The rocket burst. For a minute it made all that part of the black country stand out as under lightning. “Crash!” said the ship. Over the bluejackets swept the shells, and burst.
“Crash!” said another ship.
“Apparently effective,” said the wireless again. “Shall send patrols forward.” And again it spoke, in half an hour: “Enemy driven back. Our patrols hold road. Barb wire entanglements completed. Scouts in. Report land clear, except for enemy cavalry in force inland out of range.”
The Transports
“Now!” said the cruiser’s wireless, speaking once more into the sea.
Silent, formless, black, four vast ships, long and twice as tall as the cruisers, came slowly in among them.
These were the transports, sealed that not a thread of light should shine from them to betray them to the thing that all the fleet dreaded more than anything else—the under-water lance of a submarine’s torpedo.
Under water the submarine is always blind, even when the brightest light of the noon-day sun shines vertically into the ocean. It can see only with its periscope eye above the surface.
At night the periscope cannot see. Then the submarine ceases to be useful as a submarine. It can act still; but only on the surface, like any other torpedo boat.
Two score destroyers, each of thirty knots, each armed with from four to ten 3-inch guns and rapid-firers, circled around the transports. Twice as swift as the surface-speed of the swiftest submarine, armed overwhelmingly, they could defy surface attack.[31]