Part 27 (2/2)

[Ill.u.s.tration: ”On the water the results of the air-s.h.i.+p's attack were destructive almost beyond description.”

_See page 191._]

The firing was furious and sustained from beginning to end of the rush, but the damage inflicted by the cannonade of the Russian fleet and the torpedo-boats, which every now and then darted out from between the wars.h.i.+ps as opportunity offered to employ their silent and deadly weapons, was as nothing in comparison with the frightful havoc achieved by the air-s.h.i.+p.

This extraordinary craft hovered over the attacking force, darting hither and thither with bewildering rapidity, and raining down sh.e.l.ls charged with an unknown explosive of fearful power among the crowded s.h.i.+ps of the great force which was blocking the Sound. Half a dozen of these sh.e.l.ls were fired upon the seaward fortifications of Copenhagen in pa.s.sing, and produced a perfectly paralysing effect.

On the water the results of the air-s.h.i.+p's attack were destructive almost beyond description, particularly when she stationed herself over the Allied fleet and began firing her four guns right and left, ahead and astern. Every time a sh.e.l.l struck either a battles.h.i.+p or a cruiser, the terrific explosion which resulted either sank the s.h.i.+p in a few minutes, or so far disabled it that it fell an easy prey to the guns and rams of the Russians. As for the torpedo-boats which were struck, they were simply scattered over the water in indistinguishable fragments.

Under these conditions maintenance of formation and effective fighting were practically impossible, and the huge iron wedge of the Russian squadron was driven almost without a check through the demoralised ranks of the Allied fleet. The Gut of Elsinore was reached in a little more than three hours after the first sounds of the cannonade were heard. Shortly before this the air-s.h.i.+p had stationed itself about a thousand feet above the water, and a mile from the fortifications.

From this position it commenced a brief, rapid cannonade from its smokeless and flameless guns, the effects of which on the fortress are said to have been indescribably awful. Great blocks of steel-sheathed masonry were dislodged from the ramparts and hurled bodily into the sea, carrying with them guns and men to irretrievable destruction. In less than half an hour the once impregnable fortress of Elsinore was little better than a heap of ruins. The last sh.e.l.l blew up the central magazine; the tremendous explosion was heard for miles along the coast, and proved to be the closing act of the briefest but most deadly great naval action in the history of war.

The Russian fleet steamed triumphantly past the silenced Cerberus of the Sound with flas.h.i.+ng searchlights, blazing rockets, and jubilant salvos of blank cartridge in honour of their really brilliant victory.

The losses of the Allied fleet, so far as they are at present known, are distressingly heavy. We have lost the battles.h.i.+ps _Neptune_, _Hotspur_, _Anson_, _Superb_, _Black Prince_, and _Rodney_, the armoured cruisers _Narcissus_, _Beatrice_, and _Mersey_, the unarmoured cruisers _Arethusa_, _Barossa_, _Clyde_, _Lais_, _Seagull_, _Gra.s.shopper_, and _Nautilus_, and not less than nineteen torpedo-boats of the first and second cla.s.ses.

The Germans and Danes have lost the battles.h.i.+ps _Kaiser Wilhelm_, _Friedrich der Grosse_, _Dantzig_, _Viborg_, and _Funen_, five German and three Danish cruisers, and about a dozen torpedo-boats.

Under whatever circ.u.mstances the Russians have obtained the a.s.sistance of the air-s.h.i.+p, which rendered them services that have proved so disastrous to the Allies, there can be no doubt but that her arrival on the scene puts a completely different aspect on the face of affairs at sea.

I have written this telegram on board first-cla.s.s torpedo-boat, No. 87, which followed the Russian fleet from the Sound round the Skawe. They pa.s.sed through the Kattegat in two columns of line ahead, with the air-s.h.i.+p apparently resting after her flight on board one of the largest steamers. We could see her quite distinctly by the glare of the rockets and the electric light.

She is a small three-masted vessel almost exactly resembling the one which partially destroyed Kronstadt in the middle of March.

After rounding the Skawe, the Russian fleet steamed away westward into the German Ocean, and we put in here to send off our despatches. This telegram has, of course, been officially revised, and my information, as far as it goes, can therefore be relied upon.

CHAPTER XXVI.

AN INTERLUDE.

At noon on the 26th, as the tropical sun was pouring down its vertical rays upon the lovely valley of Aeria, the _Ithuriel_ crossed the Ridge which divided it from the outer world, and came to rest on the level stretch of sward on the northern sh.o.r.e of the lake.

Before she touched the earth Arnold glanced rapidly round and discovered his aerial fleet resting under a series of large palm-thatched sheds which had already been erected to protect them from the burning sun, and the rare but violent tropical rain-storms.

He counted them. There were only eleven, and therefore the evil tidings that they had heard from the captain of the _Andromeda_ was true.

Even before greetings were exchanged with the colonists Natas ordered Nicholas Roburoff to be summoned on board alone. He received him in the lower saloon, on either side of which, as he went in, he found a member of the crew armed with a magazine rifle and fixed bayonet.

Seated at the cabin table were Natas, Tremayne, and Arnold. The President was received in cold and ominous silence, not even a glance of recognition was vouchsafed to him. He stood at the other end of the table with bowed head, a prisoner before his judges. Natas looked at him for some moments in dead silence, and there was a dark gleam of anger in his eyes which made Arnold tremble for the man whose life hung upon a word of a judge from whose sentence there could be no appeal.

At length Natas spoke; his voice was hard and even; there were no modulations in it that displayed the slightest feeling, whether of anger or any other emotion. It was like the voice of an impa.s.sive machine speaking the very words of Fate itself.

”You know why we have returned, and why you have been sent for?”

<script>