_Kentucky_, these two telescopes follow the ship, turning gradually as
the vessel comes nearer. Down at each gun there is another man looking
at the enemy through a telescope. He is the gun-firer. Another man at
the gun, the gunner, has turned a wheel to elevate the gun so as to
shoot a certain number of yards, as marked on the dial in front of him.
The vessel is rolling from side to side. The gun now points high in the
air, and now down into the water. It is known that the enemy is the
exact distance away to be hit by the projectile if the _Kentucky_ did
not roll. The gun-firer watches as his ship comes to a level. He sees
the other ship exactly in the centre of his telescope, or at the
juncture of the cross-hairs on the glass. Not a tenth of a second must
be lost. The gunner has already pressed down a button, showing that his
aim is all right for a certain distance. The gun-firer presses his
button as the target shows itself in the centre of the cross-hairs; an
electric current flashes through the primer of the projectile, and a
thunder-bolt of war speeds through the air at the rate of about 2000
feet a second. The gun cannot be fired unless both gunner and gun-firer
press down the buttons in front of them. How do they know when to do
this? Who tells them when to fire? The answer is that no one tells them
when to fire after they have received their general orders. It all
results from those two sailor-men on the masts following the path of the
enemy.
[Illustration: DIAGRAM SHOWING TELEPHONIC CONNECTIONS BETWEEN
RANGE-FINDERS AND GUNNERS.
A.--Central Telephone Station. B.--Dial on which Distance is conveyed to
Gunners from A. C.--Range-finder who conveys Angle to A. D.--Gun-firer
who presses Firing-button when Range is Found.]
Those men on the masts are working the range-finders. There are
electrical instruments that tell automatically the exact distance from
them of any object. All that the men have to do is to keep looking at
the enemy, and the guns will keep on hitting the mark if fired at that
instant in the roll or plunge that the target comes at the centre of the
gun-firer's telescope. All that is absolutely essential, as a first
requisite, is that the two men at the range-finders shall be looking at
the same spot on the enemy's ship. Electricity does most of the rest of
the work. Now you must know that there are instruments in navigation by
which distances of objects from a ship can be reckoned accurately. A
sextant is one of these instruments. It requires a lot of figuring,
however, to fix the distance. It would be useless to try to use these
instruments in a battle. Long before the distance of an enemy could be
computed his ship, and your own as well, would have changed its
position, going as war-ships in time of conflict do at the rate of more
than a quarter of a mile a minute. A shot fired at the distance computed
would perhaps be a mile wide of the mark.
[Illustration: RANGE-FINDERS AT WORK ON THE ENEMY FROM THE FORE AND MAIN
TOPS.]
Nor will it do to fire at an enemy in the old hit-or-miss style that
used to be followed. In the old days the gunner sighted the gun, made an
allowance as best he could for the distance the ship would go before he
fired, and when the roll or plunge of his own vessel was favorable he
pulled a string, as he turned away his head, and took chances of hitting
the other ship. He had to guess the distance largely. He first tried a
certain range, and then another, until he gradually got the right
distance, and then he fired, whenever he got the right chance. Those
were the days of the old smooth-bore cannon; the days when a captain
could make himself heard by a speaking-trumpet anywhere on deck, and
almost anywhere below-deck by shouting down a hatchway. All that is
changed now. The roar on a war-ship in battle is like that on a
mountain-top encased in a violent thunder-storm. Then, too, ammunition
is too costly and too limited nowadays to be wasted by experiments in
finding the range of the enemy, and in taking chances on hitting him.
One shot from one of these guns of modern times may win the battle by
piercing the vitals of the enemy's ship, and not even the smallest
chance must be taken to miss that target. It is for that reason that the
wonderful aid of electricity has been called into use on war-ships in
many devices. Probably the most wonderful of all these devices is the
range-finder.
