The Florida agriculturist., 1889-05-15
and the subsequent roar Of wind or fall

channel, dense cloud appeared high in
the air, above 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 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 storm
of spray and foam, raging that it had
found its place usurped.
Slowly turning. the repeller discharged
bomb after bomb building up out of the
very sea itself barrier against it's enc
miles, 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 peakel 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 me of the returning
gales. was hurled forward almost on her
beam ends until she was under the edge
of one of the vast masse.; 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 afloat 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
a 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 a signal of this kind, and per-
ceivn no signs of the action of a bomb it
would be careful not to approach the re-
peller from the quarter indicated. 1t is
true that in case of the failure Of 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