sea had resumed its usual quiet, a boat carrying a white flag left
Repeller No. 1, rowed directly over the submerged net, and made for the
harbour. When the approach of this flag-of-truce was perceived from
the fort nearest the mouth of the harbour, it occasioned much surmise.
Had the earthquake brought these Syndicate knaves to their senses? Or
were they about to make further absurd and outrageous demands? Some
irate officers were of the opinion that enemies like these should be
considered no better than pirates, and that their flag-of-truce should
be fired upon. But the commandant of the fort paid no attention to
such counsels, and sent a detachment with a white flag down to the
beach to meet the approaching boat and learn its errand.
The men in the boat had nothing to do but to deliver a letter from the
Director-in-chief to the commandant of the fort, and then row back
again. No answer was required.
When the commandant read the brief note, he made no remark. In fact,
he could think of no appropriate remark to make. The missive simply
informed him that at ten o'clock and eighteen minutes A. M., of that
day, the first bomb from the marine forces of the Syndicate had been
discharged into the waters of the harbour. At, or about, two o'clock
P.M., the second bomb would be discharged at Fort Pilcher. That was
all.
What this extraordinary message meant could not be imagined by any
officer of the garrison. If the people on board the ships were taking
advantage of the earthquake, and supposed that they could induce
British soldiers to believe that it had been caused by one of their
bombs, then were they idiots indeed. They would fire their second shot
at Fort Pilcher! This was impossible, for they had not yet fired their
first shot. These Syndicate people were evidently very tricky, and the
defenders of the port must therefore be very cautious.
Fort Pilcher was a very large and unfinished fortification, on a bluff
on the opposite side of the harbour. Work had been discontinued on it
as soon as the Syndicate's vessels had appeared off the port, for it
was not desired to expose the builders and workmen to a possible
bombardment. The place was now, therefore, almost deserted; but after
the receipt of the Syndicate's message, the commandant feared that the
enemy might throw an ordinary shell into the unfinished works, and he
sent a boat across the bay to order away any workmen or others who
might be lingering about the place.
A little after two o'clock P.M., an instantaneous motor-bomb was
discharged from Repeller No. 1 into Fort Pilcher. It was set to act
five seconds after impact with the object aimed at. It struck in a
central portion of the unfinished fort, and having described a high
curve in the air, descended not only with its own motive power, but
with the force of gravitation, and penetrated deep into the earth.
Five seconds later a vast brown cloud appeared on the Fort Pilcher
promontory. This cloud was nearly spherical in form, with an apparent
diameter of about a thousand yards. At the same instant a shock
similar to that accompanying the first motor-bomb was felt in the city
and surrounding country; but this was not so severe as the other, for
the second bomb did not exert its force upon the underlying rocks of
the region as the first one had done.
The great brown cloud quickly began to lose its spherical form, part of
it descending heavily to the earth, and part floating away in vast
dust-clouds borne inland by the breeze, settling downward as they
moved, and depositing on land, water, ships, houses, domes, and trees
an almost impalpable powder.
When the cloud had cleared away there were no fortifications, and the
bluff on which they had stood had disappeared. Part of this bluff had
floated away on the wind, and part of it lay piled in great heaps of
sand on the spot where its rocks were to have upheld a fort.
The effect of the motor-bomb was fully observed with glasses from the
various fortifications of the port, and from many points of the city
and harbour; and those familiar with the effects of explosives were not
long in making up their minds what had happened. They felt sure that a
mine had been sprung beneath Fort Pilcher; and they were now equally
confident that in the morning a torpedo of novel and terrible power had
been exploded in the harbour. They now disbelieved in the earthquake,
and treated with contempt the pretence that shots had been fired from
the Syndicate's vessel. This was merely a trick of the enemy. It was
not even likely that the mine or the torpedo had been operated from the
ship. These were, in all probability, under the control of
confederates on shore, and had been exploded at times agreed upon
beforehand. All this was perfectly plain to the military authorities.
But the people of the city derived no comfort from the announcement of
these conclusions. For all that anybody knew the whole city might be
undermined, and at any moment might ascend in a cloud of minute
particles. They felt that they were in a region of hidden traitors and
bombs, and in consequence of this belief thousands of citizens left
their homes.
That afternoon a truce-boat again went out from Repeller No. 1, and
rowed to the fort, where a letter to the commandant was delivered.
This, like the other, demanded no answer, and the boat returned. Later
in the afternoon the two repellers, accompanied by the crabs, and
leaving the steel net still anchored in its place, retired a few miles
seaward, where they prepared to lay to for the night.
The letter brought by the truce-boat was read by the commandant,
surrounded by his officers. It stated that in twenty-four hours from
time of writing it, which would be at or about four o'clock on the next
afternoon, a bomb would be thrown into the garrisoned fort, under the
command of the officer addressed. As this would result in the entire
destruction of the fortification, the commandant was earnestly
counselled to evacuate the fort before the hour specified.
