In fact, I was already obliged to increase my respirations to eke out of this cell the little
oxygen it contained, when suddenly I was refreshed by a current of pure air, and perfumed with saline emanations.
Water, as you know, consists of two parts of hydrogen to one of oxygen gas.
"Here are the exact figures: 25 gallons of water, separated into its constituent elements, yield 200 pounds of oxygen and 25 pounds of hydrogen.
"Bring oxygen!" The Professor, as I remembered him, had an elephantine sense of humour capable of the most clumsy and unwieldly gambollings.
"Don't tell me that YOU have had one of these preposterous telegrams for oxygen?"
The need for oxygen could not have been so urgent that he must desert the usual means of supply and encroach upon the time of those who are really busier than himself.
"Still, for some reason he seems to wish that I should bring oxygen too.
As I came back to Professor Summerlee, he was having a furious altercation with the men who had carried down the oxygen, his little white goat's beard jerking with indignation.
He roared with amusement when he saw the oxygen cylinders upon the porter's trolly behind us.
"Well, it's at the bottom of this oxygen business, or I am mistaken," said I.
In addition, when it became evident that the air must be fought for, the air-sailors were provided with rifles with explosive bullets of oxygen or inflammable substance, but no airship at any time ever carried as much in the way of guns and armour as the smallest gunboat on the navy list had been accustomed to do.
In action they flew to get behind or over the Germans: they even dashed underneath, avoiding only passing immediately beneath the magazine, and then as soon as they had crossed let fly with their rear gun, and sent flares or oxygen shells into the antagonist's gas-chambers.