ess that the destroying agent must have come from
the air, since it could not have come from sea or land without provoking
a very vigorous reply from the forts. Instead of that they had simply
blown up without firing a shot.

He therefore decided to steam out through the narrow channel between
Hurst Castle and the Isle of Wight as quickly as possible.

It was a risky thing to do at night and at full speed, for the Channel
and the entrance to it was strewn with contact mines, but one of the
principal businesses of the British Navy is to take risks where
necessary, so he put his own ship at the head of the long line, and with
a mine chart in front of him went ahead at eighteen knots.

When Captain Adolph Frenkel, who was in command of the _See Adler_, saw
the column of warships twining and wriggling its way out through the
Channel, each ship handled with consummate skill and keeping its
position exactly, he could not repress an admiring "Ach!" Still it was
not his business to admire, but destroy.

He rose to a thousand feet, swung round to the north-eastward until the
whole line had passed beneath him, and then quickened up and dropped to
seven hundred feet, swung round again and crept up over the _Hogue_,
which was bringing up the rear. When he was just over her fore part, he
let go a shell, which dropped between the conning-tower and the forward
barbette.

The navigating bridge vanished; the twelve-inch armoured conning-tower
cracked like an eggshell; the barbette collapsed like the crust of a
loaf, and the big 9.2 gun lurched backwards and lay with its muzzle
staring helplessly at the clouds. The deck crumpled up as though it had
been burnt parchment, and the ammunition for the 9.2 and the forward
six-inch guns which had been placed ready for action exploded, blowing
the whole of the upper forepart of the vessel into scrap-iron.

But an even worse disaster than this was to befall the great
twelve-thousand-ton cruiser. Her steering gear was, of course,
shattered. Uncontrolled and uncontrollable, she swung swiftly round to
starboard, struck a mine, and inside three minutes she was lying on the
mud.

Almost at the moment of the first explosion, the beams of twenty
searchlights leapt up into the air, and in the midst of the broad white
glare hundreds of keen angry eyes saw a winged shape darting up into the
air, heading southward as though it would cross the Isle of Wight over
Yarmouth. Almost simultaneously, every