Ordinarily the commandant of the fort was of a calm and unexcitable
temperament. During the astounding events of that day and the day
before he had kept his head cool; his judgment, if not correct, was the
result of sober and earnest consideration. But now he lost his temper.
The unparalleled effrontery and impertinence of this demand of the
American Syndicate was too much for his self-possession. He stormed in
anger.
Here was the culmination of the knavish trickery of these
conscienceless pirates who had attacked the port. A torpedo had been
exploded in the harbour, an unfinished fort had been mined and blown
up, and all this had been done to frighten him--a British soldier--in
command of a strong fort well garrisoned and fully supplied with all
the munitions of war. In the fear that his fort would be destroyed by
a mystical bomb, he was expected to march to a place of safety with all
his forces. If this should be done it would not be long before these
crafty fellows would occupy the fort, and with its great guns turned
inland, would hold the city at their mercy. There could be no greater
insult to a soldier than to suppose that he could be gulled by a trick
like this.
No thought of actual danger entered the mind of the commandant. It had
been easy enough to sink a great torpedo in the harbour, and the
unguarded bluffs of Fort Pilcher offered every opportunity to the
scoundrels who may have worked at their mines through the nights of
several months. But a mine under the fort which he commanded was an
impossibility; its guarded outposts prevented any such method of
attack. At a bomb, or a dozen, or a hundred of the Syndicate's bombs
he snapped his fingers. He could throw bombs as well.
Nothing would please him better than that those ark-like ships in the
offing should come near enough for an artillery fight. A few tons of
solid shot and shell dropped on top of them might be a very conclusive
answer to their impudent demands.
The letter from the Syndicate, together with his own convictions on the
subject, were communicated by the commandant to the military
authorities of the port, and to the War Office of the Dominion. The
news of what had happened that day had already been cabled across the
Atlantic back to the United States, and all over the world; and the
profound impression created by it was intensified when it became known
what the Syndicate proposed to do the next day. Orders and advices
from the British Admiralty and War Office sped across the ocean, and
that night few of the leaders in government circles in England or
Canada closed their eyes.
The opinions of the commandant of the fort were received with but
little favour by the military and naval authorities. Great
preparations were already ordered to repel and crush this most
audacious attack upon the port, but in the mean time it was highly
desirable that the utmost caution and prudence should be observed.
Three men-of-war had already been disabled by the novel and destructive
machines of the enemy, and it had been ordered that for the present no
more vessels of the British navy be allowed to approach the crabs of
the Syndicate.
Whether it was a mine or a bomb which had been used in the destruction
of the unfinished works of Fort Pilcher, it would be impossible to
determine until an official survey had been made of the ruins; but, in
any event, it would be wise and humane not to expose the garrison of
the fort on the south side of the harbour to the danger which had
overtaken the works on the opposite shore. If, contrary to the opinion
of the commandant, the garrisoned fort were really mined, the following
day would probably prove the fact. Until this point should be
determined it would be highly judicious to temporarily evacuate the
fort. This could not be followed by occupation of the works by the
enemy, for all approaches, either by troops in boats or by bodies of
confederates by land, could be fully covered by the inland redoubts and
fortifications.
When the orders for evacuation reached the commandant of the fort, he
protested hotly, and urged that his protest be considered. It was not
until the command had been reiterated both from London and Ottawa, that
he accepted the situation, and with bowed head prepared to leave his
post. All night preparations for evacuation went on, and during the
next morning the garrison left the fort, and established itself far
enough away to preclude danger from the explosion of a mine, but near
enough to be available in case of necessity.
During this morning there arrived in the offing another Syndicate
vessel. This had started from a northern part of the United States,
before the repellers and the crabs, and it had been engaged in laying a
private submarine cable, which should put the office of the Syndicate
in New York in direct communication with its naval forces engaged with
the enemy. Telegraphic connection between the cable boat and Repeller
No. 1 having been established, the Syndicate soon received from its
Director-in-chief full and comprehensive accounts of what had been done
and what it was proposed to do. Great was the satisfaction among the
members of the Syndicate when these direct and official reports came
in. Up to this time they had been obliged to depend upon very
unsatisfactory intelligence communicated from Europe, which had been
supplemented by wild statements and rumours smuggled across the
Canadian border.
