Morris tribune. [volume] (Morris, Minn.) 1880-2000, 1889-05-22
The Great War Syndicate.
By FRANK 3. STOCKTON.


Hunslredth Man." 1.-THE Casting Away
of Mrs. I.eeks and Mrs. Aiesi,ine,' "The
DuSs,ntes." etc.
ttopyrighted by T. F. Collier, of Golfers Once
with him through the American Press Associa
lion All rights reserved
Every torpedo boat was now ordered
TO the front, and in a long line, almost
abreast of each other, these swift vessels
the lightinfantry 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
and 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 a mile
when Repeller No. II 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
q half ahead. Slowly turning her bow
from side to side, so that the guns would
cover range of nearly half a 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, dense cloud appeared high in
tho air, above a roaring, seething cal
dron, followed 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 Kissing 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 q 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 barrier against its enc
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-
rection the sea swelled and upheaved
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 food 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 eea 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
nifed 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 a bombit
would be careful not to approach the re.
peller from the quarter indicated. It is
true that in case of the failure Of a bomb
to act, another bomb would be dropped
upon the same spot, but the instructions
of the war syndicate provided that every
possible precaution should be taken
against accidents.
Of course the vice admiral did not un.
derstand these signals, nor did he know
that they were signals, but he knew that
they accompanied the discharge of a
motor gun. Once he noticed that there
was short cessation in the hitherto con.
slant succession of water avalanches, and
during this lull he had seen two puffs
from the repeller, and the destruction, al
the same moment, of the deserted torpedo
boat. 1t was, therefore, plain enough tt
him that If a motor bomb could be placed
SO accurately upon one torpedo boat, and
with such terrible result, other bombs
could quite as easily be discharged upon
the other torpedo boats which formed
the advanced line of the fleet. When
the barrier of storm and cataract again
began to stretch itself in front of the
repeller, he knew that not only was il
impossible for the torpedo boats to send
their missives through this raging tur.
MOL, but that each of these vessels was
itself in danger of instantaneous destrac
ton.
Unwilling, therefore, to expose his
vessels to profitless danger, the vice
admiral ordered the torpedo boats to re
tire from the front, and the whole line
of them proceeded to point north Of the
feet, where they lay to.
When this had been done the repellel
coacnd tha dischar oa of hop,hr h,.t fb<