United States or French Polynesia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
A few moments after there was a great heaving swell of the sea, which tossed and rolled the four vessels, and lifted the steel protecting net so high that for an instant parts of it showed themselves above the surface like glistening sea-ghosts. Experiments with motor-bombs had been made in unsettled mountainous districts, but this was the first one which had ever exerted its power under water.
This, with the armour-plate, added nearly fifteen feet to the width of the vessel above water. All her superstructures were removed from her deck, which was covered by a curved steel roof, and under a bomb-proof canopy at the bow were placed two guns capable of carrying the largest-sized motor-bombs. The Tallapoosa, thus transformed, was called Repeller No. 11.
Although it was now generally believed that motor-bombs from a repeller might destroy a man-of-war, it was also considered probable that the accurate calculations which appeared to be necessary to precision of aim could not be made when the object of the aim was in rapid motion.
The dense clouds were now upheaved at such short intervals that the scene of devastation was completely shut out from the observers on the hills; but every few minutes they felt a sickening shock, and heard a momentary and horrible crash and hiss which seemed to fill all the air. The instantaneous motor-bombs were tearing up the sea-board, and grinding it to atoms.
Instantaneous motor-bombs could sweep away all forts and citadels, and explode and destroy all torpedo defences, and London might lie under the guns of the repeller.
No one could for a moment imagine that the Syndicate had mined this place; and if it should be destroyed by motor-bombs, it would prove to the country that the Government had not been frightened by the tricks of a crafty enemy. An hour after the receipt of the note in which it was stated that Caerdaff had been selected, the Syndicate's fleet started for that place.
With as much calmness as the circumstances would permit, he awaited the progress of events. In a very short time a message came to him from Repeller No. 11, which stated that in two hours his ship would be destroyed by instantaneous motor-bombs.
This course had been highly prejudicial to the claims of the Syndicate, for as Repeller No. 7 had made no use in the contest with the Adamant of the motor-bombs with which she was said to be supplied, it was generally believed on both sides of the Atlantic that she carried no such bombs, and the conviction that the destruction at the Canadian port had been effected by means of mines continued as strong as it had ever been.
It was now generally admitted that one of the Syndicate's crabs could disable a man-of-war, that one of the Syndicate's repellers could withstand the heaviest artillery fire, and that one of the Syndicate's motor-bombs could destroy a vessel or a fort.
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.
Word Of The Day