To counteract the effect of these, a full report was immediately made
by the Syndicate to the Government of the United States, and a bulletin
distinctly describing what had happened was issued to the people of the
country. These reports, which received a world-wide circulation in the
newspapers, created a popular elation in the United States, and gave
rise to serious apprehensions and concern in many other countries. But
under both elation and concern there was a certain doubtfulness. So
far the Syndicate had been successful; but its style of warfare was
decidedly experimental, and its forces, in numerical strength at least,
were weak. What would happen when the great naval power of Great
Britain should be brought to bear upon the Syndicate, was a question
whose probable answer was likely to cause apprehension and concern in
the United States, and elation in many other countries.
The commencement of active hostilities had been precipitated by this
Syndicate. In England preparations were making by day and by night to
send upon the coast-lines of the United States a fleet which, in
numbers and power, would be greater than that of any naval expedition
in the history of the world. It is no wonder that many people of sober
judgment in America looked upon the affair of the crabs and the
repellers as but an incident in the beginning of a great and disastrous
war.
On the morning of the destruction of Fort Pilcher, the Syndicate's
vessels moved toward the port, and the steel net was taken up by the
two crabs, and moved nearer the mouth of the harbour, at a point from
which the fort, now in process of evacuation, was in full view. When
this had been done, Repeller No. 2 took up her position at a moderate
distance behind the net, and the other vessels stationed themselves
near by.
The protection of the net was considered necessary, for although there
could be no reasonable doubt that all the torpedoes in the harbour and
river had been exploded, others might be sent out against the
Syndicate's vessels; and a torpedo under a crab or a repeller was the
enemy most feared by the Syndicate.
About three o'clock the signals between the repellers became very
frequent, and soon afterwards a truce-boat went out from Repeller No.
1. This was rowed with great rapidity, but it was obliged to go much
farther up the harbour than on previous occasions, in order to deliver
its message to an officer of the garrison.
This was to the effect that the evacuation of the fort had been
observed from the Syndicate's vessels, and although it had been
apparently complete, one of the scientific corps, with a powerful
glass, had discovered a man in one of the outer redoubts, whose
presence there was probably unknown to the officers of the garrison.
It was, therefore, earnestly urged that this man be instantly removed;
and in order that this might be done, the discharge of the motor-bomb
would be postponed half an hour.
The officer received this message, and was disposed to look upon it as
a new trick; but as no time was to be lost, he sent a corporal's guard
to the fort, and there discovered an Irish sergeant by the name of
Kilsey, who had sworn an oath that if every other man in the fort ran
away like a lot of addle-pated sheep, he would not run with them; he
would stand to his post to the last, and when the couple of ships
outside had got through bombarding the stout walls of the fort, the
world would see that there was at least one British soldier who was not
afraid of a bomb, be it little or big. Therefore he had managed to
elude observation, and to remain behind.
The sergeant was so hot-headed in his determination to stand by the
fort, that it required violence to remove him; and it was not until
twenty minutes past four that the Syndicate observers perceived that he
had been taken to the hill behind which the garrison was encamped.
As it had been decided that Repeller No. 2 should discharge the next
instantaneous motor-bomb, there was an anxious desire on the part of
the operators on that vessel that in this, their first experience, they
might do their duty as well as their comrades on board the other
repeller had done theirs. The most accurate observations, the most
careful calculations, were made and re-made, the point to be aimed at
being about the centre of the fort.
The motor-bomb had been in the cannon for nearly an hour, and
everything had long been ready, when at precisely thirty minutes past
four o'clock the signal to discharge came from the Director-in-chief;
and in four seconds afterwards the index on the scale indicated that
the gun was in the proper position, and the button was touched.
The motor-bomb was set to act the instant it should touch any portion
of the fort, and the effect was different from that of the other bombs.
There was a quick, hard shock, but it was all in the air. Thousands of
panes of glass in the city and in houses for miles around were cracked
or broken, birds fell dead or stunned upon the ground, and people on
elevations at considerable distances felt as if they had received a
blow; but there was no trembling of the ground.
As to the fort, it had entirely disappeared, its particles having been
instantaneously removed to a great distance in every direction, falling
over such a vast expanse of land and water that their descent was
unobservable.
In the place where the fortress had stood there was a wide tract of
bare earth, which looked as if it had been scraped into a staring dead
level of gravel and clay. The instantaneous motor-bomb had been
arranged to act almost horizontally.
Few persons, except those who from a distance had been watching the
fort with glasses, understood what had happened; but every one in the
city and surrounding country was conscious that something had happened
of a most startling kind, and that it was over in the same instant in
which they had perceived it. Everywhere there was the noise of falling
window-glass. There were those who asserted that for an instant they
had heard in the distance a grinding crash; and there were others who
were quite sure that they had noticed what might be called a flash of
darkness, as if something had, with almost unappreciable quickness,
passed between them and the sun.
