Great War Syndicate
Page 19
earnestly urging thedesignation, without loss of time, of a place of operations.
This answer was received in London in the evening, and all night it wasthe subject of earnest and anxious deliberation in the Governmentoffices. It was at last decided, amid great opposition, that theSyndicate's alternative must be accepted, for it would be the height offolly to allow the repeller to bombard any port she should choose.When this conclusion had been reached, the work of selecting a placefor the proposed demonstration of the American Syndicate occupied butlittle time. The task was not difficult. Nowhere in Great Britain wasthere a fortified spot of so little importance as Caerdaff, on the westcoast of Wales.
Caerdaff consisted of a large fort on a promontory, and an immensecastellated structure on the other side of a small bay, with a littlefishing village at the head of said bay. The castellated structure wasrather old, the fortress somewhat less so; and both had long beenconsidered useless, as there was no probability that an enemy wouldland at this point on the coast.
Caerdaff was therefore selected as the spot to be operated upon. Noone could for a moment imagine that the Syndicate had mined this place;and if it should be destroyed by motor-bombs, it would prove to thecountry that the Government had not been frightened by the tricks of acrafty enemy.
An hour after the receipt of the note in which it was stated thatCaerdaff had been selected, the Syndicate's fleet started for thatplace. The crabs were elevated to cruising height, the repeller takenin tow, and by the afternoon of the next day the fleet was lying offCaerdaff. A note was sent on shore to the officer in command, statingthat the bombardment would begin at ten o'clock in the morning of thenext day but one, and requesting that information of the hour appointedbe instantly transmitted to London. When this had been done, the fleetsteamed six or seven miles off shore, where it lay to or cruised aboutfor two nights and a day.
As soon as the Government had selected Caerdaff for bombardment,immediate measures were taken to remove the small garrisons and theinhabitants of the fishing village from possible danger. When theSyndicate's note was received by the commandant of the fort, he wasalready in receipt of orders from the War Office to evacuate thefortifications, and to superintend the removal of the fishermen andtheir families to a point of safety farther up the coast.
Caerdaff was a place difficult of access by land, the nearest railroadstations being fifteen or twenty miles away; but on the day after thearrival of the Syndicate's fleet in the offing, thousands of peoplemade their way to this part of the country, anxious to see--ifperchance they might find an opportunity to safely see--what mighthappen at ten o'clock the next morning. Officers of the army and navy,Government officials, press correspondents, in great numbers, andcurious and anxious observers of all classes, hastened to the Welshcoast.
The little towns where the visitors left the trains were crowded tooverflowing, and every possible conveyance, by which the mountainslying back of Caerdaff could be reached, was eagerly secured, manypersons, however, being obliged to depend upon their own legs. Soonafter sunrise of the appointed day the forts, the village, and thesurrounding lower country were entirely deserted, and every point ofvantage on the mountains lying some miles back from the coast wasoccupied by excited spectators, nearly every one armed with afield-glass.
A few of the guns from the fortifications were transported to anoverlooking height, in order that they might be brought into action incase the repeller, instead of bombarding, should send men in boats totake possession of the evacuated fortifications, or should attempt anymining operations. The gunners for this battery were stationed at asafe place to the rear, whence they could readily reach their guns ifnecessary.
The next day was one of supreme importance to the Syndicate. On thisday it must make plain to the world, not only what the motor-bomb coulddo, but that the motor-bomb did what was done. Before leaving theEnglish Channel the director of Repeller No. 11 had receivedtelegraphic advices from both Europe and America, indicating thegeneral drift of public opinion in regard to the recent sea-fight; and,besides these, many English and continental papers had been brought tohim from the French coast.
