The Great War Syndicate Part 7

As the crabs came nearer, the Llangaron lowered the great steel cylinder which hung across her stern, until it lay almost entirely under water, and abaft of her rudder and propeller-blades. She now moved slowly through the water, and her men greeted the advancing crabs with yells of defiance, and a shower of shot from machine guns.

The character of the new defence which had been fitted to the Llangaron was known to the Syndicate, and the directors of the two new crabs understood the heavy piece of work which lay before them. But their plans of action had been well considered, and they made straight for the stern of the British ship.

It was, of course, impossible to endeavour to grasp that great cylinder with its rounded ends; their forceps would slip from any portion of its smooth surface on which they should endeavour to lay hold, and no such attempt was made. Keeping near the cylinder, one at each end of it, the two moved slowly after the Llangaron, apparently discouraged.

In a short time, however, it was perceived by those on board the ship that a change had taken place in the appearance of the crabs; the visible portion of their backs was growing larger and larger; they were rising in the water. Their mailed roofs became visible from end to end, and the crowd of observers looking down from the ship were amazed to see what large vessels they were.

Higher and higher the crabs arose, their powerful air-pumps working at their greatest capacity, until their ponderous pincers became visible above the water. Then into the minds of the officers of the Llangaron flashed the true object of this uprising, which to the crew had seemed an intention on the part of the sea-devils to clamber on board.

If the cylinder were left in its present position the crab might seize the chains by which it was suspended, while if it were raised it would cease to be a defence. Notwithstanding this latter contingency, the order was quickly given to raise the cylinder; but before the hoisting engine had been set in motion, Crab Q thrust forward her forceps over the top of the cylinder and held it down. Another thrust, and the iron jaws had grasped one of the two ponderous chains by which the cylinder was suspended.

The other end of the cylinder began to rise, but at this moment Crab R, apparently by a single effort, lifted herself a foot higher out of the sea; her pincers flashed forward, and the other chain was grasped.

The two crabs were now placed in the most extraordinary position. The overhang of their roofs prevented an attack on their hulls by the Llangaron, but their unmailed hulls were so greatly exposed that a few shot from another ship could easily have destroyed them. But as any ship firing at them would be very likely to hit the Llangaron, their directors felt safe on this point.

Three of the foremost ironclads, less than two miles away, were heading directly for them, and their rams might be used with but little danger to the Llangaron; but, on the other hand, three swift crabs were heading directly for these ironclads.

It was impossible for Crabs Q and R to operate in the usual way. Their ma.s.sive forceps, lying flat against the top of the cylinder, could not be twisted. The enormous chains they held could not be severed by the greatest pressure, and if both crabs backed at once they would probably do no more than tow the Llangaron stern foremost. There was, moreover, no time to waste in experiments, for other rams would be coming on, and there were not crabs enough to attend to them all.

No time was wasted. Q signalled to R, and R back again, and instantly the two crabs, each still grasping a chain of the cylinder, began to sink. On board the Llangaron an order was shouted to let out the cylinder chains; but as these chains had only been made long enough to allow the top of the cylinder to hang at or a little below the surface of the water, a foot or two of length was all that could be gained.

The davits from which the cylinder hung were thick and strong, and the iron windla.s.ses to which the chains were attached were large and ponderous; but these were not strong enough to withstand the weight of two crabs with steel-armoured roofs, enormous engines, and iron hull.

In less than a minute one davit snapped like a pipe-stem under the tremendous strain, and immediately afterward the windla.s.s to which the chain was attached was torn from its bolts, and went crashing overboard, tearing away a portion of the stern-rail in its descent.

Crab Q instantly released the chain it had held, and in a moment the great cylinder hung almost perpendicularly from one chain. But only for a moment. The nippers of Crab R still firmly held the chain, and the tremendous leverage exerted by the falling of one end of the cylinder wrenched it from the rigidly held end of its chain, and, in a flash, the enormous stern-guard of the Llangaron sunk, end foremost, to the bottom of the channel.

In ten minutes afterward, the Llangaron, rudderless, and with the blades of her propellers shivered and crushed, was slowly turning her starboard to the wind and the sea, and beginning to roll like a log of eight thousand tons.

Besides the Llangaron, three ironclads were now drifting broadside to the sea. But there was no time to succour disabled vessels, for the rest of the fleet was coming on, and there was great work for the crabs.

