score of torpedo boats, and half as many
destroyers, dashed out from behind the British lines, and, rushing
through the hurricane of shell that was directed upon them, ran past the
broken line of unmanageable cruisers and battleships, and torpedoed them
at easy range. True, half of them were crumpled up, and sent to the
bottom during the process, but that is a contingency which British
torpedo officers and men never take the slightest notice of. The
disabled ships were magnificent marks for torpedoes, and they had to go
down, wherefore down they went.

Meanwhile the _Ithuriel_ had been having a merry time among the torpedo
flotilla of the Reserve Squadron. She rose flush with the water, put on
full speed, and picked them up one after another on the end of her ram,
and tossed them aside into the depths as rapidly as an enraged whale
might have disposed of a fleet of whaleboats.

The last boat had hardly gone down when signals were seen flashing up
into the sky from over Dungeness.

"That's Beresford to the rescue," said Castellan, in a not
over-cheerful voice. "Now if it wasn't for those devil-ships of my
brother's there'd be mighty little left of the Allied Fleet to-morrow
morning; but I'm afraid he won't be able to do anything against those
amphibious _Flying Fishes_, as he calls them. Now, we'd better be off to
London."

CHAPTER XXI

--AND ENDS

The defenders of Dover, terribly as they had suffered, and hopeless as
the defence really now seemed to be, were still not a little cheered by
the tidings of the complete and crushing defeat which had been inflicted
by Admiral Beresford and the _Ithuriel_ on the French at Portsmouth and
Folkestone, and the brilliant capture of the whole of the two
Expeditionary Forces. Now, too, the destruction of the Allied Reserve
made it possible to hope that at least a naval victory might be
obtained, and the transports prevented from crossing until the remains
of the British Fleet Reserve could be brought up to the rescue.

At any rate it might be possible, in spite of sunken ships and shattered
fortifications, to prevent, at least for a while, the pollution of
English soil by the presence of hostile forces, and to get on with the
mobilisation of regulars, militia, yeomanry and volunteers, which, as
might have been expected, this sudden declaration of war found in the
usual state of hopeless muddle and chaos.

But, even in the event of complete victory by sea, there woul