Erskine pressed the top button on the right-hand side three times. The smokeless, nameless guns spoke again, and again the three flashes of blue-green flame broke out on the Frenchman's decks.
"Good enough," said Erskine, taking the transmitter down from the hooks again. "Now, Mr Lennard, just come for'ard and watch."
Lennard crept up beside him and took the glasses.
"Down guns—full speed ahead—going to ram," said Erskine, quietly, into the telephone.
To his utter astonishment, Lennard saw the three big guns sink down under the deck and the steel hoods move forward and cover the emplacements. The floor of the conning-tower jumped under his feet again and the huge shape of the French cruiser seemed to rush towards him. There was a roar of artillery, a thunder of 6.4 guns, a crash of bursting shells, a shudder and a shock, and the fifty-ton ram of the Ithuriel hit her forward of the conning-tower and went through the two-inch armour belt as a knife would go through a piece of paper. The big cruiser stopped as an animal on land does, struck by a bullet in its vitals, or a whale when the lance is driven home. Half her officers and men were lying about the decks asphyxiated by Lennard's shells. The after barbette swung round, and at the same moment, or perhaps half a minute before, Erskine touched two other buttons in rapid succession. The Dupleix lurched down on the starboard side, the two big guns went off and hit the water. Erskine touched another button, and the Ithuriel ran back from her victim. A minute later the French cruiser heeled over and sank.
"Good God, how did you do that?" said Lennard, looking round at him with eyes rather more wide open than usual.
"That's the effect of the suction screw," replied Erskine. "I got the idea from the Russian ice-breaker, the Yermack. The old idea was just main strength and stupidity, charge the ice and break through if you could. The better idea was to suck the water away from under the ice and go over it—that's what we've done. I rammed that chap, pulled the water away from under him, and, of course, he's gone down."
He gave the wheel a quarter-turn to starboard, took down the transmitter and said: "Full speed again—in two minutes, three quarters and then half."
"But surely," exclaimed Lennard, "you can do something to help those poor fellows. Are you going to leave them all to drown?"
"I have no orders, except to sink and destroy," replied Erskine between his teeth. "You must remember that this is a war of one country against a continent, and of one fleet against four. Ah, there's another! A third-class cruiser—I think I know her, she's the old Leger—they must have thought they had an easy job of it if they sent her here. Low free board, not worth shooting at. We'll go over her. No armour—what idiots they are to put a thing like that into the fighting line!"