“Able to run on four cylinders and one propeller,” replied Verplanck.
“Then let’s try her. Watch the engine. I’ll take the wheel.”
Limping along, the engine skipping and missing, the once peerless Streamline started back across the bay. Instead of heading toward the club, Kennedy pointed her bow somewhere between that and Verplanck’s.
“I wish Armand would get busy,” he remarked, after glancing now and then in the direction of the club. “What can be the matter?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
There came the boom as if of a gun far away in the direction in which he was looking, then another.
“Oh, there it is. Good fellow. I suppose he had to deliver my message to Mrs. Hollingsworth himself first.”
From every quarter showed huge balls of fire, rising from the sea, as it were, with a brilliantly luminous flame.
“What is it?” I asked, somewhat startled.
“A German invention for use at night against torpedo and aeroplane attacks. From that mortar Armand has shot half a dozen bombs of phosphide of calcium which are hurled far into the darkness. They are so constructed that they float after a short plunge and are ignited on contact by the action of the salt water itself.”