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THE AUTOMATIC SHELL.
In a large building, not far from the lens-house in which Roland Clewe had pursued the experiments which had come to such a disappointing conclusion, there was a piece of mechanism which interested its inventor more than any other of his works, excepting of course the photic borer.
This was an enormous projectile, the peculiarity of which was that its motive power was contained within itself, very much as a rocket contains the explosives which send it upward.

It differed, however, from the rocket or any other similar projectile, and many of its features were entirely original with Roland Clewe.
This extraordinary piece of mechanism, which was called the automatic shell, was of cylindrical form, eighteen feet in length and four feet in diameter.

The forward end was conical and not solid, being formed of a number of flat steel rings, decreasing in size as they approached the point of the cone.

When not in operation these rings did not touch one another, but they could be forced together by pressure on the point of the cone.