said, Tom, he knows a thing or two. Let's
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Speaker 1: hope you don't know too much, said Jessica, who had
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Speaker 1: a fine sense of limitations. It's go ahead time, said Tom.
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Speaker 1: New potatoes and english at that. We'll be having em
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Speaker 1: in March if things go on as they do. I
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Speaker 1: never see such. See his tie last night. It wasn't
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Speaker 1: suited to him, Tom, It was a gentleman's tig. He
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Speaker 1: wasn't up to it, not the rest of him. It
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Speaker 1: wasn't becoming then. Presently Bert got a cyclist suit, cap,
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Speaker 1: badge and all. And to see him and grub going
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Speaker 1: down to Brighton and back, heads down, handlebars down, backbones
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Speaker 1: curved was a revelation in the possibilities of the small
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Speaker 1: ways blood go ahead times. Old smallways would sit over
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Speaker 1: the fire, mumbling of the greatness of other days, of
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Speaker 1: old Sir Peter who drove his coach to Brighton and
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Speaker 1: back in eight and twenty hours, of old Sir Peter's
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Speaker 1: white top hats, of Lady Bone, who never set foot
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Speaker 1: to ground except to walk in the garden of the
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Speaker 1: great prize fights at Crawley. He talked of pink and
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Speaker 1: pig skin breeches, of foxes that rings button where now
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Speaker 1: the country Council paper lunatics were enclosed, of Lady Bone's
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Speaker 1: chintzes and crinolines. Nobody heeded him. The world had thrown
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Speaker 1: up a new type of gentleman altogether, a gentleman of
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Speaker 1: most ungentlemanly energy, a gentleman in dusty oil skins and
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Speaker 1: motor goggles and a wonderful cap, A stink making gentleman,
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Speaker 1: a swift, high class badger who fled perpetually along high
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Speaker 1: roads from the dust and stink he perpetually made, and
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Speaker 1: his lady, as they were able to see her at
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Speaker 1: bun Hill, was a weather bitten goddess, as free from
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Speaker 1: refinement as a gipsy, not so much dressed as packed
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Speaker 1: for transit at a high velocity. So Bert grew up
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Speaker 1: filled with ideals of speed and enterprise, and it became
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Speaker 1: so far as he became anything, a kind of bicycle
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Speaker 1: engineer of the let's have a look at it and
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Speaker 1: enamel chipping variety, even a road racer geared to one
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Speaker 1: hundred and twenty failed to satisfy him, and for time
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Speaker 1: he pined in vain at twenty miles an hour along
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Speaker 1: roads that were continually more dusty and more crowded with
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Speaker 1: mechanical traffic. But at last his savings accumulated and his
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Speaker 1: chance came. The higher purchase system bridged a financial gap,
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Speaker 1: and one bright and memorable Sunday morning, he wheeled his
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Speaker 1: new possession through the shop into the road, got on
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Speaker 1: to it with the advice and assistance of Grubb, and
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Speaker 1: tuffed off into the haze of the traffic tortured high
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Speaker 1: road to add himself as one more voluntary public danger
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Speaker 1: to the amenities of the South of England. Off to Brightened,
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Speaker 1: said old Tom Smallways, regarding his youngest son from the
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Speaker 1: sitting room window over the green grocer's shop, with something
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Speaker 1: between pride and reprobation. We know it was his age.
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Speaker 2: I'd never been to London, never been south of Crawley,
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Speaker 2: never been anywhere on my own where I couldn't walk,
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Speaker 2: and nobody didn't go, not unless they was gentry. Now
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Speaker 2: everybody's off everywhere, the old dragged country, semi floyd to pieces.
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Speaker 2: Wonder they all get back off to Brighten Indeed, anybody
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Speaker 2: want to buy horses. You can't say I've been to Brighton, father,
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Speaker 2: said Tom. No, I don't want to go, said Jester,
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Speaker 2: sharply creering about and spending your money.
