The Penn's Grove record., 1893-04-28
THE POETRY OF THE SEARCH
LIGHT,
ILLUSTRATED BY FRED 7. JANE.

When the ''bloodles6 warfare Oh TN
naval man9vres is in progress, count
less stories are told along the coast o
the havoc wrought by the electro
search.light. Romantic walks on lonely
cliff paths are disturbed by q flash from
the dec. Night is turned into day, ant
chanticleer feels in duty bound to az
PRISE his neighbors Of the fact. The
gas burning on parades and ses.waii'
pales its Intellectual glare, and tn
dazzled, winking watchers Of thu
strange lightsfrom the sea are unfeign'
eddy thankful when the beams are
turned in some other direction. St
lar they have experienced its prose
now they may hope to see something
OF what may we'll be called its poetry
The weird mystery OF it's ever-chsng-
ing effects, whose infinite variety Is
constantly presenting familiar objects
In a new aspect, the strong hight and
shade Of its pictures, and the rapidity
with which they succeed one another,
combine to produce on their observer
an impression as lasting as 1t is impos-
sible of exact repetition.
Whatever effect is produced by the
light on observers on the shore is GER
tainly not lessened when the search
light is brought to bear upon obsery-
ers at sea. From how near or far none
OF us on the ship can do more than
guess; a beam of light shootsl hither
and thither over the dark surface OF the
ocean. Suddenly the beam is lost, and
IN place of it we see q bright and blaz-
ing star. And then all the air is filed
with a binding light, apparently cir
cling round and round, and forming a
pathway direct TO the star from which
it comes. 1t is only for q moment.
As suddenly as 1t comes upon us 1t has
gone, and we feel that ever at sea,
where night can be dark, we have
never known before what darkness
meant.
Probably our ship is one Of a squad
ron, and is fitted, ike her consorts and
the vessel whose light has broken 30
mysteriously upon our darkness, with
a search-light Of her own. This will
be quickly brought into play, and Its
beams in their turn will dart hither
and thither across the dark waters in
search of the ship from which the
strange light flashed. In this progress
the beams will cross and recross the
lights of other ships, and will show at
n minute dazzlingly Opaque, and
the next as q transparent hlm.
Every eye is turned to the quarter
whence the first light flashed upon MS.
If the light some from a torpedo boat
and fortune favor us we shall sight the
boat in a few minutes, but it may be
an hour or even more before we do
go, for her commander, il he wished to
escape detection, would naturally
avoid the direct path of the light from
his ship. But, sooner or later, telling
blue-blnck against the light beyond
her, w catch sight Of the
low-lying boat, which is pass
ing through a beam and is speeding
toward us. She is travelling fast, and
we have to shift the light rapidly. Once
again the beam fails upon the water.
but 1t catches only the stern Of the
stranger, making 1t tell as light grey
against dark. Nearer and nearer
hastens theboat, darting this way and
that in a vain endeavor to elude the
binding ray of ghostly light which fol-
lows her relentlessiy. The weird mys.
terry deepens as the space between ms
grows less, and distance, form, and
color are distorted and lost. As often
as not we see from behind the light the
boat which it is covering, as though it
were travelling in the air or upon the
bulwarks OF our own ship.
Weird and startling as is this effect, il
is far surpassed by that which is given
by the search-light when 1t throws, as
it often does, huge shadows on the sky.
every state of the atmosphere is
favorable to this phenomenon. Fog or
smoke must be present in the air,
which will then, being made Opaque
semi-opaque, take the imprint OF u
almost al surely as o blank wall
on shore. just in the same way one
often gees on the water, when the sun
is shining, the sharp shadow OF a ship,
where there is foam. though as
rule the water, being as transparent
IS the air, will not take q shadow. The
same thing takes place with the search
light, only the light being so much
to the object than are the clouds
npon which the shadow is thrown, the
shadow often appears many times larger
han the original, and a tiny boat will
1--WE a shadow moving along the clouds |
ike a gigantic ghost ship.
Another curious trick OF shadow Is |
by the search. light when the
is thrown upon a cliff or upon
mother ship. In that case, owing to
The concentration Of light, the shadow /
stands ont by force of contrast appar- !
intensely black. The general |
xeirdness, and destruction Of form
md distance, play their part in the
illusion, no doubt. But when the shadow
is that of small boat, il 10 difficult ut first
10 say which is substance and which
So complete is the illusion at
that Admiral Sir NOVEL; Salmon,
in the early days of scar h-lights, once
chased what he thought was another
boat under the cliffs of Milford Haven,
only to find after he had gone q con-
distance that he was pursuing
the shadow of his torpedo boat.
If instead of looking from behind
the beam Of light we look across IT
from any distance, another curious
trick of shadow is to be seen; the masts
and yards of a vessel caught in the
beam will cast a shadow on a cliff or
coast a mile or more away, and will
even, under peculiar circumstances,
tell on the beam itself as deep blue
bars along the silvery grey. The beam
is actually straight, but sometimes
from a distance it takes the form Of q
slight white curve athwart the sky.
Ofcourse this is another illusion due, in
all probability, to the refrsotion OF the
light in passing through the different
of atmosphere, more or less
Strangest, in some ways, of all the
spectral effects Of light and shade
which the search-light gives is one
which was often displayed at the Naval
Exhibition-though it would hardly
be fair to take the apparatus used
there as fully illustrating the powers Of
those in use in the Navy. Falling
upon the water, the beam OF light is
reflected to the sky in the widest,
welrdest manner. Sometimes one edge
Of the beam m out sharply and the
other is lost, more often the whole is
and blurred, but always the
scene is weird almost beyond descrip-