It isn't necessary for us to go deep into electrical science to
understand how this instrument does its work. Electricity itself is a
great mystery, and a puzzle in many ways to those who understand it
best. Most of us have not been able to grasp its simpler puzzles until
we studied them in college, and even then it would not be well for us to
boast of what we knew. All we need to know, however, to understand the
range-finder is a little problem in geometry. Most of you understand
that if we have a triangle, and know the length of one side and the size
of the angles at the ends of that side, we can figure exactly the length
of the other two sides and the distance of the point where those two
sides meet. Well, that explains just how the range-finder works. The
exact distance between the two men looking through the telescopes is
known and fixed. Each man looks, as we have seen, at the same point out
in the distance on the enemy's ship. That point is where the two unknown
sides of the triangle come together. There is no time to figure the
distance. A tenth of a second in these days is too much time to be lost.
We must use electricity to do our figuring. This is the way it is done:
The telescopes are turned about on electric circuits; that is, they are
attached to a metal circle charged with electricity. The wires from
these circles run to a little dial down in the hold. The Wheatstone
bridge or electrical balance system is used. That means that the
resistance of a current through a wire through a given distance is
measured finally by a dial on a marking-instrument.
Now it is impossible to turn one or both of those telescopes on the
range-finders without moving the dial on the marking-instrument.
Electricity has progressed so far that to the exact foot the dial will
indicate the distance an object is away from the base of the line
connecting the range-finding instruments. At any instant that dial will
tell how many yards off the enemy is. The men at the telescopes know
nothing of what the dial is doing. The dial is down in the central
telephone exchange of the ship. One man is stationed there to do nothing
else than to watch what it records. He has a little instrument beside
him called a range-indicator. The dial of the range-finder says that the
enemy is so many yards away. He simply presses a button on the
range-indicator, which sends a current to other range-indicators in ten
different places on a battle-ship like the _Kentucky_. The needles of
these ten instruments, one at each of the guns of the main battery, and
at some of the guns of the secondary battery, tell the gunner how far
off the enemy is. The indicators have simply transmitted the news to the
gunners which the range-finders have discovered automatically.
Every gunner knows, by the sliding-scale attached to his gun, just how
far to elevate the gun so as to carry its projectile a certain number of
yards. He does not look along his gun. He pays no attention to the enemy
himself. He keeps one hand on a little wheel, which he turns with his
fingers, and the slightest twist alters the range of the piece. In a
twinkling he can change the range a hundred yards. Suppose, now, the
dial of the range-finder in front of the man in the telephone central
indicates 2580 yards. He presses his button on the range-indicator, and
in ten places on board the _Kentucky_ the gunners know that the enemy is
2580 yards away. Previous warnings have fixed that distance
approximately. With a quick twist of the wrist the range of each gun in
action is fixed for 2580 yards. The gunner keeps his eye on the
range-indicator, and when his gun is pointed to carry its projectile
that distance he presses down his firing-button. But it will not do,
perhaps, to fire at that instant. The ship may be rolling or pitching.
The gun-firer is looking through his telescope. Suddenly the ship is
shown to be on an even keel, because the cross-hairs of the telescope
centre on the enemy. The gun-firer presses his button, and the gun is
discharged.
Suppose, now, that the range has changed between the time that the gun
is aimed and the time the _Kentucky_ has reached an even keel. Of course
the gun-firer at the telescope can know nothing of it. He presses his
button, and perhaps is surprised to find that the gun does not fire.
That simply means that the gunner has taken his finger off his
firing-button while he is changing the range of the gun to the new
figures just telegraphed to him from the range-finder. The gun cannot be
fired unless the buttons of both gunner and gun-firer are pressed down
at the same time. This is done to avoid waste of ammunition. The gunner
keeps his finger on his firing-button all the time the range remains
fixed. During that time the man at the telescope can fire the gun
whenever the cross-hairs of his instrument tell him it is the proper
time to fire. If the range is being changed, the gun does not go off. If
the range is set, the gun does go off. In either case the man at the
telescope has nothing to do with the range. All he has to do is to watch
the enemy and press his button. All the gunner has to do is to see that
the range of his gun is the same as the range-indicator registers, and
to keep his button pressed down so long as the range is fixed. All the
man in the central telegraph and telephone exchange on ship has to do is
to see what range the range-finders are indicating and telegraph it to
the gunners. All the men at the range-finders have to do is to keep
pointing their telescopes at the enemy, and let the rest of the work
take care of itself.
