United States or Cabo Verde ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


For two miles they sped on, apparently unnoticed by the enemy, then the great turret guns of the Austrians opened on them. The French torpedo craft began to suffer. Two together swung broadside to the Austrians, riddled with holes; the boiler of a third burst, the ship broke in two and sank almost instantly. But the others raced on. Toward the big Austrian battleships they dashed.

It must have been a magnificent sight to behold that proud fleet steaming out to sea, ship after ship falling into line with machine-like precision and keeping distance perfectly, first the squadron of cruisers, led by the Yakumo; then the other five armoured cruisers, with the Asama in the van; then the four battleships accompanied by the Nisshin and Kasuga, which were powerful enough to take their place in the line of battle and, finally, the swarm of heterogeneous craft composed of the older and less important cruisers and other vessels, and those wasps of the sea, the destroyers.

"Dejah Thoris and Sola entered the hills not five miles from a great waterway and are now probably quite safe," he assured me. He had been a member of the ill-fated expedition which had fallen into the hands of the Tharks at the time of Dejah Thoris' capture, and he briefly related the events which followed the defeat of the battleships.

They come into the harbours stiff with cold, thaw out, and return to hardships which would make many a man prefer the trenches. Tributes to their patient courage, which came from the heart, were heard on board the battleships. "It is when we think of them," said an officer, "that we are most eager to have the German fleet come out, so that we can do our part." XXXIII The Fleet Puts To Sea

A score of torpedo boats, and half as many destroyers, dashed out from behind the British lines, and, rushing through the hurricane of shell that was directed upon them, ran past the broken line of unmanageable cruisers and battleships, and torpedoed them at easy range.

He was still sound when at six o'clock he turned east, refusing to be capped, for there was as yet no threat of any important increase in the force to which he was opposed. His mistake or that of his superior, Von Scheer came when the British battleships were sighted to the northeastward, heading down across his course.

It is such men as he, who, fearless upon the littered quarterdecks of reeling battleships, undismayed amid the smoke and death of stricken fields, their duty well and nobly done; have turned their feet homewards to pass their latter days amid their turnips and cabbages, beating their swords into pruning-hooks, and glad enough to do it. "Peter," said he suddenly. "Sir?" said I.

"Two of these sub-squadrons," says Berry, his flag-captain, "were to attack the ships of war, while the third was to pursue the transports and to sink and destroy as many as it could"; that is, he intended, in order to make sure of Napoleon's army, to use no more than ten, and possibly only eight, of his own battleships against the eleven of the enemy.

These comprised a hard fighting aggregation under a cool and daring fighter. The two first-class battleships were not equaled in fighting power by anything in the Spanish navy, and the New York was one of the best fighting ships of her kind in the world.

There are now twenty British battleships of larger size, some much larger. On shore a similar increase may be seen in the size and effectiveness of armies and the strength of fortifications.