he town, for the four cargoes exploded simultaneously as
they struck the earth.

The emmensite and dynamite tore whole streets of houses to fragments,
and hurled them far and wide into the air, to fall back again on
other parts of the town, and at the same time the fire-shells
ignited, and set the ruins blazing like so many furnaces. No more
shots were fired into the air after that.

There was nothing for it but for British valour to bow to the
inevitable, and evacuate the town and what remained of its
fortifications; and so with sad and heavy hearts the remnant of the
brave defenders turned their faces inland, leaving Dover to its fate.
Meanwhile exactly the same havoc had been wrought upon Folkestone and
Deal. Hour after hour the merciless work continued, until by three
o'clock in the afternoon there was not a gun left upon the whole
range of coast that was capable of firing a shot.

All this time the ammunition tenders of the aerial fleet had been
winging their way to and fro across the Strait constantly renewing
the shells of the war-balloons.

As soon as it began to grow dusk the naval battle commenced.
Numerically speaking the attacking force was somewhat inferior to
that of the defenders, but now the second element, which so
completely altered the tactics of sea fighting, was for the first
time in the war brought into play.

As the battleships of the League steamed out to engage the opponents,
who were thirsting to avenge the destruction that had been wrought
upon the land, a small flotilla of twenty-five insignificant-looking
little craft, with neither masts nor funnels, and looking more like
half-submerged elongated turtles than anything else, followed in tow
close under their quarters. Hardly had the furious cannonade broken
out into thunder and flame along the two opposing lines, than these
strange craft sank gently and silently beneath the waves. They were
submarine vessels belonging to the French navy, an improved type of
the _Zede_ class, which had been in existence for more than ten
years.[1]

These vessels were capable of sinking to a depth of twenty feet, and
remaining for four hours without returning to the surface. They were
propelled by twin screws worked by electricity at a speed of twenty
knots, and were provided with an electric searchlight, which enabled
them to find the hulls of hostile ships in the dark.

Each carried three torpedoes, which could be launched from a tube
forward so as