he battle raged incessantly along a semicircle some
twelve miles long, the centre of which was Dover. Crowds of anxious
watchers on the shore watched the continuous flashes of the guns
through the darkness, varied ever and anon by some tremendous
explosion which told the fate of a warship that had fired her last
shot.

All night long the incessant thunder of the battle rolled to and fro
along the echoing coast, and when morning broke the light dawned upon
a scene of desolation and destruction on sea and shore such as had
never been witnessed before in the history of warfare. On land were
the smoking ruins of houses, still smouldering in the remains of the
fires which had consumed them; forts which twenty-four hours before
had grinned defiance at the enemy were shapeless heaps of earth and
stone, and armour-plating torn into great jagged fragments; and on
sea were a few half-crippled wrecks, the remains of the British
fleet, with their flags still flying, and such guns as were not
disabled firing their last rounds at the victorious foe.

To the eastward of these about half the fleet of the League, in but
little better condition, was advancing in now overwhelming force upon
them, and behind these again a swarm of troopships and transports
were heading out from the French shore. About an hour after dawn the
_Centurion_, the last of the British battleships, was struck by one
of the submarine torpedoes, broke in two, and went down with her flag
flying and her guns blazing away to the last moment. So ended the
battle of Dover, the most disastrous sea-fight in the history of the
world, and the death-struggle of the Mistress of the Seas.

The last news of the tremendous tragedy reached the now
panic-stricken capital half an hour before the receipt of similar
tidings from Harwich, announcing the destruction of the defending
fleet and forts, and the capture of the town by exactly the same
means as those employed against Dover. Nothing now lay between London
and the invading forces but the utterly inadequate army and the lines
of fortifications, which could not be expected to offer any more
effective resistance to the assault of the war-balloons than had
those of the three towns on the Kentish coast.

[Footnote 1: _The Naval Annual_ for 1893 mentions two types of
submarine boats, the _Zede_ and the _Goubet_, both belonging to the
French navy, which had then been tried with success. The same work
mentions no such vessels belon