Everywhere the enemy were being cut to pieces.
Seeing the trap into which their vessels had fallen above the ruined bridges, and feeling that they had caused sufficient damage, they turned, and with their guns still belching forth flame, steamed at half speed back again towards the sea.
But they were not allowed to escape so easily, for the mines recently laid by the Volunteers were now brought into vigorous play, and in the long reach of the river between High Walker and Wallsend no fewer than six more of the enemy's gun and torpedo boats had their bottoms blown out, and their crews torn limb from limb.
Flashed throughout the land, the news of the enemy's repulse, though gained at such enormous loss, excited a feeling of profound satisfaction.
The injury inflicted on the invaders had been terrible, and from that attack upon the Tyne they had been hurled reeling back the poorer by the loss of a whole fleet of torpedo and gun boats, one of the most effective arms of their squadrons, while the sea had closed over one of France's proudest battleships, the Neptune, and no fewer than four of her cruisers.
The surviving vessels, which retreated round the Black Middens and gained the open sea, all more or less had their engines crippled, and not half the men that had manned them escaped alive.
They had wrought incalculable damage, it is true, for part of Newcastle was burning, and the loss of life had been terrible; yet they were driven back by the Volunteers' desperately vigorous fire, and the lives of many thousands in Newcastle and Gateshead had thus been saved at the eleventh hour by British patriots.
Alas, it was a black day in England's history!
Was this to be a turning-point in the wave of disaster which had swept so suddenly upon our land?