d been considering the situation.
There was only one gun on the Adamant which could be brought to bear
upon Crab K, and it would be the part of wisdom to interfere with the
persistent use of this gun. Accordingly the bow of the repeller was
brought to bear upon the Adamant, and her motor gun was aimed at the
boom from which the cannon was suspended.

The projectile with which the cannon was loaded was not an
instantaneous motor-bomb. It was simply a heavy solid shot, driven by
an instantaneous motor attachment, and was thus impelled by the same
power and in the same manner as the motor-bombs. The instantaneous
motor-power had not yet been used at so great a distance as that
between the repeller and the Adamant, and the occasion was one of
intense interest to the small body of scientific men having charge of
the aiming and firing.

The calculations of the distance, of the necessary elevation and
direction, and of the degree of motor-power required, were made with
careful exactness, and when the proper instant arrived the button was
touched, and the shot with which the cannon was charged was
instantaneously removed to a point in the ocean about a mile beyond the
Adamant, accompanied by a large portion of the heavy boom at which the
gun had been aimed.

The cannon which had been suspended from the end of this boom fell into
the sea, and would have crashed down upon the roof of Crab K, had not
that vessel, in obedience to a signal from the repeller, loosened its
hold upon the Adamant and retired a short distance astern. Material
injury might not have resulted from the fall of this great mass of
metal upon the crab, but it was considered prudent not to take useless
risks.

The officers of the Adamant were greatly surprised and chagrined by the
fall of their gun, with which they had expected ultimately to pound in
the roof of the crab. No damage had been done to the vessel except the
removal of a portion of the boom, with some of the chains and blocks
attached, and no one on board the British ship imagined for a moment
that this injury had been occasioned by the distant repeller. It was
supposed that the constant firing of the cannon had cracked the boom,
and that it had suddenly snapped.

Even if there had been on board the Adamant the means for rigging up
another arrangement of the kind for perpendicular artillery practice,
it would have required a long time to get it into working order, and
the director of Rep