The next instant there was a terrific concussion, and one of the big shells went screaming toward the cutter: but she was rising so fast that the projectile passed under her, and plunged foaming into the sea a mile away.
"More elevation, sir," cried the Executive Officer.
"Impossible!" answered Lieutenant Cortis: "we're too close to her, and the angle is too high."
"Look at her now!" exclaimed the Captain. "She's rushing toward us!"
"Sailing against the wind with a balloon!" cried Commander Bilton-Brooks.
The shark-bodied cutter, with her fin-keel below and her balloon above, was indeed now moving toward a position above the cruiser.
"Call away the riflemen!" cried the Captain.
The red-coated marines assembled on the superstructures, and began a rapid fire at the balloon, hoping to burst it. But their bullets simply glanced off the fine steel netting with which it was protected. Now the head of the young man once again appeared above the bulwarks of the strange machine, and he took a rapid glance at the British ship. The next instant a small port in the cutter's side opened, and from it dropped a glass globe about half the size of a football. The globe fell upon the forward deck of the cruiser. There was an appalling explosion, and the whole forecastle of the Ajax III. became a hopeless wreck. Another globe was hurled with such fatal accuracy that it fell down one of the smoke-stacks of the now helpless vessel. There was a roar as of thunder away down in her engine-room, and pale-faced men poured on deck.
"We're sinking! The ship's bottom is blown out!" they cried. There was a wild rush to lower away the boats. A few minutes later the Ajax III. sank out of sight under the fine waters of the Caribbean Sea, and Harry Borden, with his balloon stowed and his canvas spread again, was sailing away with a few survivors of the ill-fated cruiser in his strange invention in search of more British cruisers. A month later the war was over.