CHAPTER X
FIRST BLOWS FROM THE AIR
The _Flying Fish_, the prototype of the extraordinary craft which playedsuch a terrible part in the invasion of England, was a magnifiedreproduction, with improvements which suggested themselves duringconstruction, of the model whose performances had so astonished theKaiser at Potsdam. She was shaped exactly like her namesake of the deep,upon which, indeed, her inventor had modelled her. She was one hundredand fifty feet long and twenty feet broad by twenty-five feet deep inher widest part, which, as she was fish-shaped, was considerably forwardof her centre.
She was built of a newly-discovered compound, something likepapier-mache, as hard and rigid as steel, with only about one-tenth theweight. Her engines were of the simplest description in spite of thefact that they developed enormous power. They consisted merely ofcylinders into which, by an automatic mechanism, two drops of liquidwere brought every second. These liquids when joined produced a gas ofenormously expansive power, more than a hundred times that of steam,which actuated the pistons. There were sixteen of these cylinders, andthe pistons all connected with a small engine invented by Castellan,which he called an accelerator. By means of this device he couldregulate the speed of the propellers which drove the vessel under waterand in the air from sixty up to two thousand revolutions a minute.
The _Flying Fish_ was driven by nine propellers, three of these,four-bladed and six feet diameter, revolved a little forward amidshipson either side under what might be called the fins. These fins collapsedclose against the sides of the vessel when under water and expanded to aspread of twenty feet when she took the air. They worked on a pivot andcould be inclined either way from the horizontal to an angle of thirtydegrees. Midway between the end of these and the stern was a smallerpair with one driving screw. The eighth screw was an ordinary propellerat the stern, but the outside portion of the shaft worked on a ball andsocket joint so that it could be used for both steering and drivingpurposes. It was in fact the tail of the _Flying Fish_. Steering in theair was effected by means of a vertical fin placed right aft.
She was submerged as the _Ithuriel_ was, by pumping water into the lowerpart of her hull. When these chambers were empty she floated like acork. The difference between swimming and flying was merely thedifference between the revolutions of the screws and the inclination ofthe fins. A thousand raised her from the water: twelve hundred gave hertwenty-five or thirty miles an hour through the air: fifteen hundredgave her fifty, and two thousand gave her eighty to a hundred, accordingto the state of the atmosphere.
Her armament consisted of four torpedo tubes which swung at any anglefrom the horizontal to the vertical and so were capable of use bothunder water and in the air. They discharged a small,insignificant-looking torpedo containing twenty pounds of an explosive,discovered almost accidentally by Castellan and known only to himself,the German Emperor, the Chancellor, and the Commander-in-Chief. It wasthis which he had used in tiny quantities in the experiment at Potsdam.Its action was so terrific that it did not rend or crack metal or stonewhich it struck. It overcame the chemical forces by which the substancewas held together and reduced them to gas and powder.
And now, after this somewhat formal but necessary description of themost destructive fighting-machine ever created we can proceed with thestory.
There were twenty _Flying Fishes_ attached to the Allied Forces, all ofthem under the command of German engineers, with the exception of theoriginal _Flying Fish_. Two of these were attached to the threesquadrons which were attacking Hull, Newcastle and Dover: three had beendetailed for the attack on Portsmouth: two more to Plymouth, two toBristol and Liverpool respectively, on which combined cruiser andtorpedo attacks were to be made, and two supported by a small swiftcruiser and torpedo flotilla for an assault on Cardiff, in order ifpossible to terrorise that city into submission and so obtain what maybe called the life-blood of a modern navy. The rest, in case ofaccidents to any of these, were reserved for the final attack on London.
When the _Ithuriel_ disappeared and his torpedo struck a piece offloating wreckage and exploded with a terrific shock, John Castellan,standing in the conning-tower directing the movements of the _FlyingFish_, naturally concluded that he had destroyed a British submarinescout. He knew of the existence, but nothing of the real powers of the_Ithuriel_. The only foreigner who knew that was Captain Count Karl vonEckstein, and he was locked safely in a cabin on board her.
He had been searching the under-waters between Nettlestone Point andHayling Island for hours on the look-out for British submarines andtorpedo scouts, and had found nothing, therefore he was ignorant of thedestruction which the _Ithuriel_ had already wrought, and as, of course,he had heard no firing under the water, he believed that the threedestroyers supported by the _Dupleix_ and _Leger_ had succeeded inslipping through the entrance to Spithead.