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Speaker 1: Three. For a time, the possibilities of motor bicycle so
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Speaker 1: occupied Bert's mind that he remained regardless of the new
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Speaker 1: direction in which the striving soul of man was finding
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Speaker 1: exercise and refreshment. He failed to observe that the type
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Speaker 1: of motor car, like the type of bicycle, was settling
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Speaker 1: down and losing his adventurous quality. Indeed, it was as
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Speaker 1: true as it is remarkable that Tom was the first
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Speaker 1: to observe the new development. But his gardening made him
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Speaker 1: attentive to the heavens and the proximity of the bun
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Speaker 1: Hill gas works in the Crystal Palace, from which her
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Speaker 1: scents were continually being made, And presently the descent of
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Speaker 1: ballast upon his potatoes conspired to bear in upon his
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Speaker 1: unwilling mind the fact that the Goddess of change was
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Speaker 1: turning her disturbing attention to the sky. The first great
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Speaker 1: boom in aeronautics was beginning. Grubb and Bert heard of
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Speaker 1: it in a music hall. Then it was driven home
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Speaker 1: to their minds by the cinematograph. Then Bert's imagination was
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Speaker 1: stimulated by a sixpenny edition of that aeronautic plastic, mister
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Speaker 1: George Griffith's Clipper of the Clouds, and so the thing
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Speaker 1: really got hold of them. At first, the most obvious
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Speaker 1: aspect was the multiplication of balloons. The sky of bun
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Speaker 1: Hill began to be infested by balloons on Wednesday and
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Speaker 1: Saturday afternoons. Particularly, you could scarcely look skyward for a
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Speaker 1: quarter of an hour without discovering a balloon somewhere. And
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Speaker 1: then one bright day, Bert, motoring towards Croydon, was arrested
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Speaker 1: by the insurgence of a huge bolster shaped monster from
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Speaker 1: the Crystal Palace grounds and obliged to dismount and watch it.
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Speaker 1: It was like a bolster with a broken nose, and
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Speaker 1: below it, and comparatively small, was a stiff framework bearing
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Speaker 1: a man and an engine, with a screw that whizzed
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Speaker 1: around in front and a sort of canvas rudder behind
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Speaker 1: the framework had an air of dragging the reluctant gas
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Speaker 1: cylinder after it, like a brisk little terrier towing a
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Speaker 1: shy gas distended elephant into society. The combined monster certainly
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Speaker 1: traveled and steered. It went overhead, perhaps a thousand feet up.
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Speaker 1: Bert heard the engine sailed away southward, vanished over the hills,
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Speaker 1: reappeared a little blue outline far off in the east,
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Speaker 1: going now very fast, before a gentle southwest gale returned
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Speaker 1: above the crystal Palace. Towers circled round them, chose a
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Speaker 1: position for the scent, and sank down out of sight.
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Speaker 1: Bert sighed deeply and turned to his motor bicycle again.
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Speaker 1: And that was only the beginning of a succession of
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Speaker 1: strange phenomena in the heavens, cylinders, cones, pear shaped monsters,
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Speaker 1: even at last a thing of aluminium that glittered wonderfully,
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Speaker 1: and that Grub, through some confusion of ideas about armor plates,
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Speaker 1: was inclined to consider a war machine. There followed actual flight. This, however,
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Speaker 1: was not an affair that was visible from bun Hill.
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Speaker 1: It was something that occurred in private grounds or other
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Speaker 1: enclosed places and under favorable conditions, and it was brought
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Speaker 1: home to Grub and Bert's small ways only by means
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Speaker 1: of the magazine page of the half penny newspapers, or
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Speaker 1: by cinematograph records. But it was brought home very insistently.
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Speaker 1: And in those days, if everyone heard a man saying
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Speaker 1: in a public place in a loud, reassuring, confident tone,
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Speaker 1: it's bound to come, the chances were ten to one
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Speaker 1: talking of flying. And Bert got a box lid and
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Speaker 1: wrote out in correct window ticket style, and Grubb put
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Speaker 1: it in the window this inscription. Aeroplanes made and repaired it.
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Speaker 1: Quite upset Tom it seemed taking one's shop so lightly.
