Army and Navy Weekly — page 4: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Bw Ensign Clarke, Ritch, U.S. N. CHAPTER I. THE ENGLISHMAN WITH A ‘‘ HAW!”? ‘‘Aw, yedon’t mean to say the blawsted thing will fire a shot forty miles?”’ ‘Thirty-nine miles, two hundred and fifty vards, fifty-six feet and eleven inches is the exact record, sir.”’ “But, don’t ye know, that’s almost as far as itis from Lun’nun to Oxford, bah Jove!’ ‘“Tust thirteen feet, three inches further, sit.’ ‘SHaw }>9 ‘The charge is the inost peculiar part Mit, sir.” ‘“Va-as?? ‘Very pecular. hardly believe it,’’ The speaker, a handsome, merry-faced youth clad in the uniform ‘of a United States Naval Academy cadet, leaned con- fidentially toward his companion and added in an impressive whisper: ‘We use green Holland cheese, sir.’’ “What! Bah Jove, yott cawn’t use cheese to fire a gun, don’t you know?’ ‘‘Ract, sir. I’m not supposed to give the secret away, but I know you won’t repeat it. The American Government is very progressive, sir. And the American naval officer is great on inventions. It was acadet that invented the ‘cheesite,’ as the new explosive is called. He made the discovery in a very queer way.”’ The young cadet paused a second for breath, then he continued in the same impressive tone: “He was a shipmate of mine atthe Academy, sir. His name was Mudd. Funny name, eh? Well, Mudd was very In fact, you would ‘man of about twenty-three. Ct Parniay s Brave Deed. fond of Dutch cheese. Ate it all the time. One day he brought a pound or two into our room—I bunked with him, you know—and hid it in the stove. There happened to be aittle fire in it, and bless me if the cheese and heat didn’t generate gas and blow the room into the middle of the Severn river. I was nearly drowned trying to swim ashore.”’ ‘““Haw! Most’ extraordinary. make a note.of it.” ‘‘Great, isn’t it? Well, Mudd—when he left the hospital; had three ribs broken and lost a piece of his solar plexus—he experimented on the ‘cheesite’ found the gas, and is now worth a million. Great, isn’t it?’ The cadet’s companion was an English- He had a full, round red. face with a pair of pro- nounced ‘‘mutton chop’’ whiskers. <A single glass, or monocle, was screwed tightly in one eye; and he was dressed in tweeds of the loudest patterns. There was a vacant, open-mouthed ex- pression on his face that seemed peculiar- ly appropriate to his general appear- ance. The young naval cadet finished his re- markable description of the discovery -of Must ‘““cheesite’’? without the slightest indi- cation of mirth. ‘““Haw! Most extraordinary invention,’ exclaimed the Englishman. ‘‘But you Americans, don’t ye know, are extraor- dinary creatures, anyway. Haw! I hada cousin who went across the pond a few years ago. Landed in Ohio or some otber town, I believe, and started the most peculiar business. Haw! it was really remarkable.”’ EORNICLOOKS. CO 7