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The air-ship was not of the navigable balloon type, and is described by the survivors as looking more like a flying torpedo-boat than anything else. She flew no flag, and there is no clue to her origin. After destroying the fortress, she ascended several thousand feet, and continued her eastward course at such a prodigious speed, that in less than five minutes she was lost to sight.

'Now if a torpedo-boat with a City of Paris siren went mad and broke her moorings and hired a friend to help her, it's just conceivable that we might be carried as we are now. Otherwise this thing is The last words died on Keller's lips, his eyes began to start from his head, and his jaw fell.

But alarm at his own narrow escape was swamped in the feeling of relief for the safety of the Blanco Encalada; for the torpedo-boat would be obliged to manoeuvre a little to get her torpedo into place, and thus there was just a chance that he might yet be able to intercept her.

As her purpose evidently was to put us within fire of the batteries, we took but little notice of her, lying still and occasionally sending in our largest shell at her to try the range. “Soon afterward she dropped to the westward, and the torpedo-boat destroyer Terror, or it may have been her sister ship, the Furor, was sighted steaming along shore under the batteries.

"You are the young Chilian naval officer who was in charge of the torpedo-boat which destroyed three of our ships the night before last, are you not?" Jim replied that he was. "Well," resumed Villavicencio, "you will be sorry, I am sure, to hear that all your comrades were drowned when the Janequeo that was the name of the boat, I believe went down. You are the sole survivor.

"She's as fast as a torpedo-boat destroyer, then, sir," hazarded Dan. "Yes; and the submarine needs to be as fast. With the improvement of submarine boats the old style of torpedo boat will pass out altogether. Then, if the destroyer is retained the submarine must be capable of attacking the destroyer on equal terms.

In the night the British Mediterranean fleet, cruising down from Malta, had come into the roadstead, and at the signal from the flagship had maneuvered and dropped anchor, forming a long line of gigantic battleships, swift cruisers, torpedo-boat destroyers, torpedo-boats, despatch-boats, and other craft extending for several miles along the coast.

In this way the fleet was nearly surrounded, the torpedo-boat flotilla being thrown out to intercept those vessels that sought to break through the deadly net. With the coming on of darkness the firing from the great guns ceased, the Russian fleet being by this time hopelessly beaten. But the torpedo-boats now came actively into action, keeping up their fire through most of the night.

And Surgeon George Metcalf, with the rank of junior lieutenant, was ordered to the torpedo-boat above mentioned, and with him as executive officer a young graduate of the academy, Ensign Smith, who with the enthusiasm and courage of youth combined the mediocrity of inexperience and the full share of the service prejudice against civilians.

Both vessels then fired broadside after broadside up the entrance to the river. The boats coming down were two torpedo-boats and one torpedo-boat destroyer. After twenty minutes of firing by the Eagle, during the last five of which the Marblehead participated, the Spanish vessels ceased firing. April 29. A cablegram from St.