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Speaker 1: But most of the neighbors and all of the sporting
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Speaker 1: ones approved of it as being very good. Indeed, everybody
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Speaker 1: talked of flying. Everybody repeated over and over again, bound
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Speaker 1: to come. And then you know, it didn't come. There
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Speaker 1: was a hitch. They flew, that was all right. They
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Speaker 1: flew in machines heavier than air. But they smashed. Sometimes
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Speaker 1: they smashed the engine, sometimes they smashed the aeronaut. Usually
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Speaker 1: they smashed both machines that made flights of three or
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Speaker 1: four miles and came down safely went up the next
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Speaker 1: time to headlong disaster. It seemed no possible trusting to them.
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Speaker 1: Upset them. The eddies near the ground upset them. A
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Speaker 1: passing thought in the mind of the aeronaut upset them
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Speaker 1: also they upset simply. It's this stability, does em said Grubb,
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Speaker 1: repeating his newspaper. They pitch, and they pitched till they
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Speaker 1: pitched themselves to pieces. Experiments fell away. After two expectant
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Speaker 1: years of this sort of success, the public and then
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Speaker 1: the newspapers tired of the expensive photographic reproductions, the optimistic reports,
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Speaker 1: the perpetual sequence of triumph and disaster, and silence. Flying slumped,
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Speaker 1: even ballooning fell away to some extent, though it remained
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Speaker 1: a fairly popular sport and continued to lift gravel from
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Speaker 1: the wharf of the bun Hill gas works and drop
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Speaker 1: it upon deserving people's lawns and gardens. There were half
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Speaker 1: a dozen reassuring years for Tom, at least so far
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Speaker 1: as flying was concerned. But that was the great time
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Speaker 1: of mono rail development, and his anxiety. He was only
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Speaker 1: diverted from the high heavens by the most urgent threats
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Speaker 1: and symptoms of change in the lower sky. There had
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Speaker 1: been talk of mono rails for several years, but the
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Speaker 1: real mischief began when Brennan sprang his gyroscopic mono rail
19:16
Speaker 1: car upon the Royal Society. It was the leading sensation
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Speaker 1: of the nineteen o seven soirees that celebrated. Demonstration room
19:24
Speaker 1: was all too small for its exhibition. Brave soldiers, leading zionists,
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Speaker 1: deserving novelists, noble ladies congested the narrow passage and thrust
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Speaker 1: distinguished elbows into ribs the world would not willingly let break.
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Speaker 1: Deeming themselves fortunate if they could see just a little
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Speaker 1: bit of the rail. Inaudible but convincing, the great inventor
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Speaker 1: expounded his discovery and sent his obedient little model of
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Speaker 1: the trains of the future up gradients, round curves, and
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Speaker 1: across a sagging wire. It ran along its single rail
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Speaker 1: on its single wheels, simple and sufficient. It stopped, reversed,
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Speaker 1: stood still, balanced perfectly. It maintained its astounding equilibrium. Amidst
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Speaker 1: a thunder of applause. The audience dispersed at last, discussing
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Speaker 1: how far they would enjoy crossing an abyss on a
20:20
Speaker 1: wire cable suppose the gyroscope stopped. Few of them anticipated
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Speaker 1: a tithe of what the Brennan Monoreil would do for
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Speaker 1: their railway securities and for the face of the world.
20:34
Speaker 1: In a few years, they realized better. In a little while,
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Speaker 1: no one thought anything of crossing an abyss on a wire,
20:40
Speaker 1: and the mono rail was superseding the tramlines, railways, and
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Speaker 1: indeed every form of track for mechanical locomotion. Where land
20:48
Speaker 1: was cheap, the rail ran along the ground. Where it
20:51
Speaker 1: was deer, the rail lifted up on iron standards and
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Speaker 1: passed overhead its swifts. Convenient cars went everywhere and did
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Speaker 1: everything that had once been done along made tracks upon
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Speaker 1: the ground. When Old Tom Smallways died, Tom could think
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Speaker 1: of nothing more striking to say of him than that
21:10
Speaker 1: when he was a boy, there wasn't nothing higher than
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Speaker 1: your chimbleys. There wasn't a wire nor a cable in
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Speaker 1: the sky. Old Smallways went to his grave under an
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Speaker 1: intricate networks of wires and cables. For bun Hill became
21:24
Speaker 1: not only a sort of minor center of power distribution.