Against these enemies, swift of motion and sudden in action, the torpedo-boats found it almost impossible to operate, for the British ships and the crabs were so rapidly nearing each other that a torpedo sent out against an enemy was more than likely to run against the hull of a friend. Each crab sped at the top of its speed for a ship, not only to attack, but also to protect itself.

Once only did the crabs give the torpedo-boats a chance. A mile or two north of the scene of action, a large cruiser was making her way rapidly toward the repeller, which was still lying almost motionless, four miles to the westward. As it was highly probable that this vessel carried dynamite guns, Crab Q, which was the fastest of her cla.s.s, was signalled to go after her. She had scarcely begun her course across the open s.p.a.ce of sea before a torpedo-boat was in pursuit. Fast as was the latter, the crab was faster, and quite as easily managed. She was in a position of great danger, and her only safety lay in keeping herself on a line between the torpedo-boat and the gun-boat, and to shorten as quickly as possible the distance between herself and that vessel.

If the torpedo-boat shot to one side in order to get the crab out of line, the crab, its back sometimes hidden by the tossing waves, sped also to the same side. When the torpedo-boat could aim a gun at the crab and not at the gun-boat, a deadly torpedo flew into the sea; but a tossing sea and a shifting target were unfavourable to the gunner's aim. It was not long, however, before the crab had run the chase which might so readily have been fatal to it, and was so near the gun-boat that no more torpedoes could be fired at it.

Of course the officers and crew of the gun-boat had watched with most anxious interest the chase of the crab. The vessel was one which had been fitted out for service with dynamite guns, of which she carried some of very long range for this cla.s.s of artillery, and she had been ordered to get astern of the repeller and to do her best to put a few dynamite 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 do so; but her speed was not as great as that of a crab, and when the torpedo-boat had given up the chase, and the dreaded crab was drawing swiftly near, the captain thought it time for bravery to give place to prudence. With the large amount of explosive material of the most tremendous and terrific character which he had on board, it would be the insanity of courage for him to allow his comparatively small vessel to be racked, shaken, and partially shivered by the powerful jaws of the on-coming foe. As he could neither fly nor fight, he hauled down his flag in token of surrender, the first instance of the kind which had occurred in this war.

When the director of Crab Q, through his lookout-gla.s.s, beheld this action on the part of the gun-boat, he was a little perplexed as to what he should next do. To accept the surrender of the British vessel, and to a.s.sume control of her, it was necessary to communicate with her.

The communications of the crabs were made entirely by black-smoke signals, 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 the crab was cruising, could not be opened when she was at her fighting depth, and in a tossing sea.

A means was soon devised of communicating with the gun-boat. A speaking-tube was run up through one of the air-pipes of the crab, which pipe was then elevated some distance above the surface. Through this the director hailed the other vessel, and as the air-pipe was near the stern of the crab, and therefore at a distance from the only visible portion of the turtle-back roof, his voice seemed to come out of the depths of the ocean.

The surrender was accepted, and the captain of the gun-boat was ordered to stop his engines and prepare to be towed. When this order had been given, the crab moved round to the bow of the gun-boat, and grasping the cut-water with its forceps, reversed its engines and began to back rapidly toward the British fleet, taking with it the captured vessel as a protection against torpedoes while in transit.

The crab slowed up not far from one of the foremost of the British ships, and coming round to the quarter of the gun-boat, the astonished captain of that vessel was informed, through the speaking-tube, that if he would give his parole to keep out of this fight, he would be allowed to proceed to his anchorage in Portsmouth harbour. The parole was given, 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 of naval warfare. On the side of the British, seven war-ships were disabled and drifting slowly to the south-east. For half an hour no advance had been made by the British fleet, for whenever one of the large vessels had steamed ahead, such vessel had become the victim of a crab, and the Vice-Admiral commanding the fleet had signalled not to advance until farther orders.

The crabs were also lying-to, each to the windward of, and not far from, one of the British ships. They had ceased to make any attacks, and were resting quietly under protection of the enemy. This, with the fact that the repeller still lay four miles away, without any apparent intention of taking part in the battle, gave the situation its peculiar character.

The British Vice-Admiral did not intend to remain in this quiescent condition. It was, of course, useless to order forth his ironclads, simply to see them disabled and set adrift. There was another arm of the service which evidently could be used with better effect upon this peculiar foe than could the great battle-ships.

