out. And I hope to turn all the colors of the rainbow if there was a tinge of green in her skin. It was the skin of a baby, smooth and pink and—mmmm!
She kissed me smack on the place you're supposed to be kissed. And then she talked a blue streak, thanking me over and over.
Boiled as I'd been, it seemed as if I'd done the right thing through it all. Yeoto put over his sales talk and had fixed her up. Wally was doing great and would be up in a couple of weeks when his fractures were healed. They were to be married as soon as this was a fact. And I was to be best man.
How do you like that?
"Swell," I told her, wishing my split skull wouldn't keep opening and shutting like an inquisitive oyster. "Everybody's happy, even me. Now I can go back into the Service and not have a screwball hanging around the ether-phone going batty over a voice."
The voice rippled out a silvery tinkle of laughter. "That's what you think," said Elsa Vaughn. "I've already signed up in the Service myself and General Tompkins, the old dear, assigned me to the new ship you and Wally are getting. I'll be your etherphone operator and Mess Sergeant as well."
And that was that. All I have left to say is that my two Gs were well spent. But don't tell Elsa or Wally about that, will you?
« « SHIPS OF STONE » »
BY KEN KOBER
TOWARD the end of World War I the Fred T. Ley & Co., Incorporated, built the steamship Selma in record time. The ship's hull was made entirely of stone, reinforced with steel rods. In short, the Selma was made of reinforced concrete.
Today in British waters the concrete vessel is again trying to make a comeback. Sir Owen Williams, a noted English engineer, has designed the stone monster. It has a displacement of 4,000 tons, can carry 2,000 tons dead- weight of cargo, and is as fast and as sea-worthy as any steel ship. Only close inspection reveals that it is made of stone instead of steel.
While the first concrete ship of this war rests alongside a dock somewhere in Eng- land another one is on the ways under construction. Both of the ships have been built entirely by building labor. No skilled ship builders have had to be used in their construction, and none of the elaborate equipment of the ordinary shipbuilding yard has been found necessary.
Both vessels are 265 feet long, 42 feet wide, and 21 feet deep. They have been built on the same mold, but the second ship has undergone improvements in design that have resulted in economy in the use of steel and at the same time have increased her pay load by more than 500 tons.
Blond-haired Sir Owen Williams toiled for a full year perfecting his designs for the first concrete cargo carrier. For four weeks he squinted at calculations and blinked at drawings to determine the flex- ibility and strain on every portion of his stone sea-going goliath. He knew that his ship would have to ride the roughest of seas and he remembered that during World War I some concrete ships had the nasty habit of cracking. He's sure his ships won't crack.
Says Sir Owen: "I do not suggest that all-concrete ships will ever replace steel ones, but there is a real place for them in war-time. Compared with a steel ship of the same size and the same carrying ca- pacity, my ship represents a saving of forty per cent in metal requirements alone. Production costs are also much cheaper."
Engineers in this country have for years been experimenting with concrete ships. As yet none have been built during this war, but the suggestion has been put to the Maritime Commission and is under consideration. Proposed plans call for dozens of ships being turned out from a single mold. "With enough molds we can turn out three or four hulls a day," says a spokesman.
