my were within
range, and through the roar of the lighter artillery now came the
deep, sullen boom of the big guns on the battleships, and the great
thousand-pound projectiles began to scream through the air and fling
the water up into mountains of foam where they pitched.

Where one of them struck, death and destruction would follow as
surely as though it were a thunderbolt from Heaven. The three liners
scattered and steamed away to the northward as fast as their
propellers would drive them. But what was their utmost speed to that
of the projectiles cleaving through the air at more than two thousand
feet a second?

See! one at length strikes the German liner square amidships, and
bursts. There is a horrible explosion. The searchlight thrown on her
shows a cloud of steam and smoke and flame rising up from her riven
decks. Where her funnels were is a huge ragged black hole. This is
visible for an instant, then her back breaks, and in two halves she
follows the French cruiser to the bottom of the Atlantic.

The sinking of the German liner was the signal for the appearance of
a new actor on the scene, and the commencement of a work of
destruction more appalling than anything that human warfare had so
far known.

Michael Roburoff, standing on the spar-deck of the flying _Aurania_,
suddenly saw a bright stream of light shoot down from the clouds, and
flash hither and thither, till it hovered over the advancing French
and Italian squadron. For the moment the combat ceased, so astounded
were the combatants on both sides at this mysterious apparition.

Then, without the slightest warning, with no flash or roar of guns,
there came a series of frightful explosions among the ships of the
pursuers. They followed each other so quickly that the darkness
behind the electric lights seemed lit with a continuous blaze of
livid green flame for three or four minutes.

Then there was darkness and silence. Black darkness and absolute
silence. The searchlights were extinguished, and the roar of the
artillery was still. The British waited in dazed silence for it to
begin again, but it never did. The whole of the pursuing squadron had
been annihilated.

[Illustration: "This mysterious apparition."

_See page 178._]

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE NEW WARFARE.

It will now be necessary, in order to insure the continuity of the
narrative, to lay before the reader a brief sketch of the course of
events in Europe from the actual commenc