machine ever created we can proceed with the
story.

There were twenty _Flying Fishes_ attached to the Allied Forces, all of
them under the command of German engineers, with the exception of the
original _Flying Fish_. Two of these were attached to the three
squadrons which were attacking Hull, Newcastle and Dover: three had been
detailed for the attack on Portsmouth: two more to Plymouth, two to
Bristol and Liverpool respectively, on which combined cruiser and
torpedo attacks were to be made, and two supported by a small swift
cruiser and torpedo flotilla for an assault on Cardiff, in order if
possible to terrorise that city into submission and so obtain what may
be called the life-blood of a modern navy. The rest, in case of
accidents to any of these, were reserved for the final attack on London.

When the _Ithuriel_ disappeared and his torpedo struck a piece of
floating wreckage and exploded with a terrific shock, John Castellan,
standing in the conning-tower directing the movements of the _Flying
Fish_, naturally concluded that he had destroyed a British submarine
scout. He knew of the existence, but nothing of the real powers of the
_Ithuriel_. The only foreigner who knew that was Captain Count Karl von
Eckstein, and he was locked safely in a cabin on board her.

He had been searching the under-waters between Nettlestone Point and
Hayling Island for hours on the look-out for British submarines and
torpedo scouts, and had found nothing, therefore he was ignorant of the
destruction which the _Ithuriel_ had already wrought, and as, of course,
he had heard no firing under the water, he believed that the three
destroyers supported by the _Dupleix_ and _Leger_ had succeeded in
slipping through the entrance to Spithead.

He knew that a second flotilla of six destroyers with three swift
second-class cruisers were following in to complete the work, which by
this time should have begun, and that after them came the main French
squadron, consisting of six first-class battleships with a screen of ten
first and five second-class cruisers, the work of which would be to
maintain a blockade against any relieving force, after the submarines
and destroyers had sunk and crippled the ships of the Fleet Reserve and
cut the connections of the contact mines.

He knew also that the _See Adler_, which was _Flying Fish II._, was
waiting about the Needles to attack Hurst Castle and the forts on the
Isle of Wight side, preparatory to a r