gun from the tops of the
battleships spoke, and a storm of shells rent the air.

But Captain Frenkel had already seen his mistake. The _See Adler's_
wings were inclined at an angle of twenty degrees, her propellers were
revolving at their utmost velocity, and at a speed of nearly a hundred
miles an hour, she took the Isle of Wight in a leap. She slowed down
rapidly over Freshwater Bay. Captain Frenkel took a careful observation
of the position and course of the squadron, dropped into the water,
folded his wings and crept round the Needles with his conning-tower just
awash, and lay in wait for his prey about two miles off the Needles.

The huge black hull of the _Irresistible_ was only a couple of hundred
yards away. He instantly sank and turned on his water-ray. As the
flagship passed within forty yards he let go his first torpedo. It hit
her sternpost, smashed her rudder and propellers, and tore a great hole
in her run. The steel monster stopped, shuddered, and slid sternward
with her mighty ram high in the air into the depths of the smooth grey
sea.

There is no need to repeat the ghastly story which has already been
told--the story of the swift and pitiless destruction of these miracles
of human skill, huge in size and mighty in armament and manned by the
bravest men on land or sea, by a foe puny in size but of awful
potentiality. It was a fight, if fight it could be called, between the
visible and the invisible, and it could only have one end. Battleship
after battleship received her death-wound, and went down without being
able to fire a shot in defence, until the _Magnificent_, smitten in the
side under her boilers, blew up and sank amidst a cloud of steam and
foam, and the Western Squadron had met the fate of the Eastern.

While this tragedy was being enacted, the cruisers scattered in all
directions and headed for the open at their highest speed. It was a
bitter necessity, and it was bitterly felt by every man and boy on board
them; but the captains knew that to stop and attempt the rescue of even
some of their comrades meant losing the ships which it was their duty at
all costs to preserve, and so they took the only possible chance to
escape from this terrible unseen foe which struck out of the silence and
the darkness with such awful effect.

But despite the tremendous disaster which had befallen the Reserve
Fleet, the work of death and destruction was by no means all on one
side. When he sank the _Leger