o 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 st