of rock on which they had stood.

The motor-bombs which the repeller was now discharging were of the
largest size and greatest power, and a dozen more of them were
discharged at intervals of a few minutes. The promontory on which the
fortifications had stood was annihilated, and the waters of the bay
swept over its foundations. Soon afterward the head of the bay seemed
madly rushing out to sea, but quickly surged back to fill the chasm
which yawned at the spot where the village had been.

The dense clouds were now upheaved at such short intervals that the
scene of devastation was completely shut out from the observers on the
hills; but every few minutes they felt a sickening shock, and heard a
momentary and horrible crash and hiss which seemed to fill all the air.
The instantaneous motor-bombs were tearing up the sea-board, and
grinding it to atoms.

It was not yet noon when the bombardment ceased. No more puffs of
black smoke came up from the distant repeller, and the vast spreading
mass of clouds moved seaward, dropping down upon St. George's Channel
in a rain of stone dust. Then the repeller steamed shoreward, and when
she was within three or four miles of the coast she ran up a large
white flag in token that her task was ended.

This sign that the bombardment had ceased was accepted in good faith;
and as some of the military and naval men had carefully noted that each
puff from the repeller was accompanied by a shock, it was considered
certain that all the bombs which had been discharged had acted, and
that, consequently, no further danger was to be apprehended from them.
In spite of this announcement many of the spectators would not leave
their position on the hills, but a hundred or more of curious and
courageous men ventured down into the plain.

That part of the sea-coast where Caerdaff had been was a new country,
about which men wandered slowly and cautiously with sudden
exclamations, of amazement and awe. There were no longer promontories
jutting out into the sea; there were no hillocks and rocky terraces
rising inland. In a vast plain, shaven and shorn down to a common
level of scarred and pallid rock, there lay an immense chasm two miles
and a half long, half a mile wide, and so deep that shuddering men
could stand and look down upon the rent and riven rocks upon which had
rested that portion of the Welsh coast which had now blown out to sea.

An officer of the Royal Engineers stood on the seawar