Your infantry are all lying on their
stomachs, and it would take very little to protect them.
And steel has improved, Munro! Chilled steel! Bessemer!
Bessemer! Very good. How much to cover a man? Fourteen
inches by twelve, meeting at an angle so that the bullet
will glance. A notch at one side for the rifle. There
you have it, laddie--the Cullingworth patent portable
bullet-proof shield! Weight? Oh, the weight would be
sixteen pounds. I worked it out. Each company carries
its shields in go-carts, and they are served out on going
into action. Give me twenty thousand good shots, and
I'll go in at Calais and come out at Pekin. Think of it,
my boy! the moral effect. One side gets home every
time and the other plasters its bullets up against
steel plates. No troops would stand it. The nation that
gets it first will pitchfork the rest of Europe over the
edge. They're bound to have it--all of them. Let's
reckon it out. There's about eight million of them on a
war footing. Let us suppose that only half of them have
it. I say only half, because I don't want to be too
sanguine. That's four million, and I should take a
royalty of four shillings on wholesale orders. What's
that, Munro? About three-quarters of a million sterling,
eh? How's that, laddie, eh? What?"
Really, that is not unlike his style of talk, now
that I come to read it over, only you miss the queer
stops, the sudden confidential whispers, the roar with
which he triumphantly answered his own questions, the
shrugs and slaps, and gesticulations.
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