Olga Romanoff

by George Chetwynd Griffith

In orderly succession the hundred huge transports, each carrying from eight to ten thousand men, left the outer basin in two long lines in the rear of the fifty air-ships already in position.

A hundred submarine battleships took up their stations five hundred yards in advance of the first line of transports. Fifty of these sank to a depth of thirty feet, and shot two thousand yards ahead as soon as the whole flotilla was in motion, while the other fifty ran along the surface of the water with their conning-towers just showing above the waves, ready to sink in obedience to any signal that their commanders might receive from the air-ships, which commanded an immense range of vision over the waters.

To all appearance the enemy was content with the one terrible blow that had already been struck. The smooth, sunlit sea betrayed no trace of a hostile vessel, and as far as the glasses of those on board the air-ships could sweep the sky nothing but the blue atmosphere, flecked here and there with white, fleecy clouds, could be seen.

But the Moslem commanders were far from being deceived by these peaceful appearances. From Sultan Khalid, who was commanding the expedition in person, to the engineers who worked the transports, all knew that the invisible line of the Federation patrols had to be passed somewhere in the depths of the sea before the shores of Italy could be reached.

The speed of the three flotillas was limited to twenty-five miles an hour, in order that there might be no headlong running into danger, and the commander of each of the submerged battleships had orders to rise to the surface the instant that his tell-tale needle denoted the presence of an enemy, and signal the fact to the rest of the squadron. The transports were then to stop, and were not to resume their passage until the battleships had cleared the way for them. The first division was to engage the enemy, while the second was to remain on the surface ready to defend the transports in case of need.

For six hours the expedition proceeded on its way north-west by west from Alexandria without interruption. The intention was to pass about a hundred miles to the south of the Federation post at Candia, between which island and the Cape Spartivento the ocean patrol would most likely be met with.

Soon after twelve those on board the Sultan’s flagship detected half a dozen little points of light shining amidst the waves to the north-westward. They could be nothing else but the scout-ships of the patrol; and although they were nearly ten miles away, a couple of shells were discharged at them from the Al Borak’s bow gun, more as a warning to the Moslem flotilla than in the hope of doing any damage. Whether they did or not was never known, for before the explosion of the shells was seen in the water the points of light had vanished.

Signals were at once made from the flagship ordering the transports to stop, and the second division of battleships to stand by to protect them. A dozen remained on the surface of the water, running round and round the now stationary troopships in concentric circles. The others sank to varying depths, and scattered until the vague fluctuations of their needles showed that they were more than a thousand yards from each other and the transports.

As the first division had orders to keep more than two miles in advance as soon as an enemy was discovered, there would be no danger of ramming friend instead of foe. It ran on for seven miles after the main body stopped. It was moving in a single line, the vessels being at an equal distance apart, so that, with the exception of the two ships at the extremities of the line, the attraction of the steel hulls on the needles should be neutralised, and therefore only give indications of vessels ahead.

At the end of the seventh mile the tell-tales ceased their wavering motions and began to point steadily, in slightly varying directions, ahead. The moment they did so the engines were stopped and the flotilla rose to the surface of the water. Their commanders found themselves out of sight of the transports, but the Al Borak, attended by ten other air-ships, was floating about a thousand feet above them. From the flagship’s mainmast-head flew the signal—“Fleet eight miles to the rear. Enemy ahead. Sink and ram.”