All this seems like a complicated bit of mechanism. So it is; but, as
with all electrical appliances, it is difficult to understand and
extremely simple to use them. It may surprise you to know that from the
time that the range-finder sailors fix their telescopes on the enemy
less than one second need elapse before the guns are fired. Of course
every man is at his station. Each gun is already fixed at near the
proper range. The range-finders give the exact distance. The man in the
central office telegraphs it to the gunners. The gunners adjust their
weapons and press down their buttons. The gun-firers wait to get the
proper sight, probably in the same twinkling of an eye that all this
information is being sent over the ship, and he finally fires the gun.
Of course, where the ship is rolling or pitching considerably, the time
between fixing the range and firing the gun may be longer. After the gun
is all ready for firing, however, even the fifth of a second may make
the difference between a hit and a miss, and hence the need for the
lightning quickness of electricity.
The range-finder and the other appliances used with it are the
inventions of Lieutenant Bradley A. Fiske, of the United States navy. No
other navy than ours has them, although the naval authorities of other
nations are thinking of adopting them. If we should have a war right
away, we should have an advantage over an enemy. Constant experience has
shown their complete success.
In another article we shall consider some more of these "trifles" that
are used in connection with electricity on war-ships.
A LOYAL TRAITOR.
A STORY OF THE WAR OF 1812 BETWEEN AMERICA AND ENGLAND.
BY JAMES BARNES.
CHAPTER III.
THE BURNING.
The fire must have eaten through the chimney, and had probably been
burning in the walls along the staircase and in the floors of the
rubbish chambers for some minutes before we had inkling of it. It was
almost beyond imagining, the way it spread. But the steps of the
staircase itself were firm underfoot, although inside the walls, and
even to the roof, the roaring crackling flames were gutting the left
wing of the house.
The doctor did not stop to help Mr. Edgerton find the key; he threw his
weight against the door I pointed out again and again. It went open with
a crash at last, after I had thought that the doctor would have stove
his own side in first.
There was no smoke on this side of the house, but it followed us from
the hallway, choking the throat and stinging the eyes. There was the box
in the middle of the room.
Now we were all three encouraging one another and shouting for haste.
Twice did the lawyer drop the bunch of keys as he tried to fit the lock.
"Take them, lad," he cried at last, looking over his shoulder; "your
fingers are the nimbler. But make haste!" The tears were pouring down
his face; he hurriedly rose from his knees, and, making a leap for the
window, kicked out the glass and the shutter that had been nailed fast,
and thrust his head to the air, coughing, struggling, and gagging as if
his last day had come.
In the mean time the doctor was bending over, with his face close to
mine, and whispering admonitions to be cool; but his hand on my shoulder
shook as if the ague had possession of him. Upon my soul, I think I was
the coolest of the three! Key after key I tried without success.
Suddenly the doctor slipped his fingers into the handle at the end.
[Illustration: "OUT OF THE WINDOW WITH IT!" HE SPLUTTERED.]
"Out the window with it!" he spluttered. "What jack-asses! What dunces!
Bear a hand here, Edgerton!"
The lawyer turned back into the room. He took the other end of the box,
and they heaved with all their strength, I, still on my knees, helping
them. We might as well have tried to pull the big oak before the house
up by the roots.
"It's nailed down!" roared the lawyer, running his fingers along the
edge.
There was a crash in the lower hall, and a great tongue of flame, like a
red thirsty blade, licked in at us through the doorway. There was such
a roaring now in our ears that we could not make ourselves heard except
by shouting.
"Out of the window for our lives!" cried the doctor. "The stairs have
fallen!"
The lawyer bestowed some angry but useless kicks on the lid of the box,
and we piled out of the window on the roof of the back piazza. The wind,
blowing strongly from the eastward, had kept most of the smoke and the
flame away from the north side of the building.
But it was a fearsome sight to see the way things were going. The whole
of the west wing, and the south also, to the roof, was one red smooch of
flame against the tree-tops. The dark smoke curled over and hung close
to the damp earth. It was some twelve or fifteen feet from the piazza
roof to the ground, but a chinaberry-tree grew close to hand, spreading
to the eaves.
