as we've been able to learn, the French are going to try Togo's
tactics at Port Arthur, and rush Portsmouth with the small craft. You'll
find that it's your business to look after them. Sink, smash and
generally destroy. Go for everything you see. There isn't a craft of
ours within twenty miles outside. Good-bye, and good luck to you!"

"Good-bye!" said Erskine, as they shook hands, "and if we don't come
back, give my love to the Lords of the Admiralty and thank them for
giving me the chance with the _Ithuriel_. Bye-bye!"

Their hands gripped again and the captain of the _Ithuriel_ ran down the
steps like a boy going to a picnic.

The pinnace gave a little squeak from its siren and sped away down the
harbour between the two forts, in which the gunners were standing by the
new fourteen-inch wire-wound guns, whose long chases were prevented from
drooping after continuous discharge by an ingenious application of the
principle of the cantilever bridge, invented by the creator of the
_Ithuriel_. In the breech-chamber of each of them was a thousand-pound
shell, carrying a bursting charge of five hundred pounds of an explosive
which was an improvement on blasting gelatine, and the guns were capable
of throwing these to a distance of twelve miles with precision. They
were the most formidable weapons either ashore or afloat.

Just outside the harbour the pinnace swung round to the westward and in
a few minutes stopped alongside the _Ithuriel_.

As far as Lennard could see she was neither cruiser nor destroyer nor
submarine, but a sort of compound of all three. She did not appear to be
a steamer because she had no funnels. She was not exactly a submarine
because she had a signal-mast forward and carried five long,
ugly-looking guns, three ahead and two astern, of a type that he had
never seen before. Forward of the mast there was a conning-tower of oval
shape, with the lesser curves fore and aft. The breech-ends of the guns
were covered by a long hood of steel, apparently of great thickness, and
that was all.

As soon as they got on board Erskine said to Lennard:

"Come into the conning-tower with me. I believe we can make use of this
invention of yours at once. I've got a pretty well-fitted laboratory
down below and we might have a try. But you must excuse me a moment, I
will just run through this."

He opened the envelope containing his instructions, put them down on
the little desk in front of him and then read a note