21:27
Speaker 1: The Home County's power distribution company set up transformers and
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Speaker 1: a generating station close beside the old gas works, but
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Speaker 1: also a junction on the suburban mono rail system. Moreover,
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Speaker 1: every tradesman in the place, and indeed nearly every house,
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Speaker 1: had its own telephone. The mono rail cable standard became
21:46
Speaker 1: a striking fact in urban landscape for the most part,
21:49
Speaker 1: stout iron erections rather like tapering trestles and painted a
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Speaker 1: bright bluish green. One that happened bestrode Tom's house, which
21:59
Speaker 1: looked still more tiring and apologetic beneath its immensity, and
22:03
Speaker 1: another giant stood just inside the corner of his garden,
22:06
Speaker 1: which were still not built upon and unchanged except for
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Speaker 1: a couple of advertisement boards, one recommending a two and
22:13
Speaker 1: sixpenny watch and one a nerve restorer. These, by the bye,
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Speaker 1: were placed almost horizontally to catch the eye of the
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Speaker 1: passing mono rail passengers above, and so served admirably to
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Speaker 1: roof over a tool shed and a mushroom shed for Tom.
22:28
Speaker 1: All day and all night, the fast cars from Brighton
22:31
Speaker 1: and Hastings went murmuring by overhead, long, broad comfortable looking
22:36
Speaker 1: cars that were brightly lit after dark, and as they
22:39
Speaker 1: flew by at night transient flares of light and a
22:43
Speaker 1: rumbling sound of passage. They kept up a perpetual summer
22:47
Speaker 1: lightning and thunderstorm in the street below. Presently, the English
22:55
Speaker 1: Channel was bridged a series of great iron Eiffel tower
22:58
Speaker 1: pillars carrying on orail cables at a height of one
23:01
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty feet above the water, except near the middle,
23:05
Speaker 1: where they rose higher to allow the passage of the
23:07
Speaker 1: London and Antwerp shipping and the Hamburg American liners. Then
23:12
Speaker 1: heavy motor cars began to run about on only a
23:15
Speaker 1: couple of wheels, one behind the other, which for some
23:18
Speaker 1: reason upset Tom dreadfully and made him gloomy for days
23:21
Speaker 1: after the first one passed the shop. All this gyroscopic
23:27
Speaker 1: and mono rail development naturally absorbed a vast amount of
23:30
Speaker 1: public attention, and there was also a huge excitement consequent
23:33
Speaker 1: upon the amazing gold discoveries off the coast of Anglesia
23:38
Speaker 1: made by a submarine prospector, Miss Patricia Giddey. She had
23:43
Speaker 1: taken her degree in geology and mineralogy at the University
23:46
Speaker 1: of London, and while working upon the oriiforous rocks of
23:49
Speaker 1: North Wales after a brief holiday spent in agitating for
23:52
Speaker 1: women's suffrage, she had been struck by the possibility of
23:55
Speaker 1: these reefs cropping up again under the water. She had
23:58
Speaker 1: set herself to verify the supposition by the use of
24:01
Speaker 1: a submarine crawler invented by doctor Alberto Cassini, by a
24:07
Speaker 1: happy mingling of reasoning and intuition peculiar to her sex.
24:10
Speaker 1: She found gold at her first ascent, and emerged after
24:14
Speaker 1: three hours submersion with about two hundredweight of ore containing
24:18
Speaker 1: gold in the unparalleled quantity of seventeen ounces to the ton.
24:24
Speaker 1: But the whole story of her submarine mining, intensely interesting
24:27
Speaker 1: as it is, must be told at some other time.
24:31
Speaker 1: Suffice it now to remark simply that it was during
24:34
Speaker 1: the consequent great rise of prices, confidence, and enterprise that
24:38
Speaker 1: the revival of interest in flying occurred. End of Chapter one,
24:44
Speaker 1: Parts one, two, and three