contrivance--a compound of mechanism and galvanism--which, when the
buoys are bumped, _close_ the electric circuit and cause the mine to
explode. Thus when a ship-of-war sails against one of these
circuit-closers, she is immediately blown up."

"Is not that rather a sneaking way of killing one's enemies?" asked my
mother.

Young Firebrand laughed, and admitted that it was, but pleaded that
everything was fair in love and war.

In actual warfare the circuit-closers are placed just over the mines
which they are designed to explode, but for safety on this occasion they
were placed at a safe distance from their respective mines. A
steam-launch was used to bump them, and a prodigious upheaval of water
on each explosion showed clearly enough what would have been the fate of
an iron-clad if she had been over the mine.

"Oh, shade of Nelson!" I could not help exclaiming, "how shocked you
must be if you are permitted to witness such methods of conducting war."

"Ah, yes!" sighed Firebrand; "the bubble reputation, you see, is being
transferred from the cannon's mouth to the torpedo."

I made no reply, for my mind reverted to my laboratory in Devonshire,
where lay the working-model of the terrible weapon I had spent so much
time in perfecting. It seemed strange to me now, that, in the eager
pursuit of a scientific object, I had scarcely ever, if at all,
reflected on the dire results that the use of my torpedo involved, and I
felt as if I were really guilty of the intent to murder. Just before
leaving home I had charged my model, which was quite a large one,
capable of holding about 50 pounds of dynamite, in the hope that I might
prevail on the First Lord of the Admiralty and some of his colleagues to
come down and see it actually fired. I now resolved to throw the
dynamite into the sea, break up my model, and have done with explosives
for ever.

While my mind was running on this, I was startled by an explosion close
alongside. On turning towards the side of the ship, I found that it was
caused by the rending of a huge iron chain, the links of which were more
than one and a quarter inch in thickness. This powerful cable, which
could have held an iron-clad, was snapped in twain like a piece of
thread by the explosion _against_ it of only two and a half pounds of
gun-cotton.

"Very well done," I said to Firebrand, "but I think that a much smaller
quantity of dynamite would have done it as effectively."

"Now, Mrs