In this manner every ship of the first division had been destroyed within three minutes after it had made its first and last charge. Then the Federationists had risen to the surface for an instant to reconnoitre by means of the arrangement of mirrors previously described, and sinking again had worked their way back towards the transports, formed in a huge circle round them, and had sent torpedo after torpedo into their midst.
As soon as the flotilla had been thrown into confusion they had converged until they could communicate with each other by means of their submarine signals, and after that they had attacked the enemy singly. Ship after ship charged into the mêlée, did her work, and retired, if she escaped destruction, to give place to another.
Only twenty Federation ships had been engaged in each of the five battles, and of these forty in all had been destroyed, a loss utterly disproportionate to the gigantic damage that had been done to the enemy.
Khalid the Magnificent divined intuitively that the disaster which had overwhelmed the expedition which he had commanded in person was only a portion of a result achieved by some elaborate and consummately-conceived scheme of defence which must have been simultaneously put into operation against his other expeditions. What had succeeded against his own might well have been expected to have succeeded against them.
He at once despatched four squadrons of ten air-ships each to Tripoli and Tunis, Algiers and Oran, with orders to collect all attainable information, and to return to Alexandria as soon after sunset as possible. Then he turned the prows of the remainder of his fleet towards his capital, and gave the signal for full speed ahead.