But before doing anything else, he must provide for the safety of those of his vessels which had been rendered helpless by the crabs, and some of which were now drifting dangerously near to each other. Despatches had been sent to Portsmouth for tugs, but it would not do to wait until these arrived, and a sufficient number of ironclads were detailed to tow their injured consorts into port.

When this order had been given, the Vice-Admiral immediately prepared to renew the fight, and this time his efforts were to be directed entirely against the repeller. It would be useless to devote any further attention to the crabs, especially in their present positions.

But if the chief vessel of the Syndicate's fleet, with its spring armour and its terrible earthquake bombs, could be destroyed, it was quite possible that those sea-parasites, the crabs, could also be disposed 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-infantry of the sea--advanced upon the solitary and distant foe. If one torpedo could but reach her hull, the Vice-Admiral, in spite of seven disabled ironclads and a captured gun-boat, might yet gaze proudly at his floating flag, even if his own ship should be drifting broadside to the sea.

The line of torpedo-boats, slightly curving inward, had advanced about a mile, when Repeller No. 11 awoke from her seeming sleep, and began to act. The two great guns at her bow were trained upward, so that a bomb discharged 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 cover a range of nearly half a circle, the instantaneous motor-bombs of the repeller were discharged, one every half minute.

One of the most appalling characteristics of the motor-bombs was the silence which accompanied their discharge and action. No noise was heard, except the flash of sound occasioned by the removal of the particles of the object aimed at, and the subsequent roar of wind or fall of water.

As each motor-bomb dropped into the channel, a dense cloud appeared high in the air, above a roaring, seething cauldron, hollowed out of the waters and out of the very bottom of the channel. Into this chasm the cloud quickly came down, condensed into a vast body of water, which fell, with the roar of a cyclone, into the dreadful abyss from which it had been torn, before the hissing walls of the great hollow had half filled it with their sweeping surges. The piled-up ma.s.s of the redundant water was still sending its maddened billows tossing and writhing in every direction toward their normal level, when another bomb was discharged; another surging abyss appeared, another roar of wind and water was heard, and another mountain of furious billows uplifted itself in a storm of spray and foam, raging that it had found its place usurped.

Slowly turning, the repeller discharged bomb after bomb, building up out of the very sea itself a barrier against its enemies. Under these thundering cataracts, born in an instant, and coming down all at once in a plunging storm; into these abysses, with walls of water and floors of 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 pa.s.s.

The air driven off in every direction by tremendous and successive concussions came rushing back in shrieking gales, which tore up the waves into blinding foam. For miles in every direction the sea swelled and upheaved into great peaked waves, the repeller rising upon these almost high enough to look down into the awful chasms which her bombs were making. A torpedo-boat caught in one of the returning gales was hurled forward almost on her beam ends until she was under the edge of one of the vast ma.s.ses of descending water. The flood which, from even the outer limits of this falling-sea, poured upon and into the unlucky vessel nearly swamped her, and when she was swept back by the rushing waves into less stormy waters, her officers and crew leaped into their boats and deserted her. By rare good-fortune their boats were kept afloat in the turbulent sea until they reached the nearest torpedo-vessel.

Five minutes afterward a small but carefully aimed motor-bomb struck the nearly swamped vessel, and with the roar of all her own torpedoes she pa.s.sed into nothing.

The British Vice-Admiral had carefully watched the repeller through his gla.s.s, and he noticed that simultaneously with the appearance of the cloud in the air produced by the action of the motor-bombs there were two puffs of black smoke from the repeller. These were signals to the crabs to notify them that a motor-gun had been discharged, and thus to provide against accidents in case a bomb should fail to act. One puff signified that a bomb had been discharged to the north; two, that it had gone eastward; and so on. If, therefore, a crab should see a signal of this kind, and perceive no signs of the action of a bomb, it would be careful not to approach the repeller from the quarter indicated. It is true that in case of the failure of a bomb to act, another bomb would be dropped upon the same spot, but the instructions of the War Syndicate provided that every possible precaution should be taken against accidents.

Of course the Vice-Admiral did not understand these signals, nor did he know that they were signals, but he knew that they accompanied the discharge of a motor-gun. Once he noticed that there was a short cessation in the hitherto constant succession of water avalanches, and during this lull he had seen two puffs from the repeller, and the destruction, at the same moment, of the deserted torpedo-boat. It was, therefore, plain enough to him that if a motor-bomb could be placed so accurately upon one torpedo-boat, and with such terrible result, other bombs could quite as easily be discharged upon the other torpedo-boats which formed the advanced line of the fleet. When the barrier of storm and cataract again began to stretch itself in front of the repeller, he knew that not only was it impossible for the torpedo-boats to send their missives through this raging turmoil, but that each of these vessels was itself in danger of instantaneous destruction.

