experience. After literally months of labour, having filled perhaps fifty foolscap sheets with closely pencilled figures, after many disappointments and heartaches, the truth stood revealed, real, and perfect, and unquestionable; the very truth. It did one good; one was the better for the experience. It struck me at the time that those who built the great arches of the English cathedrals in mediaeval times must have known something of our mathematics, and perhaps passed through the same experience, and I have wondered if Freemasonry has anything to do with this.
While all this was going on, I was writing my second published novel in the evenings,
So Disdained
. Again I seem to have taken considerable pains over it; it took me two years to write and all of it was written through twice over, some of it three times. I used to find that the story became fixed in the first writing; I do not think that I ever altered a scene or the essentials of a piece of dialogue in a subsequent writing. A re-writing increased the length by about ten per cent; awkward phrases and sentences were eliminated, and the general style of the writing was improved. Since the first writing probably took a year, one came to the chapter fresh in the re-writing, a year older, with a year past in which one had forgotten much of the detail; this undoubtedly helped in putting the thing in to a better style. This great amount of re-writing does not seem to be necessary to me now; with increasing experience I find that I can say pretty well what I want tosay the first time. Perhaps thirty per cent of my later books have been re-written; I re-write the first chapter always as a matter of principle since it is seldom in tune with the rest of the book. I do not seem to get into my stride till the first chapter is over.
We built R.100 hanging from the roof of the shed without the use of any trestles or staging; each transverse frame was built horizontally upon the floor, lifted up with a pyramid of wires to the corners, slung by the sides to the roof railways, and the centre was then lowered till the frame hung vertically. It was then slid along into position and the longitudinal girders were put in to attach it to the next frame. The ship remained hanging from the roof of the shed until she was inflated with gas; the slings were only removed a few days before she was ready for flight. This method of erection gave us a clear floor and other advantages, but it brought its own responsibilities. Howden shed was getting old and the roof had been neglected for years; it stood in an exposed position and in heavy gales it was clear that parts of the seven and a half acres of corrugated iron were not too secure. The roof never blew off but with every gale we thought that it was going to, and in bad weather we had to keep a standing watch of riggers ready for the first sign of trouble.
By the early summer of 1929 the ship was getting on towards completion, and the time had come to inflate her gasbags with hydrogen. Her volume was a little over five million cubic feet, giving her a gross lift of about a hundred and fifty-six tons; her tare weight was about a hundred and two tons, so that she had about fifty-four tons available for fuel and oil, ballast, crew, and passengers.
The gas plant was just outside the shed and here the hydrogen was made, not without some danger. The gas was conveyed in a gas main which ran beneath the ground to points immediately beneath the ship; to these pointseach gasbag in turn was connected for inflation. Each empty gasbag hung like a curtain from the axial girder that ran through the centre of the ship; as the gas was filled into it the top of the bag bellied out and rose slowly till it reached the upper netting, and spread down the sides till it filled the whole section of the ship. There were fourteen gasbags in R.100.
To guide these gasbags accurately into place was no mean task. We had no foremen who were experienced in this sort of work,
While all this was going on, I was writing my second published novel in the evenings,
So Disdained
. Again I seem to have taken considerable pains over it; it took me two years to write and all of it was written through twice over, some of it three times. I used to find that the story became fixed in the first writing; I do not think that I ever altered a scene or the essentials of a piece of dialogue in a subsequent writing. A re-writing increased the length by about ten per cent; awkward phrases and sentences were eliminated, and the general style of the writing was improved. Since the first writing probably took a year, one came to the chapter fresh in the re-writing, a year older, with a year past in which one had forgotten much of the detail; this undoubtedly helped in putting the thing in to a better style. This great amount of re-writing does not seem to be necessary to me now; with increasing experience I find that I can say pretty well what I want tosay the first time. Perhaps thirty per cent of my later books have been re-written; I re-write the first chapter always as a matter of principle since it is seldom in tune with the rest of the book. I do not seem to get into my stride till the first chapter is over.
We built R.100 hanging from the roof of the shed without the use of any trestles or staging; each transverse frame was built horizontally upon the floor, lifted up with a pyramid of wires to the corners, slung by the sides to the roof railways, and the centre was then lowered till the frame hung vertically. It was then slid along into position and the longitudinal girders were put in to attach it to the next frame. The ship remained hanging from the roof of the shed until she was inflated with gas; the slings were only removed a few days before she was ready for flight. This method of erection gave us a clear floor and other advantages, but it brought its own responsibilities. Howden shed was getting old and the roof had been neglected for years; it stood in an exposed position and in heavy gales it was clear that parts of the seven and a half acres of corrugated iron were not too secure. The roof never blew off but with every gale we thought that it was going to, and in bad weather we had to keep a standing watch of riggers ready for the first sign of trouble.
By the early summer of 1929 the ship was getting on towards completion, and the time had come to inflate her gasbags with hydrogen. Her volume was a little over five million cubic feet, giving her a gross lift of about a hundred and fifty-six tons; her tare weight was about a hundred and two tons, so that she had about fifty-four tons available for fuel and oil, ballast, crew, and passengers.
The gas plant was just outside the shed and here the hydrogen was made, not without some danger. The gas was conveyed in a gas main which ran beneath the ground to points immediately beneath the ship; to these pointseach gasbag in turn was connected for inflation. Each empty gasbag hung like a curtain from the axial girder that ran through the centre of the ship; as the gas was filled into it the top of the bag bellied out and rose slowly till it reached the upper netting, and spread down the sides till it filled the whole section of the ship. There were fourteen gasbags in R.100.
To guide these gasbags accurately into place was no mean task. We had no foremen who were experienced in this sort of work,
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