He knew that a second flotilla of six destroyers with three swiftsecond-class cruisers were following in to complete the work, which bythis time should have begun, and that after them came the main Frenchsquadron, consisting of six first-class battleships with a screen of tenfirst and five second-class cruisers, the work of which would be tomaintain a blockade against any relieving force, after the submarinesand destroyers had sunk and crippled the ships of the Fleet Reserve andcut the connections of the contact mines.
He knew also that the _See Adler_, which was _Flying Fish II._, waswaiting about the Needles to attack Hurst Castle and the forts on theIsle of Wight side, preparatory to a rush of two battleships and threecruisers through the narrows, while another was lurking under HaylingIsland ready to take the air and rain destruction on the forts ofPortsmouth before the fight became general.
What thoroughly surprised him, however, was the absolute silence andinaction of the British. True, two shots had been fired, but whetherfrom fort or warship, and with what intent, he hadn't the remotestnotion. The hour arranged upon for the general assault was fastapproaching. The British must be aware that an attack would be made, andyet there was not so much as a second-class torpedo boat to be seenoutside Spithead. This puzzled him, so he decided to go and investigatefor himself. He took up a speaking-tube and said to his Lieutenant,M'Carthy--one of too many renegade Irishmen who in the terrible timesthat were to come joined their country's enemies as Lynch and histraitors had done in the Boer War:
"I don't quite make it out, M'Carthy. We'll go down and get under--it'sabout time the fun began--and I haven't heard a shot fired or seen anEnglish ship except that submarine we smashed. My orders are for twelveo'clock, and I'm going to obey them."
There was one more device on board the _Flying Fish_ which should bedescribed in order that her wonderful manoeuvering under water may beunderstood. Just in front of the steering-wheel in the conning-tower wasa square glass box measuring a foot in the side, and in the centre ofthis, attached to top and bottom by slender films of asbestos, was aneedle ten inches long, so hung that it could turn and dip in anydirection. The forward half of this needle was made of highly magnetisedsteel, and the other of aluminium which exactly counter-balanced it. Theglass case was completely insulated and therefore the extremelysensitive needle was unaffected by any of the steel parts used in theconstruction of the vessel. But let any other vessel, save of course awooden ship, come within a thousand yards, the needle began to trembleand sway, and the nearer the _Flying Fish_ approached it, the steadierit became and the more directly it pointed towards the object. If thevessel was on the surface, it of course pointed upward: if it was asubmarine, it pointed either level or downwards with unerring precision.This needle was, in fact, the eyes of the _Flying Fish_ when she wasunder water.
Castellan swung her head round to the north-west and dropped gently onto the water about midway between Selsey Bill and the Isle of Wight.Then the _Flying Fish_ folded her wings and sank to a depth of twentyfeet. Then, at a speed of ten knots, she worked her way in a zigzagcourse back and forth across the narrowing waters, up the channeltowards Portsmouth.
To hi
s surprise, the needle remained steady, showing that there wasneither submarine nor torpedo boat near. This meant, as far as he couldsee, that the main approach to the greatest naval fortress in Englandhad been left unguarded, a fact so extraordinary as to be exceedinglysuspicious. His water-ray apparatus, a recent development of the X-rayswhich enabled him to see under water for a distance of fifty yards, haddetected no contact mines, and yet Spithead ought to be enstrewn withthem, just as it ought to have been swarming with submarines anddestroyers. There must be some deep meaning to such apparentlyincomprehensible neglect, but what was it?
If his brother Denis had not happened to recognise Captain Count Karlvon Eckstein and haled him so unceremoniously on board the _Ithuriel_,and if his portmanteau full of papers had been got on board a Frenchwarship, instead of being left for the inspection of the BritishAdmiralty, that reason would have been made very plain to him.
Completely mystified, and fearing that either he was going into sometrap or that some unforeseen disaster had happened, he swung round, ranout past the forts and rose into the air again. When he had reached theheight of about a thousand feet, three rockets rose into the air andburst into three showers of stars, one red, one white, and the otherblue. It was the Tricolour in the air, and the signal from the FrenchAdmiral to commence the attack. Castellan's orders were to cripple orsink the battleships of the Reserve Fleet which was moored in twodivisions in Spithead and the Solent.
