"And borings, too ... lots of them ... in the bed of the Channel. They've started a Tunnel, two thousand yards of it from Dover, under the sea, and there isn't a flaw in it. Hardly any water comes through, although there isn't a lining to the walls ... just the bare, grey chalk. I was awfully sick when I was told I couldn't go to Harland and Wolff's, but I don't mind now. Building a Channel Tunnel is as big a job as building the Gigantic any day, and Hare is as brainy as Tom Arthurs!"
He became oratorical about the Channel Tunnel, and he told them stories of remarkable borings on both sides of the sea.
"There's a big thick bed of grey chalk all the way from England to France," he said, "and the water simply can't get through it. They've made experimental tubes from our side and from the French side, and they let people into them, and it was all right. No mud, no water, no foul air ... perfectly sound!"
He quoted Sartiaux, the French engineer, and Sir Francis Fox, the English engineer. "They don't fool about with wildcat schemes, I can tell you. Why, Fox built the Mersey Tunnel and the Simplon Tunnel ... and the Channel Tunnel is as easy as that!"
There were to be two tubes, each capable of carrying the ordinary British railway, bored through a bed of cenomian chalk, two hundred feet thick on an average.
"We could have an extra tunnel for motor-cars, if necessary!" said Ninian. "Just think of the difference there'd be if we had the Tunnel. You could buzz from London to Paris in five or six hours without changing, and you'd never get seasick!..."
"That would be nice," said Mrs. Graham.
"And you'd be safer in the Tunnel than you'd be on the Channel. There'd be a hundred and fifty feet of watertight chalk between you and the sea!"
They argued about the Tunnel. How long would it take to construct? "Oh, six or seven years!" Ninian answered airily. "What about War? Supposing England and France went to War with each other?"
"We could flood a long section of the Tunnel from our side, and they couldn't pump the water out from theirs," he answered. "Of course, I don't know much about it, but when you get chaps like Hare and Sartiaux and Fox talking seriously about it, you listen seriously to them. Anyhow, I do. Old Hare told me yesterday I was getting on nicely!..."