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Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heavenby Mark Twainred trumpet scrapers CHAPTER I
Well, when I had been dead about thirty years I begun to get a
little anxious. Mind you, had been whizzing through space all that
time, like a comet. LIKE a comet! Why, Peters, I laid over the
lot of them! Of course there warn't any of them going my way, as a
steady thing, you know, because they travel in a long circle like
the loop of a lasso, whereas I was pointed as straight as a dart
for the Hereafter; but I happened on one every now and then that
was going my way for an hour or so, and then we had a bit of a
brush together. But it was generally pretty one-sided, because I
sailed by them the same as if they were standing still. An
ordinary comet don't make more than about 200,000 miles a minute.
Of course when I came across one of that sort - like Encke's and
Halley's comets, for instance - it warn't anything but just a flash
and a vanish, you see. You couldn't rightly call it a race. It
was as if the comet was a gravel-train and I was a telegraph
despatch. But after I got outside of our astronomical system, I
used to flush a comet occasionally that was something LIKE. WE
haven't got any such comets - ours don't begin. One night I was
swinging along at a good round gait, everything taut and trim, and
the wind in my favor - I judged I was going about a million miles a
minute - it might have been more, it couldn't have been less - when
I flushed a most uncommonly big one about three points off my
starboard bow. By his stern lights I judged he was bearing about
northeast-and-by-north-half-east. Well, it was so near my course
that I wouldn't throw away the chance; so I fell off a point,
steadied my helm, and went for him. You should have heard me whiz,
and seen the electric fur fly! In about a minute and a half I was
fringed out with an electrical nimbus that flamed around for miles
and miles and lit up all space like broad day. The comet was
burning blue in the distance, like a sickly torch, when I first
sighted him, but he begun to grow bigger and bigger as I crept up
on him. I slipped up on him so fast that when I had gone about
150,000,000 miles I was close enough to be swallowed up in the
phosphorescent glory of his wake, and I couldn't see anything for
the glare. Thinks I, it won't do to run into him, so I shunted to
one side and tore along. By and by I closed up abreast of his
tail. Do you know what it was like? It was like a gnat closing up
on the continent of America. I forged along. By and by I had
sailed along his coast for a little upwards of a hundred and fifty
million miles, and then I could see by the shape of him that I
hadn't even got up to his waistband yet. Why, Peters, WE don't
know anything about comets, down here. If you want to see comets
that ARE comets, you've got to go outside of our solar system -
where there's room for them, you understand. My friend, I've seen
comets out there that couldn't even lay down inside the ORBITS of
our noblest comets without their tails hanging over.
Well, I boomed along another hundred and fifty million miles, and
got up abreast his shoulder, as you may say. I was feeling pretty
fine, I tell you; but just then I noticed the officer of the deck
come to the side and hoist his glass in my direction. Straight off
I heard him sing out - "Below there, ahoy! Shake her up, shake her
up! Heave on a hundred million billion tons of brimstone!"
"Ay-ay, sir!"
"Pipe the stabboard watch! All hands on deck!"
"Ay-ay, sir!"
"Send two hundred thousand million men aloft to shake out royals
and sky-scrapers!"
"Ay-ay, sir!"
"Hand the stuns'ls! Hang out every rag you've got! Clothe her
from stem to rudder-post!"
"Ay-ay, sir!" Captain Stormfields visit from Heaven by Mark Twain In about a second I begun to see I'd woke up a pretty ugly
customer, Peters. In less than ten seconds that comet was just a
blazing cloud of red-hot canvas. It was piled up into the heavens
clean out of sight - the old thing seemed to swell out and occupy
all space; the sulphur smoke from the furnaces - oh, well, nobody
can describe the way it rolled and tumbled up into the skies, and
nobody can half describe the way it smelt. Neither can anybody
begin to describe the way that monstrous craft begun to crash
along. And such another powwow - thousands of bo's'n's whistles
screaming at once, and a crew like the populations of a hundred
thousand worlds like ours all swearing at once. Well, I never
heard the like of it before.
We roared and thundered along side by side, both doing our level
best, because I'd never struck a comet before that could lay over
me, and so I was bound to beat this one or break something. I
judged I had some reputation in space, and I calculated to keep it.
I noticed I wasn't gaining as fast, now, as I was before, but still
I was gaining. There was a power of excitement on board the comet.
Upwards of a hundred billion passengers swarmed up from below and
rushed to the side and begun to bet on the race. Of course this
careened her and damaged her speed. My, but wasn't the mate mad!
He jumped at that crowd, with his trumpet in his hand, and sung out
-
"Amidships! amidships, you -! (1) or I'll brain the last idiot of
you!"
Well, sir, I gained and gained, little by little, till at last I
went skimming sweetly by the magnificent old conflagration's nose.
By this time the captain of the comet had been rousted out, and he
stood there in the red glare for'ard, by the mate, in his shirt-
sleeves and slippers, his hair all rats' nests and one suspender
hanging, and how sick those two men did look! I just simply
couldn't help putting my thumb to my nose as I glided away and
singing out:
"Ta-ta! ta-ta! Any word to send to your family?"
Peters, it was a mistake. Yes, sir, I've often regretted that - it
was a mistake. You see, the captain had given up the race, but
that remark was too tedious for him - he couldn't stand it. He
turned to the mate, and says he -
"Have we got brimstone enough of our own to make the trip?"
"Yes, sir."
"Sure?"
"Yes, sir - more than enough."
"How much have we got in cargo for Satan?"
"Eighteen hundred thousand billion quintillions of kazarks." shaping interior space 2nd edition miles away from the ordinary shirts Mark Twain Captain Stormfields ORBuy "The Mark Twain Collection" and receive all 45 of the ebooks for only $9.95 Ebook Titles: - The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
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