The lawyer made one leap of it into the tree and crashed through it; and
just as the roof on which we were standing shook and sloughed away and
the flames burst up from below, the doctor and I caught at a branch and
swung off together; but the limb broke beneath our weight. Down we came
by the run, I landing full and fair upon the doctor's chest, which
almost did for him for good and all.
Scrambling to our feet, Mr. Edgerton and I hauled him away to some
distance from the house, and the cool rain helped to revive him,
although for some minutes he drew breath with difficulty.
Then the three of us sat there on the wet grass and watched the house
burn. I shall never forget it or the mixture of feelings which filled my
mind and bosom. A sense of unreality, an inability to grasp the idea
that it was really _happening_ probably was uppermost.
The lawyer, whom I had always thought a cold-tempered person, was
squatted cross-legged, Turk fashion, grasping the toes of his boots in
either hand, and rocking himself to and fro, all the time muttering and
scolding like a child, and, whether from the smoke or his anger and
disappointment, the tears following one another down his cheeks.
The doctor, who had raised himself on his elbow, was the first to speak
coherently.
"The burning of a mystery," he said. "Now what's to be done?"
A shrill, frightful scream, the like of which I had never heard before
or since, roused us to our feet.
"In the name of all the powers, what's that?" cried the lawyer.
"The horses, man--we have forgotten them!" answered the doctor, starting
on a run to the front of the house around the east wing.
The oak to which the two beasts had been made fast was close to the side
of the house. One of them had broken loose, and had made off into the
garden, towing the chain behind him. The other (the saddle-horse) had
wound the halter around the trunk of the tree, and, half strangled, was
snubbed close to it, backing away with all his might. As we saw this
again he emitted the horrid cry of fright and agony. I had never known
that such tones were in the voice of any animal. The heat had shrivelled
the upper branches of the oak, and even the bark on the side toward the
house was singed and smoking.
The lawyer drew out a knife, and hastening up, shielding his face, cut
the poor beast adrift. He galloped away toward the swamp.
The wooden wing was completely eaten by this time, and the flames were
pouring from every window of the brick portion of the older part of the
dwelling. Soon the walls alone would be left standing. I turned away
from the sight and looked out to the river. A long white row of wild
swan swayed in the current. Their halloings and cries, like those of a
crowd of school-children at recess, came down to us on the damp wind.
The smoke had evidently been seen from one of the plantations up the
Gunpowder, for a boat under a small sprit-sail was making out from the
farther shore.
The doctor was now in the garden examining the chaise, which had been
overturned in a patch of brushwood. He tried each wheel mechanically,
and I could see he felt relieved that no damage had been done.
"Well, what are we going to do now?" I nervously asked of Mr. Edgerton,
speaking for the first time, and repeating the doctor's words of a few
minutes before.
The lawyer fumbled in his pockets and drew forth the miniature and the
paper he had taken from the desk. I remembered having noticed also that
the doctor had slipped the coins in his pocket.
"This is all we have to go by," he replied. "Lord only knows what you've
lost, Master Hurdiss. Oh, confound the thought that made me light the
fire!" he added, kicking and pawing at the soaked ground like an angry
bull.
Well, to make a short story of a long one, we watched the house burn
down to a mass of smouldering heated ashes, and then we started to drive
back without speaking. On the return we met a number of men on foot and
horseback, who had sighted the conflagration from the cross-roads and
were coming down the lane, but it was too late to do anything, and in a
few words we explained what had happened. That night we spent at the
tavern, and the next day we returned to Marshwood, followed by many
curious persons. We dug in the still warm ruins, and there, to show the
heat of the fire, we discovered nothing of the strong-box but the
hinges, melted out of shape, and two or three small bits of metal as
large as bullets that had once been gold pieces. These were turned over
to me as being my lawful possessions, and they made, with what the
doctor had saved and the miniature and the paper, my sole inheritance.
So now begins the time I must act for myself.
CHAPTER IV.
WHEREIN I FALL IN LOVE WITH THE SEA.
On the twelfth day of November, 1811, my new life began. But before I go
on I should explain that on the outside of the paper which the lawyer
had saved, and which I had deciphered on the day of the burning of
Marshwood House (and which has staid in my mind, as I transcribed it
also), an address had been found. In some way it had been overlooked
upon the first reading. It was important, however, as it gave the
address of my uncle, Monsieur Henri Amedee Lovalle de Brienne, as
Miller's Falls, near Stonington, Connecticut.
