Sometimes fleets of canoes emerged from groves of palms or were launched from placid lagoons, while their crews paddled madly in the vain attempt to keep pace with the airship. And so as to encourage them, and because there was no danger of colliding with high ground, Joe set the ship at a lower altitude, till she was but a hundred feet above the water.
But such close acquaintance with this strange monster was too much for the nerves of the natives. It had been very well for them to discharge arrows at her when a thousand feet up. But now, when her vast proportions were more apparent, they took fright, and without a single exception bolted for cover, many of the passengers in the dug-outs diving overboard and swimming beneath water.
"Not that it'd help 'em much," the Major remarked. "With a rifle one could pick every one of them off as he came to the surface to breathe. Look! Did ever you see such clear water?"
It was positively fascinating to gaze downward and watch fish darting here and there, to follow the agonized movements of the natives who had taken to the water. For at that elevation the bed of the ocean was laid out like a map, a beautiful golden map, crossed by dull-red bands of coral often enough, marked by upheavals of rock in some places, and once, close to a rocky headland, showing on the sand at its foot the outline of a lost vessel.
"What a ship for treasure hunting!" cried the Commander. "No need to sound and dredge and send divers down in order to discover a wreck. There it would lie, beneath one's eyes, and one could set to work immediately. Joe, tell us like a good fellow, how far can a man see into other waters?"
"A hundred feet, sometimes more. In the Yellow Sea not nearly as much. But let us take the English Channel. I have carried out experiments there, and have detected the presence of a wreck in quite deep water. As to a submarine, from a ship such as this is one could drop a heavy mine over a submerged vessel without difficulty and without much danger to oneself."
"So that the use of submarines will become limited once such ships as this are built in numbers," ventured the Major.
"Exactly—or, rather, the risks to the crews of submarines will become even greater."
"Which leads one to ask where all this modern invention will end? As applied to engines of destruction, it has provided means whereby men may be massacred by the hundred; for modern guns and modern shell are capable of terrible destruction at distances never dreamed of but fifty years ago. Ships may be caused to founder not only by the direct gunfire of an opponent, or by torpedoes launched at her, but by the aid of submarines, the presence of which may not have been suspected. Add the modern rifle, with its high-muzzle velocity and consequent flat trajectory, and its vastly increased range, whereby troops may be slain at a distance of two miles from the firing point. Then, with wireless apparatus to enable one general to co-ordinate his movements with another, aeroplanes to spy out the land and report the presence of unsuspected troops, and lastly, airships such as this one, capable of almost anything—why, sir, where are we coming to?"