some of their
bodies were examined afterwards, it was found that their hearts were
split open as cleanly as though they had been divided with a razor, just
as are the hearts of fishes which have been killed with dynamite.

John Castellan and his lieutenant, M'Carthy, for the time being gloried
in the work of destruction. Captain Frenkel was a soldier and a
gentleman, and he saw nothing in it save wanton killing of defenceless
people and a wicked waste of ammunition; but the terrible War Lord of
Germany had given Castellan supreme command, and to disobey meant
degradation, and possibly death, and so the _See Adler_ perforce took
her share in the tragedy.

In a couple of hours Portsmouth, Gosport and Portsea had ceased to be
towns. They were only areas of flaming ruins; but at last the ammunition
gave out, and Castellan was compelled to signal the _See Adler_ to shape
her course for Bracklesham Bay in order to replenish the magazines. They
reached the bay, and descended at the spot where the _Leger_ ought to
have been at anchor. She was not there, for the sufficient reason that
the _Ithuriel's_ ram had sent her to the bottom of the Channel.

For half an hour the _Flying Fish_ and the _See Adler_ hunted over the
narrow waters, but neither was the _Leger_ nor any other craft to be
seen between the Selsey coast and the Isle of Wight. When they came
together again in Bracklesham Bay, John Castellan's rage against the
hated Saxon had very considerably cooled. Evidently something serious
had happened, and something that he knew nothing about, and now that the
excitement of destruction had died away, he remembered more than one
thing which he ought to have thought of before.

The two rushes of the torpedo boats, supported by the swift cruisers,
had not taken place. Not a hostile vessel had entered either Spithead or
the Solent, and the British cruisers, which he had been ordered to
spare, had got away untouched. It was perfectly evident that some
disaster had befallen the expedition, and that the _Leger_ had been
involved in it. In spite of the terrible destruction that the _Flying
Fish_, the _See Adler_ and the _Banshee_ had wrought on sea and land, it
was plain that the first part of the invader's programme had been
brought to nothing by some unknown agency.

He was, of course, aware of the general plan of attack. He had destroyed
the battleships of the Fleet Reserve. While he was doing that the
destroyers should have be