The Press., 1889-05-16
Issued Every Thursday Evening.


 the light infantry of the sea-advanced upon the solitary and distant foe. If one torpedo could but reach her hull, the vice admiral, in spite of seven disabled ironclads and a captured gunboat, might yet gaze proudly at his floating flag, even if his own ship should be drifting broadside to the sea.
 The line of torpedo boats, slightly curv- ing inward, had advanced about mile when Repeller Mo- il awoke from her seeming sleep, and began to act. The two great guns at her bow were trained upward, so that bomb discharged from them would fall into the sea mile and half ahead. Slowly turning her bow from side to side, so that the guns would cover range of nearly half circle, the instantaneous motor bombs of the re- peller were discharged, one every half minute.
 One of the most appalling character istics of the motor bombs was the silence which accompanied their discharge and action. No noise was heard, except the flash of sound occasioned by the removal of the particles of the object aimed at, and the subsequent roar of wind or fall of water.
 As each motor bomb dropped into the channel, a dense cloud appeared high in | the air, above roaring, seething cal dron, hollowed out of the waters and out of the very bottom of the channel. Into this chasm the cloud quickly came down, condensed into vast body of water, which fell, with the roar of a cyclone, into the dreadful abyss from which it had been torn, before the hissing walls of the great hollow had half filled it with their sweeping surges. The piled up mass of the redundant water was still sending it's maddened pillows tossing and writhing in every direction toward their normal level, when another bomb was discharged; another surging abyss ap- peared, another roar of wind and water was heard, and another mountain of furious pillows uplifted itself in storm of spray and foam, raging that it had found it's place usurped.
 Slowly turning, the repeller discharged bomb after bomb, building up out of the very sea itself a barrier against it's ene- mics. Under these laundering cata- racts, born in an instant, and coming down all at once in plunging storm; into these abysses, with walls of water and floors of cleft and shivered rocks; through this wide@belt of raging turmoil, thrown into new frenzy after the dis charge of every bomb-no vessel, no tor pedo, could pass.
 The air driven off in every direction by tremendous and successive concus- sions came rushing back in shrieking gales, which tore up the waves into, binding foam. For miles in every di- Id into great peaked waves, the repeller rising upon these almost high enough to look down into the awful chasms which her bombs were making. A torpedo boat, caught in one of the returning gales, was hurled forward almost on her beam ends until she was under the edge of one of the vast masses of descending water. The flood which, from even the outer limits of this falling sea, poured upon and into the unlucky vessel nearly swamped her, and when she was swept back by the rushing waves into less stormy waters, her officers and crew leaped into their boats and deserted her. By rare good fortune their boats were kept afoat in the turbulent cea until they reached the nearest torpedo vessel
 Five minutes afterward a small but carefully aimed motor bomb struck the nearly swamped vessel, and with the roar of all her own torpedoes she passed into nothing.
 The British vice admiral had carefully watched the repeller through his glass, and he noticed that simultaneously with the appearance of the cloud in the air, produced by the action of the motor bombs, there were two puffs of black smoke from the repeller. These were signals to the crabs to notify them that motor gun had been discharged, and thus to provide against accidents in case bomb should fail to act. One puff sig nified that bomb had been discharged to the north; two, that it had gone east ward, and SO on. If, therefore, crab should see signal of this kind, and per ceive no signs of the action of bomb it would be careful not to approach the re. peller from the quarter indicated. It is true that in case of the failure of bomt to act, another bomb would be dropped upon the same spot, bat the instructions of the war syndicate provided that every possible precaution should be taker against accidents.
 Of course the vice admiral did not un ucIStdud tHeSo SlSutASs uOT uAu u0 kuON that they were signals, but he knew that they accompanied the discharge of z motor gun. Once he noticed that there was short cessation in the hitherto con stant succession of water avalanches, anG during this Hull he had seen two puff from the repeller, and the destruction, al the same moment, of the deserted torpedo boat. It was, therefore, plain enough te him that if motor bomb could be placed so accurately upon one torpedo boat, and with such terrible result, other bombs could quite as easily be discharged upor the other torpedo boats which formed the advanced line of the fleet. Wher the barrier of storm and cataract agair began to stretch itself in front of tn, repeller, he knew that not only was i impossible for the torpedo boats to sent , their missives through this raging tur moil, but that each of these vessels wa itself in danger of instantaneous destruc tion.
 Unwilling, therefore, to expose hi vessels to proftless danger, the vic' admiral ordered the torpedo boats to re tire from the front, and the whole lin of them proceeded to point north of tn fleet, where they lay to.
 When this had been done the repelle cnasad tha discharoa of houhs h,,t th