ish warships, but
the next moment the grey-blue, almost invisible shape of the _Ithuriel_
leapt up out of the semi-darkness, and her long pointed ram struck
amidships, cut him down to the waterline, and almost before the two
halves of his vessel had sunk the same fate had befallen the third
destroyer.

"Well, what do you think of that?" said Erskine, as he touched a couple
more buttons and the _Ithuriel_ swung round to the eastward again.

"Well," said Lennard, slowly, "of course it's war, and those fellows
were coming in to do all the damage they could. But it is just a bit
terrible, for all that. It's just seven minutes since you rammed the
first boat: you haven't fired a shot and there are three big destroyers
and I suppose three hundred and fifty men at the bottom of the sea.
Pretty awful, you know."

"My dear sir," replied Erskine, without looking round, "all war is awful
and entirely horrible, and naval war is of course the most horrible of
all. There is no chance for the defeated: my orders do not even allow me
to pick up a man from one of those vessels. On the other hand, one must
remember that if one of those destroyers had got in, they could have let
go half a dozen torpedoes apiece among the ships of the Fleet Reserve,
and perhaps half a dozen ships and five or six thousand men might have
been at the bottom of the Solent by this time, and those torpedoes
wouldn't have had any sentiment in them. Hallo, there's another!"

A long, black shape surmounted by a signal-mast and four funnels slid up
and out of the darkness into a patch of moonlight lying on the water.
Erskine gave a quarter turn to the wheel and touched the two buttons
again. The _Ithuriel_ swung round and ran down on her prey. The two
fifteen-and the six twelve-pounder guns ahead and astern and on the
broadside of the destroyer crackled out and a hail of shells came
whistling across the water. A few of them struck the _Ithuriel_, glanced
off and exploded.

"There," said Erskine, "they've knocked some of our nice new paint off.
Now they're going to pay for it."

"Couldn't you give them a shot back?" said Lennard.

"Not worth it, my dear sir," said Erskine. "We keep our guns for bigger
game. We haven't an angle that a shell would hit. You might just as well
fire boiled peas at a hippopotamus as those little things at us. Of
course a big shell square amidships would hurt us, but then she's so
handy that I think I could stop it hitting her strai