"The Holland I. has been blown up into a million pieces!"
"Andy, you can't mean it."
"It's true."
"Who did it, some of the foreign warships?"
"No, one mean, miserable skunk of a man did it all."
"And who was he?"
"An Italian named Gabretti. He was employed on the boat as an engineer. The foreign governments bought him up, it's said, for a hundred thousand dollars, and he blew her up by connecting an electric battery with the torpedoes she was carrying."
"And were the crew killed?"
"To a man. Gabretti had just time enough to get into a steam launch when the Holland sailed skyward. The steam launch was followed by the cruiser Massachusetts, but escaped in the darkness, and it is surmised that the Italian went on board one of the foreign warships cruising around the Atlantic Ocean."
This news, startling as it was, was true.