The Project Gutenberg EBook of Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100.
February 21, 1891, by Various

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Title: Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 21, 1891

Author: Various

Release Date: August 22, 2004 [EBook #13253]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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PUNCH,

OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

VOL. 100.

February 21, 1891.

MR. PUNCH'S PRIZE NOVELS.

NO. XIII.--THROUGH SPACE ON A FORMULA.

(_BY_ RULES SPURN, _AUTHOR OF "GOWNED AND CURLED IN EIGHTY STAYS,"
"TWENTY THOUSAND TWEAKS SUNDERED THE FLEA," "A TEA WITH ICE," "A
DOCTOR ON ROCKS AND PEPPERMINT," "A CAB-FARE FROM 'THE SUN,'" "THE
CONFIDENCE OF THE CONTINENT," "ATTORNEY TO DISSENTERS UP AT PERTH,"
"LIEUTENANT SCATTERCASH," &C._)

["This," writes the Author, "is one of my best and freshest,
although on a moderate computation it must be my thousand and
first, or so. But I have really lost count. Still it's grand
to talk in large numbers of leagues, miles, vastnesses,
secrets, mysteries, and impossible sciences. Some pedants
imagine that I write in French. That's absurd, for every
schoolboy knows (and lots of them have told me) that I write
only in English or in American. I have some highly dried
samples of vivid adventure ready for immediate consumption.
Twopence more and up goes the donkey, up, up, up to be
a satellite to an undiscovered star. Brave Donkey! I
follow."--R.S.]

CHAPTER I.

The iceberg was moving. There was no doubt of it. Moving with
a terrible sinuous motion. Occasionally an incautious ironclad
approached like a foolish hen, and pecked at the moving mass. Then
there was a slight crash, followed by a mild convulsion of masts, and
spars, and iron-plates, and 100-ton guns, then two or three gurgles
and all was still. The iceberg passed on smiling in triumph, and
British Admirals wrote to the _Times_ to declare that they had
known from the first that H.M.S. _Thunderbomb_ had been so faultily
constructed, as to make a contest with a hen-coop a certa