to strike the hull of the doomed ship from beneath. As
soon as the torpedo was discharged the submarine boat spun round on
her heel and headed away at full speed in an opposite direction out
of the area of the explosion.

The effects of such terrible and, indeed, irresistible engines of
naval warfare were soon made manifest upon the ships of the British
fleet. In the heat of the battle, with every gun in action, and
raining a hail of shot and shell upon her adversary, a great
battleship would receive an unseen blow, struck in the dark upon her
most vulnerable part, a huge column of water would rise up from under
her side, and a few minutes later the splendid fabric would heel over
and go down like a floating volcano, to be quenched by the waves that
closed over her.

But as if it were not enough that the defending fleet should be
attacked from the surface of the water and the depths of the sea, the
war-balloons, winging their way out from the scene of ruin that they
had wrought on shore, soon began to take their part in the work of
death and destruction.

Each of them was provided with a mirror set a little in front of the
bow of the car, at an angle which could be varied according to the
elevation. A little forward of the centre of the car was a tube fixed
on a level with the centre of the mirror. The ship selected for
destruction was brought under the car, and the speed of the balloon
was regulated so that the ship was relatively stationary to it.

As soon as the glare from one of the funnels could be seen through
the tube reflected in the centre of the mirror, a trap was sprung in
the floor of the car, and a shell charged with dynamite, which, it
will be remembered, explodes vertically downwards, was released, and,
where the calculations were accurately made, passed down the funnel
and exploded in the interior of the vessel, bursting her boilers and
reducing her to a helpless wreck at a single stroke.

Every time this horribly ingenious contrivance was successfully
brought into play a battleship or a cruiser was either sunk or
reduced to impotence. In order to make their aim the surer, the
aerostats descended to within three hundred yards of their prey, and
where the missile failed to pass through the funnel it invariably
struck the deck close to it, tearing up the armour sheathing, and
wrecking the funnel itself so completely that the steaming-power of
the vessel was very seriously reduced.

All night long t