Unwilling, therefore, to expose his vessels to profitless danger, the Vice-Admiral ordered the torpedo-boats to retire from the front, and the whole line of them proceeded to a point north of the fleet, where they lay to.

When this had been done, the repeller ceased the discharge of bombs; but the sea was still heaving and tossing after the storm, when a despatch-boat brought orders from the British Admiralty to the flagship. Communication between the British fleet and the sh.o.r.e, and consequently London, had been constant, and all that had occurred had been quickly made known to the Admiralty and the Government. The orders now received by the Vice-Admiral were to the effect that it was considered judicious to discontinue the conflict for the day, and that he and his whole fleet should return to Portsmouth to receive further orders.

In issuing these commands the British Government was actuated simply by motives of humanity and common sense. The British fleet was thoroughly prepared for ordinary naval warfare, but an enemy had inaugurated another kind of naval warfare, for which it was not prepared. It was, therefore, decided to withdraw the ships until they should be prepared for the new kind of warfare. To allow ironclad after ironclad to be disabled and set adrift, to subject every ship in the fleet to the danger of instantaneous destruction, and all this without the possibility of inflicting injury upon the enemy, would not be bravery; it would be stupidity. It was surely possible to devise a means for destroying the seven hostile ships now in British waters. Until action for this end could be taken, it was the part of wisdom for the British navy to confine itself to the protection of British ports.

When the fleet began to move toward the Isle of Wight, the six crabs, which had been lying quietly among and under the protection of their enemies, withdrew southward, and, making a slight circuit, joined the repeller.

Each of the disabled ironclads was now in tow of a sister vessel, or of tugs, except the Llangaron. This great ship had been disabled so early in the contest, and her broadside had presented such a vast surface to the north-west wind, that she had drifted much farther to the south than any other vessel. Consequently, before the arrival of the tugs which had been sent for to tow her into harbour, the Llangaron was well on her way across the channel. A foggy night came on, and the next morning she was ash.o.r.e on the coast of France, with a mile of water between her and dry land. Fast-rooted in a great sand-bank, she lay week after week, with the storms that came in from the Atlantic, and the storms that came in from the German Ocean, beating upon her tall side of solid iron, with no more effect than if it had been a precipice of rock. Against waves and winds she formed a ma.s.sive breakwater, with a wide stretch of smooth sea between her and the land. There she lay, proof against all the artillery of Europe, and all the artillery of the sea and the storm, until a fleet of small vessels had taken from her her ponderous armament, her coal and stores, and she had been lightened enough to float upon a high tide, and to follow three tugs to Portsmouth.

When night came on, Repeller No. 11 and the crabs dropped down with the tide, and lay to some miles west of the scene of battle. The fog shut them in fairly well, but, fearful that torpedoes might be sent out against them, they showed no lights. There was little danger, of collision with pa.s.sing merchantmen, for the English Channel, at present, was deserted by this cla.s.s of vessels.

The next morning the repeller, preceded by two crabs, bearing between them a submerged net similar to that used at the Canadian port, appeared off the eastern end of the Isle of Wight. The anchors of the net were dropped, and behind it the repeller took her place, and shortly afterward she sent a flag-of-truce boat to Portsmouth harbour.

This boat carried a note from the American War Syndicate to the British Government.

In this note it was stated that it was now the intention of the Syndicate to utterly destroy, by means of the instantaneous motor, a fortified post upon the British coast. As this would be done solely for the purpose of demonstrating the irresistible destructive power of the motor-bombs, it was immaterial to the Syndicate what fortified post should be destroyed, provided it should answer the requirements of the proposed demonstration. Consequently the British Government was offered the opportunity of naming the fortified place which should be destroyed. If said Government should decline to do this, or delay the selection for twenty-four hours, the Syndicate would itself decide upon the place to be operated upon.

Every one in every branch of the British Government, and, in fact, nearly every thinking person in the British islands, had been racking his brains, or her brains, that night, over the astounding situation; and the note of the Syndicate only added to the perturbation of the Government. There was a strong feeling in official circles that the insolent little enemy must be crushed, if the whole British navy should have to rush upon it, and all sink together in a common grave.