Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/239

 discharges, and keeps the breech-pressure always up to the danger mark."

"Do yuh get him?" the despairing-eyed Sadie demanded of the scrupulously attentive Wilsnach. The latter nodded, though with a touch of impatience.

"Now this man Strasser," continued Kestner, "saw that the explosive itself was about as powerful as chemistry could make it. So he began to experiment with guncotton, in the matter of mechanical distribution. He found that a multi-perforated charge resulted in a relatively low initial pressure in the gun, while the explosive, because it was cushioned with these countless perforations, burned with sufficiently accelerating rapidity to maintain a constant pressure behind the projectile during its entire transit through the gun-barrel. In other words, he devised an explosive that would 'follow through' and make the longest drive. The longer the gun, of course, the greater the push. So he calmly walked up to the Washington authorities and requested them to make him a sixty-foot gun. This gun was to weigh some sixty-nine tons, the same weight as our present fourteen-inch naval gun, and