Waterbury evening Democrat., 1889-03-20

mystery should amount to nothing, there was no reason why the Craglevin should not be lowed into port, and be made again the grand war ship that she had i been.
 Now the director gave the signal, and the captain. with his eyes fixed upon his ship. touched the button. A quick shock ran through the repeller, and black gray cloud. half mile high, occupied the place of the British ship.
 1 The cloud rapidly settled down, cover ing the water with a glittering scum had been the Craglevin. The British captain stood for a moment motionless, and then he picked up a rammer and ran it into the muzzle of the cannon which had been discharged. The great gun was empty The instan- taneous motor bomb was not there. Now he was convinced that the syndi- cate had not mined the fortresscs which they had destroyed.
 | In twenty minutes the two British officers were on board the transport, which then steamed rapidly westward The crabs again took the repeller in tow, and the syndicate's fleet continued it's eastward course, passing through the wide expanse of glittering scum which had spread itself upon the sea.
 They were not two-thirds of their way across the Atlantic when the transport reached St. Johns, and the cable told the world that the Craglevin had been anni- Inflated.
 This news was received with amaze ment, and even constcrnation. It came from an officer in the Royal navy. and how could it be doubted that d great man-of-war had been destroyed in q mo ment by one shot from the syndicate's vessell And yet, even now. there were persons who did doubt. and who asserted that the crabs might have placed q great torpedo under the Craglevin; that wire attached to this torpedo ran out from the repeller. and that the British captain had merely fired the torpedo. But hour by | hour. as fuller news came across the ocean. the number of these doubters be- came smaller and smaller
 In the midst of the great public excite ment which now existed on both sides of
 
 ficting opinions. fears and hopes-the dominant sentiment seemed to be. in America as we'll as in Europe. one of curiosity. Were these six crabs and one repeller bound for the British Isles2 And if so. what did they intend to do when they got there?
 It was now generally admitted that one of the syndicate's crabs could disable man-ofwar; that one of the syndi- cate's repellers could withstand the heaviest artillery fire, and that one of the syndicate's motor bombs could destroy a vessel or fort. But these things had been proved in isolated combats, where ! the new methods of attack and defense had had almost undisturbed opportunity for exhibiting their efficiency. But what could repeller and half a dozen crabs do against the combined force of the Royal navy. navy which had in the last few years regained it's supremacy among the nations. and which h,.d made Great Britain once more the first mari time power in the world?
 The crabs might disable some mel. -of- war. the repelle- might make her calcu- lations and discharge her bomb at ship or fort, but what would the main body of the navy be doing meanwhile? Over whelming, crushing and sinking to the bottom crabs, repeller, motor guns and everything that belonged to them.
 In England there was feeling of strong resentment that such a little fleet should be allowed to sail with such in- tent into British waters. This resent ment extended itself not only to the inn pudent syndicate. but toward the gov ernment, and the opposition party gained daily in strength. The opposition papers had been loud and reckless in their de- nunciations of the slowness and made quacy of the naval preparations, and loaded the government with the entire responsibility. not only of the damage which had already been done to the forts, the ships, and the prestige of Great Britain, but also for the threatened danger of sudden descent of the syndi- cate's fleet upon some unprotected point upon the coast. This fleet should never have been allowed to approach within 0 thousand miles of England It should have been sunk in mid-ocean, if it's sink ing had involved the loss of a dozen men, of-war.
 In America very strong feeling of dis satisfaction showed itself. From the first the syndicate contract had not been popu- lar, but the quick, effective and business like action of that body of men. and the marked success up to this time of their inventions and their operations, had caused great reaction in their favor. They had, so far. successfully defended the American coast, and when they had increased the number of their vessels, they would have been relied upon to con- tinue that defense. Even if British armada had set out to cross the Atlantic, Its movements must have been slow and cumbrous, and the swift and sudden strokes with which the syndicate waged war could have been given by night and by day over thousands of miles of ocean.
 Whether or not these strokes would have been quick enough or hard enough to turn back an armada might be ques- ton, but there could be no question of the suicidal policy of sending seven ships