The lawyer had written to this place a letter at some length, but we had
waited in vain for a reply; letters often went astray in those days, and
in some way, as I afterwards discovered, this one was most likely lost.
In the mean time I had become a member of Mr. Edgerton's family. I was
treated with kindness, but of course it was not expected of him to take
charge of my maintenance, and the proposition for a change came from my
own lips. In walking along the water-front one day I discovered that a
little brig, the _Minetta_, was about to sail for Stonington, and I
proposed to Mr. Edgerton to take passage in her and search out my
relative, if he were living.
The lawyer, who I could see felt himself responsible in some way for the
beginning of my misfortune, exacted a promise that should I fail in
finding M. de Brienne, I would return to him, and I should have done so
had affairs terminated otherwise than as they did.
The consultation in which this decision was arrived at took place on the
evening of the tenth of the month; and it was two days later, as I have
written, that my new life began. For bright and early that morning I was
standing at the taffrail of the little brig that was being warped out
into midstream.
Mr. Edgerton and his family, consisting of a maiden sister and a grown
daughter (he had been a widower for some ten years), together with Mr.
Thompson, the school-master, the major, the kind doctor, and some of my
boy companions, were on the dock. And I must not forget that Aunt Sheba,
Ann Martha, and Ol' Peter were there also, all three of them in tears.
The lawyer had promised to take care of Peter, and the doctor had taken
Aunt Sheba and Ann Martha into his household. I am glad to say that I
had not sold the old people, although I had a perfect right to do so, as
they were my property, but had given them their freedom, and knew they
were left in kind hands and keeping.
Soon the faces on shore became indistinct. The brig took in her kedge
anchors, the trilling of her capstan falls ceased, her jibs rattled up
the stays, the yards creaked aslant, and we caught the light westerly
breeze. The tide was setting out, and we made good travelling of it.
I was not the only passenger. There was a Virginian, by the name of
Chaffee, a tobacco-planter, who was going on the voyage as a sort of
supercargo, and his wife (a slight, black-eyed woman of much spirit)
accompanied him.
The Captain and first mate were both New Bedford men, and tiptop
sailors, as circumstances proved afterwards. The crew of eight men were
Americans also, so far as I could judge, three of them being
negroes--great, deep-chested black fellows, worth large sums of money in
the market; but they were free men, and held themselves differently from
slaves, although one, Pompey, waited on the cabin table.
Whether the _Minetta_'s crew was a picked one or not I do not know, but
no man would have felt ashamed of being over them. I can say that much.
As for the brig, she was something over one hundred and eighty tons
burden, and loaded with tobacco, sole-leather, and turpentine; she was
light in ballast, and in good trim for fast sailing.
The crew for the most part slept in a tall deck-house on the forecastle,
built around the foremast, and the cabin was given up to Mr. Chaffee and
his wife; the two officers and myself bunked in a little cubby-hole
forward of the after-skylight.
The _Minetta_ was old-fashioned, and her high poop and top sides gave
her a clumsy look; her spars and masts were very heavy for her tonnage,
and I think had been built for a larger vessel; but she spread a great
show of canvas, and the way she boiled the water up in front of her
proved she was no laggard.
We kept well to the eastern shore as we went down the bay, but,
nevertheless, I soon made out the mouth of the Gunpowder River, and
could see the stark walls of my old home standing out against the trees.
Here I was, scarce fourteen years of age, and starting into the wide
world alone, verily with my bridges burned behind me! Mr. Chaffee had
entered into conversation with me, and he and his wife displaying great
interest, I told him as much of my story as I thought proper. So far as
the Captain and first mate went, I might not have existed.
That night as I lay on my narrow little shelf, I was so full of thinking
that at first I could not sleep. I longed for comfort, and would have
given worlds to have rested my head on Aunt Sheba's shoulder. I half
sobbed aloud from loneliness, but at last I dozed off, and was awakened
some hours afterwards by feeling the vessel pitching heavily.
[Illustration: THE SOUND OF A SCURRYING ON DECK CAUSED ME TO START UP
SUDDENLY.]