Fortunately, my maimed hand, which I kept in a sling and made the most of, sufficed to account for my altered appearance. But for that and my bearing towards Lilian, Philip might have suspected. Then he found me so entirely free from anything like pique or anger towards himself, that he could not imagine the change he observed to be occasioned by any fault of his own. I had indeed nothing to dissemble in the way of anger. In my moments of deepest misery, it was given me to see that there had been no intended disloyalty to me. Philip's love for Lilian and her love for him were simply the natural consequence of two so well fitted for each other being thrown together intimately as they had been. I am writing from a distance of time, and of course in a calmer frame of mind than I was in at the moment of the trial; but I know that my thoughts all tended to exonerate them from the first.
None knew better than did I how completely free Lilian was from anything in the way of trying to attract, even as much as girls may honestly do. Knowing what I did—reading both their hearts—it was very precious to me to see their truth and fealty to the right. I knew that if they once perceived my suffering, nothing would induce them to accept happiness that way. I must keep my nerves steady! As much as I was able to compass that first day was to puzzle them all; but even that was a little step—it was something that they could see the change without discovering the cause. Quite enough to begin with.
[TORPEDOES AND INFERNAL MACHINES.]
On Easter Monday last, when several thousands of persons were holiday-making in a public garden out north-westward of London, a loud bang startled the inmates of houses many miles from the spot in all directions—louder than any discharge of artillery, and comparable to a blowing-up on a tremendous scale. It proved on investigation to be due to the explosion of a cylinder no more than twenty-five inches in length by two inches in diameter, filled with one or other of those destructive compositions which chemistry has lately presented to us, and to which have been given the mysterious names of dynamite, lithofracteur, gun-cotton, nitro-glycerine, &c. How such a diabolical sausage got into such a place at such a time, and what the police authorities have had to say about it, we need not detail here; but the subject sets people thinking ugly thoughts about Torpedoes and Infernal Machines.
The French have had much to do with (so-called) infernal machines, which, under various forms, have been employed to assassinate successive sovereigns, but happily failed in the wicked attempt, though not without inflicting injuries on onlookers. In 1804, when Napoleon thought that he had England pretty nearly in his grasp, a catamaran expedition was fitted out by the English to act against him. This catamaran was an oblong water-proof box lined with lead; it contained fifteen hundred pounds of gunpowder, various inflammable substances, clockwork to produce an explosion at a given moment, and ballast to steady it. Being towed towards an enemy's ship and left for the tide to float it onward, it would cling to the ship by means of grappling-irons buoyed up with cork; and in a given number of minutes the clockwork acting on a trigger would explode the combustibles. Such at least was the theory; but the chances of failure were found to be too numerous and varied in practice. Some years after this, Colonel Colt, the inventor of the celebrated revolver, devoted a great deal of time to this subject of infernal machines, making many combinations which were useful as hints to later contrivers.
In 1809, when Lord Cochrane was engaged against the French in the Bay of Biscay, he employed a destroyer most formidable in character. He filled a number of empty puncheons with about fifty thousand pounds of powder; on the tops of these puncheons were placed three hundred and fifty explosive shells, with fuses, and upwards of two thousand hand grenades among and between them. The whole were bound and jammed together with cables, wedges, and sand, on board a small vessel called the Devastator. A fifteen minutes' time-fuse being ignited, the crew (Cochrane himself, a lieutenant, and four seamen) rowed away quickly in a boat. The infernal monster did not produce quite the kind of mischief intended; the explosion was one of the most tremendous ever heard; but the enemy's ships were rather too far away to be materially damaged, while Cochrane lost some of his gallant little crew by over-fatigue and drowning by tumultuous waves.
During the short war between England and the United States in 1812-13, many submarine boats were suggested and partially tried, but with no great result.
The Crimean War (1854-56) brought to the Admiralty a deluge of inventors and projectors, each armed with some new scheme of a 'diabolical' kind. The Earl of Dundonald (the Lord Cochrane of 1809) sounded the government concerning a plan which he had matured long before; but there was hesitation in the matter; and the public learned little more than that the scheme related to a kind of fire-ship. Captain Warner's 'long range' was another crotchet, by which an enemy's vessel was to be destroyed at an immense distance by something being hurled against it; this something, whatever it may have been, did not find favour with the government. Then there was a talk also about Captain Disney's war-projectile, consisting of a metal cylinder having a bursting charge at one end, and at the other a highly combustible liquid; the liquid, when exposed to the air, set fire to almost everything with which it came in contact. This pleasant kind of plaything was to be propelled against ships, buildings, or masses of troops. Captain Disney had another mode of employing what he frankly called his 'infernal fluid,' which would 'cause blindness for several hours to all troops coming within a quarter of a mile of it.' The real nature of the liquid was his peculiar secret, which, so far as we are aware, the government did not think proper to purchase.
While discoverers and inventors were directing their attention to these intentionally destructive contrivances, the principal governments were cautiously testing some of them as opportunity offered. The Russians studded the Baltic with submerged torpedoes in 1854-55; iron cases containing combustibles, sulphuric acid, and chlorate of potash, so placed that a sudden concussion would make the whole explode. Very few British ships were really hit by them; but a good deal of uneasiness was felt by the crews of Admiral Sir Charles Napier's fleet, who would much rather have encountered an open enemy than a concealed submarine foe, the whereabouts of which could not be determined beforehand. In 1866 the Austrians in their brief war with Italy used torpedoes in which gun-cotton was fired off by an electric current. During the American Civil War, 1861 to 1865, nearly forty vessels were destroyed by torpedoes. (We may here mention that this name, first given to these contrivances by the Americans, was derived from one designation of the torpedo or electrical fish.) Three-fourths of the destruction was wrought by the Confederates against Federal vessels, but the remainder blew up or disabled the Confederates' own ships. The torpedoes employed were of various kinds and sizes, some exploding by mechanical concussion, some by chemical action, some by electric discharge. One of them was a complete submarine boat, which could be lowered to several feet below the surface of the water, and there propelled with hand-paddles at the rate of four miles an hour, by men shut up in a water-tight compartment, and provided with half an hour's compressed fresh air. This submarine boat dragged a floating torpedo, allowed it to come under the bottom of an enemy's ship, paddled away to a safe distance, and then fired the torpedo by an electric fuse. Such at least was the theory; but it proved to be a case of the engineer 'hoist by his own petard;' for although the torpedo really did destroy a Federal ship, the submarine boat and its crew were never afterwards seen or heard of.[A]