a ship, notonly to attack, but also to protect itself.
Once only did the crabs give the torpedo-boats a chance. A mile or twonorth of the scene of action, a large cruiser was making her wayrapidly toward the repeller, which was still lying almost motionless,four miles to the westward. As it was highly probable that this vesselcarried dynamite guns, Crab Q, which was the fastest of her class, wassignalled to go after her. She had scarcely begun her course acrossthe open space of sea before a torpedo-boat was in pursuit. Fast aswas the latter, the crab was faster, and quite as easily managed. Shewas in a position of great danger, and her only safety lay in keepingherself on a line between the torpedo-boat and the gun-boat, and toshorten as quickly as possible the distance between herself and thatvessel.
If the torpedo-boat shot to one side in order to get the crab out ofline, the crab, its back sometimes hidden by the tossing waves, spedalso to the same side. When the torpedo-boat could aim a gun at thecrab and not at the gun-boat, a deadly torpedo flew into the sea; but atossing sea and a shifting target were unfavourable to the gunner'saim. It was not long, however, before the crab had run the chase whichmight so readily have been fatal to it, and was so near the gun-boatthat no more torpedoes could be fired at it.
Of course the officers and crew of the gun-boat had watched with mostanxious interest the chase of the crab. The vessel was one which hadbeen fitted out for service with dynamite guns, of which she carriedsome of very long range for this class of artillery, and she had beenordered to get astern of the repeller and to do her best to put a fewdynamite bombs on board of her.
The dynamite gun-boat therefore had kept ahead at full speed,determined to carry out her instructions if she should be allowed to doso; but her speed was not as great as that of a crab, and when thetorpedo-boat had given up the chase, and the dreaded crab was drawingswiftly near, the captain thought it time for bravery to give place toprudence. With the large amount of explosive material of the mosttremendous and terrific character which he had on board, it would bethe insanity of courage for him to allow his comparatively small vesselto be racked, shaken, and partially shivered by the powerful jaws ofthe on-coming foe. As he could neither fly nor fight, he hauled downhis flag in token of surrender, the first instance of the kind whichhad occurred in this war.
When the director of Crab Q, through his lookout-glass, beheld thisaction on the part of the gun-boat, he was a little perplexed as towhat he should next do. To accept the surrender of the British vessel,and to assume control of her, it was necessary to communicate with her.The communications of the crabs were made entirely by black-smokesignals, and these the captain of the gun-boat could not understand.The heavy hatches in the mailed roof which could be put in use when thecrab was cruising, could not be opened when she was at her fightingdepth, and in a tossing sea.
A means was soon devised of communicating with the gun-boat. Aspeaking-tube was run up through one of the air-pipes of the crab,which pipe was then elevated some distance above the surface. Throughthis the director hailed the other vessel, and as the air-pipe was nearthe stern of the crab, and therefore at a distance from the onlyvisible portion of the turtle-back roof, his voice seemed to come outof the depths of the ocean.
The surrender was accepted, and the captain of the gun-boat was orderedto stop his engines and prepare to be towed. When this order had beengiven, the crab moved round to the bow of the gun-boat, and graspingthe cut-water with its forceps, reversed its engines and began to backrapidly toward the British fleet, taking with it the captured vessel asa protection against torpedoes while in transit.
The crab slowed up not far from one of the foremost of the Britishships, and coming round to the quarter of the gun-boat, the astonishedcaptain of that vessel was informed, through the speaking-tube, that ifhe would give his parole to keep out of this fight, he would be allowedto proceed to his anchorage in Portsmouth harbour. The parole wasgiven, and the dynamite gun-boat, after reporting to the flag-ship,steamed away to Portsmouth.
The situation now became one which was unparalleled in the history ofnaval warfare. On the side of the British, seven war-ships weredisabled and drifting slowly to the south-east. For half an hour noadvance had been made by the British fleet, for whenever one of thelarge vessels had steamed ahead, such vessel had become the victim of acrab, and the Vice-Admiral commanding the fleet had signalled not toadvance until farther orders.
