The other consisted of two liquids separated by a partition in the shell, and these, when mixed by the breaking of the partition, burst into a volume of flame which could not be extinguished by any known human means.

It would burn even in a vacuum, since it supplied its own elements of combustion.

The guns would throw these shells to a distance of about seven terrestrial miles.

On the upper deck there were also stands for a couple of light machine guns capable of discharging seven hundred explosive bullets a minute.
Professor Rennick, although a man of peace, had little sympathy with the laws of "civilised" warfare which permit men to be blown into rags of flesh and splinters of bone by explosive shells of a pound weight and upward, and only allow projectiles of less weight to be used against "savages." There was no humbug about him.

He believed that when war _was_ necessary it had to _be_ war--and the sooner it was over the better for everybody concerned.
The small arms consisted of a couple of heavy ten-bore elephant guns carrying three-ounce melinite shells; a dozen rifles and fowling-pieces of different makes of which three, a single and a double-barrelled rifle and a double-barrelled shot-gun, belonged to her Ladyship, as well as a dainty brace of revolvers, one of half a dozen braces of various calibres which completed the minor armament of the _Astronef_.
The guns were got up and mounted while the attraction of the planet was comparatively feeble, and the weapons themselves therefore of very little weight.