When the officers of the garrison mounted the hill before them and
surveyed the place where their fort had been, there was not one of them
who had sufficient command of himself to write a report of what had
happened. They gazed at the bare, staring flatness of the shorn bluff,
and they looked at each other. This was not war. It was something
supernatural, awful! They were not frightened; they were oppressed and
appalled. But the military discipline of their minds soon exerted its
force, and a brief account of the terrific event was transmitted to the
authorities, and Sergeant Kilsey was sentenced to a month in the
guard-house.
No one approached the vicinity of the bluff where the fort had stood,
for danger might not be over; but every possible point of observation
within a safe distance was soon crowded with anxious and terrified
observers. A feeling of awe was noticeable everywhere. If people
could have had a tangible idea of what had occurred, it would have been
different. If the sea had raged, if a vast body of water had been
thrown into the air, if a dense cloud had been suddenly ejected from
the surface of the earth, they might have formed some opinion about it.
But the instantaneous disappearance of a great fortification with a
little more appreciable accompaniment than the sudden tap, as of a
little hammer, upon thousands of window-panes, was something which
their intellects could not grasp. It was not to be expected that the
ordinary mind could appreciate the difference between the action of an
instantaneous motor when imbedded in rocks and earth, and its effect,
when opposed by nothing but stone walls, upon or near the surface of
the earth.
Early the next morning, the little fleet of the Syndicate prepared to
carry out its further orders. The waters of the lower bay were now
entirely deserted, craft of every description having taken refuge in
the upper part of the harbour near and above the city. Therefore, as
soon as it was light enough to make observations, Repeller No. 1 did
not hesitate to discharge a motor-bomb into the harbour, a mile or more
above where the first one had fallen. This was done in order to
explode any torpedoes which might have been put into position since the
discharge of the first bomb.
There were very few people in the city and suburbs who were at that
hour out of doors where they could see the great cloud of water arise
toward the sky, and behold it descend like a mighty cataract upon the
harbour and adjacent shores; but the quick, sharp shock which ran under
the town made people spring from their beds; and although nothing was
then to be seen, nearly everybody felt sure that the Syndicate's forces
had begun their day's work by exploding another mine.
A lighthouse, the occupants of which had been ordered to leave when the
fort was evacuated, as they might be in danger in case of a
bombardment, was so shaken by the explosion of this motor-bomb that it
fell in ruins on the rocks upon which it had stood.
The two crabs now took the steel net from its moorings and carried it
up the harbour. This was rather difficult on account of the islands,
rocks, and sand-bars; but the leading crab had on board a pilot
acquainted with those waters. With the net hanging between them, the
two submerged vessels, one carefully following the other, reached a
point about two miles below the city, where the net was anchored across
the harbour. It did not reach from shore to shore, but in the course
of the morning two other nets, designed for shallower waters, were
brought from the repellers and anchored at each end of the main net,
thus forming a line of complete protection against submarine torpedoes
which might be sent down from the upper harbour.
Repeller No. 1 now steamed into the harbour, accompanied by Crab A, and
anchored about a quarter of a mile seaward of the net. The other
repeller, with her attendant crab, cruised about the mouth of the
harbour, watching a smaller entrance to the port as well as the larger
one, and thus maintaining an effective blockade. This was not a
difficult duty, for since the news of the extraordinary performances of
the crabs had been spread abroad, no merchant vessel, large or small,
cared to approach that port; and strict orders had been issued by the
British Admiralty that no vessel of the navy should, until further
instructed, engage in combat with the peculiar craft of the Syndicate.
Until a plan of action had been determined upon, it was very desirable
that English cruisers should not be exposed to useless injury and
danger.
This being the state of affairs, a message was sent from the office of
the Syndicate across the border to the Dominion Government, which
stated that the seaport city which had been attacked by the forces of
the Syndicate now lay under the guns of its vessels, and in case of any
overt act of war by Great Britain or Canada alone, such as the entrance
of an armed force from British territory into the United States, or a
capture of or attack upon an American vessel, naval or commercial, by a
British man-of-war, or an attack upon an American port by British
vessels, the city would be bombarded and destroyed.
This message, which was, of course, instantly transmitted to London,
placed the British Government in the apparent position of being held by
the throat by the American War Syndicate. But if the British
Government, or the people of England or Canada, recognized this
position at all, it was merely as a temporary condition. In a short
time the most powerful men-of-war of the Royal Navy, as well as a fleet
of transports carrying troops, would reach the coasts of North America,
and then the condition of affairs would rapidly be changed. It was
absurd to suppose that a few medium-sized vessels, however heavily
armoured, or a few new-fangled submarine machines, however destructive
they might be, could withstand an armada of the largest and finest
armoured vessels in the world. A ship or two might be disabled,
although this was unlikely, now that the new method of attack was
understood; but it would soon be the ports of the United States, on
both the Pacific and Atlantic coasts, which would lie under the guns of
an enemy.