The Torpedo.
By Katharine Drayton Mayrant Simons, Jr.
Death, our mother, gave us her three gray gifts from the sea—
(Cherish your birthright, Brothers!)—speed, cunning, and certainty.
And mailèd Mars, he blest us—but his blessing was most to me!
For the swift gun sometimes falters, sparing the foe afar,
And the hid mine wastes destruction on the drag's decoying spar,
But I am the wrath of the Furies' path—of the war god's avatar!
Mine is the brain of thinking steel man made to match his own,