The Spithead Division lay in column of line abreast between GilkickerPoint and Ryde Pier. It consisted of the _Formidable_, _Irresistible_,_Implacable_, _Majestic_ and _Magnificent_, and the cruisers _Hogue_,_Sutlej_, _Ariadne_, _Argonaut_, _Diadem_ and _Hawke_. The westernDivision consisted of the battleships _Prince George_, _Victoria_,_Jupiter_, _Mars_ and _Hannibal_, and the cruisers _Amphitrite_,_Spartiate_, _Andromeda_, _Europa_, _Niobe_, _Blenheim_ and _Blake_.
It had of course been perfectly easy for Castellan to mark the positionof the two squadrons from the air, and he knew that though they werecomparatively old vessels they were quite powerful enough, with theassistance of the shore batteries, to hold even Admiral Durenne'ssplendid fleet until the Channel Fleet, which for the time being seemedto have vanished from the face of the waters, came up and took theFrench in the rear.
In such a case, the finest fleet of France would be like a nut in avice, and that was the reason for the remorseless orders which had beengiven to him, orders which he was prepared to carry out to the letter,in spite of the appalling loss of life which they entailed; for, as the_Flying Fish_ sank down into the water, he thought of that swimming racein Clifden Bay and of the girl whose marriage with himself, willing orunwilling, was to be one of the terms of peace when the British Navy layshattered round her shores, and the millions of the Leagued Nations hadtrampled the land forces of Britain into submission.
Just as she touched the water a brilliant flash of pink flame leapt upfrom the eastern fort on the Hillsea Lines, followed by a sharp crashwhich shook the atmosphere. A thin ray of light fell from the clouds,then came a quick succession of flashes moving in the direction of thegreat fort on Portsdown, until two rose in quick succession fromPortsdown itself, and almost at the same moment another from HurstCastle, and yet another from the direction of Fort Victoria.
"God bless my soul, what's that?" exclaimed the Commander-in-Chief,Admiral Sir Compton Domville, who had just completed his finalinspection of the defences of Portsmouth Harbour, and was standing onthe roof of Southsea Castle, taking a general look round before goingback to headquarters. "Here, Markham," he said, turning to the Commanderof the Fort, "just telephone up to Portsdown at once and ask them whatthey're up to."
An orderly instantly dived below to the telephone room. The FortCommander took Sir Compton aside and said in a low voice:
"I am afraid, sir, that the forts are being attacked from the air."
"What's that?" replied Sir Compton, with a start. "Do you mean thatinfernal thing that Erskine and Castellan and the watch of the_Cormorant_ saw in the North Sea?"
"Yes, sir," was the reply. "There is no reason why the enemy should notpossess a whole fleet of these craft by this time, and naturally theywould act in concert with the attack of the French Fleet. I've heardrumours of a terrible new explosive they've got, too, which shatterssteel into splinters and poisons everyone within a dozen yards of it. Ifthat's true and they're dropping it on the forts, they'll probably smashthe guns as well. For heaven's sake, sir, let me beg of you to go backat once to headquarters! It will probably be our turn next. You will besafe there, for they're not likely to waste their shells on Governmentbuildings."
"Well, I suppose I shall be of more use there," growled Sir Compton.
At this moment the orderly returned, looking rather scared. He salutedand said:
"If you please, sir, they've tried Portsdown and all the Hillsea fortsand can't get an answer."
"Good heavens!" said the Commander-in-Chief, "that looks almost as ifyou were right, Markham. Signal to Squadron A to up-anchor at once andtelephone to Squadron B to do the same. Telephone Gilkicker to turn allsearchlights on. Now I must be off and have a talk with GeneralHamilton."
He ran down to his pinnace and went away full speed for the harbour, butbefore he reached the pier another flash burst out from the direction ofFort Gilkicker, followed by a terrific roar. To those standing on thetop of Southsea Castle the fort seemed turned into a volcano, spoutingflame and clouds of smoke, in the midst of which they could see for aninstant whirling shapes, most of which would probably be the remains ofthe gallant defenders, hurled into eternity before they had a chance offiring a shot at the invaders. The huge guns roared for the first andlast time in the war, and the great projectiles plunged aimlessly amongthe ships of the squadron, carrying wreck and ruin along the line.
"Our turn now, I suppose," said the Fort Commander, quietly, as helooked up and by a chance gleam of moonlight through the breaking cloudssaw a dim grey, winged shape drift across the harbour entrance.
They were the last words he ever spoke, for the next moment the roofcrumbled under his feet, and his body was scattered in fragments throughthe air, and in that moment Portsmouth had ceased to be a fortifiedstronghold.