“Thomas Roch!” Engineer Serko cries, and points to the cruiser.
The latter is steaming slowly towards the northwestern point of the island and is between four and five miles off.
Roch nods assent, and waves them back from the trestle.
Ker Karraje, Captain Spade and the others draw back about fifty paces.
Thomas Roch then takes the stopper from the phial which he holds in his right hand, and successively pours into a hole in the rear-end of each engine a few drops of the liquid, which mixes with the fusing matter.
Forty-five seconds elapse—the time necessary for the combination to be effected—forty-five seconds during which it seems to me that my heart ceases to beat.
A frightful whistling is then heard, and the three engines tear through the air, describing a prolonged curve at a height of three hundred feet, and pass the cruiser.
Have they missed it? Is the danger over?
No! the engines, after the manner of Artillery Captain Chapel’s discoid projectile, return towards the doomed vessel like an Australian boomerang.
The next instant the air is shaken with a violence comparable to that which would be caused by the explosion of a magazine of melinite or dynamite, Back Cup Island trembles to its very foundations.