this motor mystery should amount to
nothing, there was no reason why the Craglevin should not be towed into
port, and be made again the grand warship that she had been.

Now the director gave the signal, and the captain, with his eyes fixed
upon his ship, touched the button. A quick shock ran through the
repeller, and a black-gray cloud, half a mile high, occupied the place
of the British ship.

The cloud rapidly settled down, covering the water with a glittering
scum which spread far and wide, and which had been the Craglevin.

The British captain stood for a moment motionless, and then he picked
up a rammer and ran it into the muzzle of the cannon which had been
discharged. The great gun was empty. The instantaneous motor-bomb was
not there.

Now he was convinced that the Syndicate had not mined the fortresses
which they had destroyed.

In twenty minutes the two British officers were on board the transport,
which then steamed rapidly westward. The crabs again took the repeller
in tow, and the Syndicate's fleet continued its eastward course,
passing through the wide expanse of glittering scum which had spread
itself upon the sea.

They were not two-thirds of their way across the Atlantic when the
transport reached St. John's, and the cable told the world that the
Craglevin had been annihilated.

The news was received with amazement, and even consternation. It came
from an officer in the Royal Navy, and how could it be doubted that a
great man-of-war had been destroyed in a moment by one shot from the
Syndicate's vessel! And yet, even now, there were persons who did
doubt, and who asserted that the crabs might have placed a great
torpedo under the Craglevin, that a wire attached to this torpedo ran
out from the repeller, and that the British captain had merely fired
the torpedo. But hour by hour, as fuller news came across the ocean,
the number of these doubters became smaller and smaller.

In the midst of the great public excitement which now existed on both
sides of the Atlantic,--in the midst of all the conflicting opinions,
fears, and hopes,--the dominant sentiment seemed to be, in America as
well as in Europe, one of curiosity. Were these six crabs and one
repeller bound to the British Isles? And if so, what did they intend
to do when they got there?

It was now generally admitted that one of the Syndicate's crabs could
disable a man-of-war, that one of the Syndicate's repellers could
withstan