The crabs were also lying-to, each to the windward of, and not farfrom, one of the British ships. They had ceased to make any attacks,and were resting quietly under protection of the enemy. This, with thefact that the repeller still lay four miles away, without any apparentintention of taking part in the battle, gave the situation its peculiarcharacter.
The British Vice-Admiral did not intend to remain in this quiescentcondition. It was, of course, useless to order forth his ironclads,simply to see them disabled and set adrift. There was another arm ofthe service which evidently could be used with better effect upon thispeculiar foe than could the great battle-ships.
But before doing anything else, he must provide for the safety of thoseof his vessels which had been rendered helpless by the crabs, and someof which were now drifting dangerously near to each other. Despatcheshad been sent to Portsmouth for tugs, but it would not do to wait untilthese arrived, and a sufficient number of ironclads were detailed totow their injured consorts into port.
When this order had been given, the Vice-Admiral immediately preparedto renew the fight, and this time his efforts were to be directedentirely against the repeller. It would be useless to devote anyfurther attention to the crabs, especially in their present positions.But if the chief vessel of the Syndicate's fleet, with its springarmour and its terrible earthquake bombs, could be destroyed, it wasquite possible that those sea-parasites, the crabs, could also bedisposed of.
Every torpedo-boat was now ordered to the front, and in a long line,almost abreast of each other, these swift vessels--the light-infantryof the sea--advanced upon the solitary and distant foe. If one torpedocould but reach her hull, the Vice-Admiral, in spite of seven disabledironclads and a captured gun-boat, might yet gaze proudly at hisfloating flag, even if his own ship should be drifting broadside to thesea.
The line of torpedo-boats, slightly curving inward, had advanced abouta mile, when Repeller No. 11 awoke from her seeming sleep, and began toact. The two great guns at her bow were trained upward, so that a bombdischarged from them would fall into the sea a mile and a half ahead.Slowly turning her bow from side to side, so that the guns would covera range of nearly half a circle, the instantaneous motor-bombs of therepeller were discharged, one every half minute.
One of the most appalling characteristics of the motor-bombs was thesilence which accompanied their discharge and action. No noise washeard, except the flash of sound occasioned by the removal of theparticles of the object aimed at, and the subsequent roar of wind orfall of water.
As each motor-bomb dropped into the channel, a dense cloud appearedhigh in the air, above a roaring, seething cauldron, hollowed out ofthe waters and out of the very bottom of the channel. Into this chasmthe cloud quickly came down, condensed into a vast body of water, whichfell, with the roar of a cyclone, into the dreadful abyss from which ithad been torn, before the hissing walls of the great hollow had halffilled it with their sweeping surges. The piled-up mass of theredundant water was still sending its maddened billows tossing andwrithing in every direction toward their normal level, when anotherbomb was discharged; another surging abyss appeared, another roar ofwind and water was heard, and another mountain of furious billowsuplifted itself in a storm of spray and foam, raging that it had foundits place usurped.
Slowly turning, the repeller discharged bomb after bomb, building upout of the very sea itself a barrier against its enemies. Under thesethundering cataracts, born in an instant, and coming down all at oncein a plunging storm; into these abysses, with walls of water and floorsof cleft and shivered rocks; through this wide belt of
raging turmoil,thrown into new frenzy after the discharge of every bomb,--no vessel,no torpedo, could pass.
The air driven off in every direction by tremendous and successiveconcussions came rushing back in shrieking gales, which tore up thewaves into blinding foam. For miles in every direction the sea swelledand upheaved into great peaked waves, the repeller rising upon thesealmost high enough to look down into the awful chasms which her bombswere making. A torpedo-boat caught in one of the returning gales washurled forward almost on her beam ends until she was under the edge ofone of the vast masses of descending water. The flood which, from eventhe outer limits of this falling-sea, poured upon and into the unluckyvessel nearly swamped her, and when she was swept back by the rushingwaves into less stormy waters, her officers and crew leaped into theirboats and deserted her. By rare good-fortune their boats were keptafloat in the turbulent sea until they reached the nearesttorpedo-vessel.
Five minutes afterward a small but carefully aimed motor-bomb