The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1889-04-14

UlSCndrSeu, duOIuSr SUISInS ABYSS dp-
peared, another roar of wind and water
was heard, and another mountain of
furious pillows uplifted itself in a 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 a 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-
rectioA the sea swelled and upheaved
into great peaked waves, the repeller
rising upon thes2 almost high enough to
loci! down into the awful chasms which
her bombs were making. A torpedo
boat, caught III 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
Ieaped into their boats and deserted her.
BY rare good fortune their boats were
kept afoat in the turbulent rea 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
a motor gun had been discharged, and
thus to provide against accidents in case
bomb should fail to act. One puff sig
nifed that a bomb bad 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. 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 IN
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 a short cessation in the hitherto con-
slant succession of water avalanches, and
during this hull he had seen two pufTs
from the repeller, and the destruction, at
the same moment, of the deserted torpedo
boat. 1t was, therefore, plain enough to
him that if q 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 it
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 destruc-
| 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 a point north of the
fleet, where they lay to.
When this had been done the repeller
ceased the discharge of bombs, but the
sea was still heaving and tossing after
the storm, when a dispatch boat brought
orders from the British admiralty to the
flag ship. Communication between the
British fleet and the shore, and con-
sequently London, had been constant,
and all that had occurred had been
quickly made known to the admiralty
and the government. The orders now
received by the vice admiral were to the
effect that it was considered judicious to
discontinue the conflict for the day, and
that he and his whole fleet should return
| to Portsmouth to receive further orders.
In issuing these commands the British
| government was actuated simply by mo-
tives of humanity and common sense.
The British feet was thoroughly pre-
pared for ordinary naval warfare, but
an enemy had inaugurated another kind
of naval warfare for which it was not
prepared. 1t was therefore decided to
withdraw the ships until they should be
prepared for the new kind of warfare. To
allow ironclad after ironciad to be disa-
bled and set adrift, to subject every ship
in the feet to the danger of instantaneous
destruction, and all this without the
possibility of infiicting injury upon the
enemy, would not be bravery; it would
be stupidity. 1t was surely possible to
devise means for destroying the seven
hostile ships now in British waters.
Until action for this end could be taken,
it was the part of wisdom for the British