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Rudyard Kipling by John Palmer
page 42 of 74 (56%)
Devil and the Deep Sea_ or of _.007_ as the unfortunate rioting of an
amateur machinist. To those who object that Mr Kipling has spoiled
these stories with an absurd enthusiasm for bolts and bars it has at
once to be answered that but for this very enthusiasm for bolts and
bars, which the undiscerning have found so tedious, the great majority
of Mr Kipling's stories would never have been written at all. A
powerful turbine excites in Mr Kipling precisely the same quality of
emotion which a comely landscape excited in Wordsworth; and this
emotion is stamped upon all that he has written in this kind. There is
a passage in _Between the Devil and the Deep Sea_ which runs:


"What follows is worth consideration. The forward engine had no more
work to do. Its released piston-rod, therefore, drove up fiercely,
with nothing to check it, and started most of the nuts of the
cylinder-cover. It came down again, the full weight of the steam
behind it, and the foot of the disconnected connecting-rod, useless as
the leg of a man with a sprained ankle, flung out to the right and
struck the starboard, or right-hand, cast-iron supporting-column of the
forward engine, cracking it clean through about six inches above the
base, and wedging the upper portion outwards three inches towards the
ship's side. There the connecting-rod jammed. Meantime, the after
engine, being as yet unembarrassed, went on with its work, and in so
doing brought round at its next revolution the crank of the forward
engine, which smote the already jammed connecting-rod, bending it and
therewith the piston-rod cross-head--the big cross-piece that slides up
and down so smoothly."


This is the method of Homer as applied to the shield of Achilles, the
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