CHAPTER II
The Battle Over the Atlantic
Gazing ahead, Macklin and Hilliard and I stood together in the bridge-room of our cruiser. The squadron which we headed was at the lead of one of our fleet's great columns. Far behind us stretched its ships, flashing forward at uniform speed. Then from the distance-phone before us came the First Air Chief's voice.
"Squadrons 1 to 6 take up scouting positions!" he ordered.
Instantly the first six squadrons of the two columns, our own one of the first, leapt forward and out from the two great lines of the main fleet. Our own and another squadron moved straight ahead, past the silver-striped flagship of the First Air Chief, until our two hundred ships had spread out into a great, thin fringe that was flying forward miles before the main body of our fleet. Two of the other four squadrons drove to right and left of the fleet, spreading there in the same way, the remaining two taking up positions high above and far beneath our two great columns. Thus, with its great lines of scouts fringing it and protecting it from surprise on all sides, our great fleet drove on toward the east over the gray and endless plain of the Atlantic, holding at Yarnall's orders a speed of eight hundred miles an hour.
The crimson descending sun flaming in the heavens behind us, the great gray ocean stretching endlessly beneath us, we rushed on through empty sea and sky. By then Hilliard had gone down to take up his position with the crew beneath, but Macklin and I still stared into the great empty vista before us. With the drone of our great motors and those of the scouts flying beside us, we seemed like a great flight of bees. Beneath there was no sound now from the crew, a silence that told of the tenseless, of expectancy. But still before us was no sign of the great fleet that we had come out to meet, and almost it seemed that in spite of our certain information as to its course we had missed it, since already we were some hundreds of miles out to sea. Then suddenly, as I gazed ahead, I caught my breath, and the next moment had turned swiftly to the distance-phone.
"Squadron 1 reporting," I said rapidly. "The scouts of the European Federation fleet are in sight and are heading toward us!"
For there ahead a great line of dark dots had appeared suddenly in the empty sky, a great fringe of dark dots that were rushing toward us and that were becoming quickly larger! With each moment that they raced toward us they became larger, until they had come plain to our eyes as long torpedo-shaped cruisers like our own. They differed from our own only in that their bridge-rooms, instead of being raised like our own, were sunk flush with their upper-surfaces, only their transparent forward-windows showing. They were the scouts of the European fleet, and at the same time I saw them they must have seen us, for they changed their course slightly. So racing straight toward us were five hundred cruisers opposing the two hundred of our far-flung line. On and on they came, and I saw momentarily far behind them a great cloud of other cruisers, the mighty main body of the European fleet. I shouted the information into the distance-phone. Then the next moment the speeding line of cruisers before us had rushed straight into our own onrushing line!