From all these the director perceived that the cause of the Syndicatehad in a certain way suffered from the manner in which the battle inthe channel had been conducted. Every newspaper urged that if therepeller carried guns capable of throwing the bombs which the Syndicateprofessed to use, there was no reason why every ship in the Britishfleet should not have been destroyed. But as the repeller had notfired a single shot at the fleet, and as the battle had been foughtentirely by the crabs, there was every reason to believe that if therewere such things as motor-guns, their range was very short, not asgreat as that of the ordinary dynamite cannon. The great risk run byone of the crabs in order to disable a dynamite gun-boat seemed anadditional proof of this.
It was urged that the explosions in the water might have been producedby torpedoes; that the torpedo-boat which had been destroyed was sonear the repeller that an ordinary shell was sufficient to accomplishthe damage that had been done.
To gainsay these assumptions was imperative on the Syndicate's forces.To firmly establish the prestige of the instantaneous motor was theobject of the war. Crabs were of but temporary service. Any nationcould build vessels like them, and there were many means of destroyingthem. The spring armour was a complete defence against ordinaryartillery, but it was not a defence against submarine torpedoes. Theclaims of the Syndicate could be firmly based on nothing but the powersof absolute annihilation possessed by the instantaneous motor-bomb.
About nine o'clock on the appointed morning, Repeller No. 11, much tothe surprise of the spectators on the high grounds with field-glassesand telescopes, steamed away from Caerdaff. What this meant nobodyknew, but the naval military observers immediately suspected that theSyndicate's vessel had concentrated attention upon Caerdaff in order togo over to Ireland to do some sort of mischief there. It was presumedthat the crabs accompanied her, but as they were now at their fightingdepth it was impossible to see them at so great a distance.
But it was soon perceived that Repeller No. 11 had no intention ofrunning away, nor of going over to Ireland. From slowly cruising aboutfour or five miles off shore, she had steamed westward until she hadreached a point which, according to the calculations of her scientificcorps, was nine marine miles from Caerdaff. There she lay to against astrong breeze from the east.
It was not yet ten o'clock when the officer in charge of the starboardgun remarked to the director that he suppose that it would not benecessary to give the smoke signals, as had been done in the channel,as now all the crabs were lying near them. The director reflected amoment, and then ordered that the signals should be given at everydischarge of the gun, and that the columns of black smoke should beshot up to their greatest height.
At precisely ten o'clock, up rose from Repeller No. 11 two tall jetsof black smoke. Up rose from the promontory of Caerdaff, a heavy graycloud, like an immense balloon, and then the people on the hill-topsand highlands felt a sharp shock of the ground and rocks beneath them,and heard the sound of a terrible but momentary grinding crush.
As the cloud began to settle, it was borne out to sea by the wind, andthen it was revealed that the fortifications of Caerdaff haddisappeared.
In ten minutes there was another smoke signal, and a great cloud overthe castellated structure on the other side of the bay. The cloudpassed away, leaving a vacant space on the other side of the bay.
The second shock sent a panic through the crowd of spectators. Thenext earthquake bomb might strike among them. Down the eastern slopesran hundreds of them, leaving only a few of the bravest civilians, thereporters of the press, and the naval and military men.
The next motor-bomb descended into the fishing village, the comminutedparticles of which, being mostly of light material, floated far out tosea.
The detachment of artillerists who had been deputed to man the guns onthe heights which commanded the bay had been or
dered to fall back tothe mountains as soon as it had been seen that it was not the intentionof the repeller to send boats on shore. The most courageous of thespectators trembled a little when the fourth bomb was discharged, forit came farther inland, and struck the height on which the battery hadbeen placed, removing all vestiges of the guns, caissons, and the ledgeof rock on which they had stood.
The motor-bombs which the repeller was now discharging were of thelargest size and greatest power, and a dozen more of them weredischarged at intervals of a few minutes. The promontory on which thefortifications had stood was annihilated, and the waters of the bayswept over its foundations. Soon afterward the head of the bay seemedmadly rushing out to sea, but quickly surged back to fill the chasmwhich yawned at the spot where the village had been.
The dense clouds were now upheaved at such short intervals that thescene of devastation was completely shut out from the observers on thehills; but every few minutes they felt a sickening