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Updated: June 28, 2025
Thus, while they were arguing, Stevens took the offensive, and a cruelly barbed steel war-head tore completely through the body of their leader and mortally wounded the creature next beyond him. Though surprised, they were not to be frightened off, but with wild, shrill screams rushed to the attack.
Finally, he laid his hand flat on the altar; the executioner unbent his bow and the arrow drooped from the painted haft and dangled there, its hammered iron war-head glinting in the firelight.
"Ensign," shouted Lieutenant Danvers, "we shall feel obliged if you can lie alongside of that torpedo, and render the war-head harmless. We believe the torpedo to be fully loaded, and ready for instant action." "I'll do what I can, sir, and as promptly as possible," replied the ensign, saluting his superior officer.
A few minutes later the working part of the torpedo's war-head had been removed by the boat's crew, and the torpedo itself was taken in tow. "Now, Ensign, run in alongside, and take me on board," announced Lieutenant Danvers. "Mr. Benson, you'll go over to the 'Oakland' with me, of course?" By this time the "Thor" had come about, and up within hailing distance of her Pollard rival. "What's wrong?
If we left a loaded torpedo floating on the surface of the water, here in the paths of coast navigation, it would sink the first ship that struck the war-head of the torpedo." The sea, by this time, was rough and whitecapped, and a brisk wind was blowing down from the north-east. It was no easy task to get a rope around first one dummy torpedo, and then the other.
First the war-head, then the middle, then the tail and propeller of a fourteen-foot Whitehead torpedo swept away from them, two or three feet below the surface of the waves. A line of bubbles came to the surface, showing that the torpedo was headed, straight and clean, for the stone-laden scow over on the ocean. Then the torpedo, still under water, passed out of their range of view.
A war-head touched steel plating and there ensued a world-wracking explosion of atomic iron. Gaping wide, helpless, with all defenses down, other torpedoes entered the stricken hulk and completed its destruction even before they could be recalled.
"Jack, now that that torpedo is spent, and lying harmless on the water, start up speed and head over that way. Go carefully, for, remember, any sudden shock against the war-head of the torpedo would set it off." Jack signaled for slow speed ahead, the response coming promptly. "Somers," directed Lieutenant Danvers, "get the signal bunting out, and I'll help you rig a signal to the 'Oakland."
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