There was nothing in front of the Narragansett defenses that eyes could see or ears could hear. Nothing—and then, far out, it was as if a sea-monster had arisen in dying torment, and lashed, and spouted and screamed. Before the riven column of water could fall, there came muffled, thundering explosion under water—one, two, three!
The defenses split the fog with fire. Their mine-protecting batteries had been trained over the fields long since. There was no need for aim. Instantly they swept the hidden sea with shells that would clear twenty acres of water.
Again there was silence and blindness—the unearthly silence of the Atlantic sea-fog. It lay for half an hour, as if there were no such thing as war in the world.
Then once more came the roar and the crash, followed by its submarine echoes. Once more the land-guns raved, firing blind.
Fighting Mines with Mines
The enemy was counter-mining. Instead of sweeping, his vessels were dropping mines of their own in the fields, and then, backing off to avoid the fire from the batteries if they could, they exploded them by electric contact, to blow up the American mines with the shock.
Not all the mine-sweepers escaped mines or guns. But there were vessels to spare, and lives to spare. All night the counter-mining went on, and all night the American guns fired into the vapor and the darkness.
The sun arose invisibly. But it climbed, and when it had lifted all its disk above the rim of sea, it showed through the mist as a pale illumination. It was “burning off” the fog.
“It will be clear enough in an hour,” said the executive officer of a battleship under Block Island. The vessel’s wireless began to speak.
On one of the mother-ships men brought out and assembled an armored biplane. Its two fliers stowed range-finding apparatus, aerial telegraph, aneroids and charts in it. There were signal flags and light, brightly silvered balls. Men brought receptacles that contained bombs and adjusted them carefully in place. The fliers waited, watching the fog.