The Great War Syndicate

by Frank R. Stockton

Subject to order or not, the Adamant did not lie passive. Every gun on board which could be sufficiently depressed, was made ready to fire upon the crabs should they attempt to get away. Four large boats, furnished with machine guns, grapnels, and with various appliances which might be brought into use on a steel-plated roof, were lowered from their davits, and immediately began firing upon the exposed portions of the crabs. Their machine guns were loaded with small shells, and if these penetrated under the horizontal plates of a crab, and through the heavy glass which was supposed to be in these interstices, the crew of the submerged craft would be soon destroyed.

The quick eye of the captain of the Adamant had observed through his glass, while the crabs were still at a considerable distance, their protruding air-pipes, and he had instructed the officers in charge of the boats to make an especial attack upon these. If the air-pipes of a crab could be rendered useless, the crew must inevitably be smothered.

But the brave captain did not know that the condensed-air chambers of the crabs would supply their inmates for an hour or more without recourse to the outer air, and that the air-pipes, furnished with valves at the top, were always withdrawn under water during action with an enemy. Nor did he know that the glass blocks under the armour-plates of the crabs, which were placed in rubber frames to protect them from concussion above, were also guarded by steel netting from injury by small balls.

Valiantly the boats beset the crabs, keeping up a constant fusillade, and endeavouring to throw grapnels over them. If one of these should catch under an overlapping armour-plate it could be connected with the steam windlass of the Adamant, and a plate might be ripped off or a crab overturned.

But the crabs proved to be much more lively fish than their enemies had supposed. Turning, as if on a pivot, and darting from side to side, they seemed to be playing with the boats, and not trying to get away from them. The spring armour of Crab K interfered somewhat with its movements, and also put it in danger from attacks by grapnels, and it therefore left most of the work to its consort.

Crab J, after darting swiftly in and out among her antagonists for some time, suddenly made a turn, and dashing at one of the boats, ran under it, and raising it on its glistening back, rolled it, bottom upward, into the sea. In a moment the crew of the boat were swimming for their lives. They were quickly picked up by two of the other boats, which then deemed it prudent to return to the ship.

But the second officer of the Adamant, who commanded the fourth boat, did not give up the fight. Having noted the spring armour of Crab K, he believed that if he could get a grapnel between its steel ribs he yet might capture the sea-monster. For some minutes Crab K contented itself with eluding him; but, tired of this, it turned, and raising its huge nippers almost out of the water, it seized the bow of the boat, and gave it a gentle crunch, after which it released its hold and retired. The boat, leaking rapidly through two ragged holes, was rowed back to the ship, which it reached half full of water.

The great battle-ship, totally bereft of the power of moving herself, was now rolling in the trough of the sea, and a signal came from the repeller for Crab K to make fast to her and put her head to the wind. This was quickly done, the crab attaching itself to the stern-post of the Adamant by a pair of towing nippers. These were projected from the stern of the crab, and were so constructed that the larger vessel did not communicate all its motion to the smaller one, and could not run down upon it.

As soon as the Adamant was brought up with her head to the wind she opened fire upon the repeller. The latter vessel could easily have sailed out of the range of a motionless enemy, but her orders forbade this. Her director had been instructed by the Syndicate to expose his vessel to the fire of the Adamant's heavy guns. Accordingly the repeller steamed nearer, and turned her broadside toward the British ship.

Scarcely had this been done when the two great bow guns of the Adamant shook the air with tremendous roars, each hurling over the sea nearly a ton of steel. One of these great shot passed over the repeller, but the other struck her armoured side fairly amidship. There was a crash and scream of creaking steel, and Repeller No. 7 rolled over to windward as if she had been struck by a heavy sea. In a moment she righted and shot ahead, and, turning, presented her port side to the enemy. Instant examination of the armour on her other side showed that the two banks of springs were uninjured, and that not an air-buffer had exploded or failed to spring back to its normal length.