e motor-bomb did what was done. Before leaving the
English Channel the director of Repeller No. 11 had received
telegraphic advices from both Europe and America, indicating the
general drift of public opinion in regard to the recent sea-fight; and,
besides these, many English and continental papers had been brought to
him from the French coast.

From all these the director perceived that the cause of the Syndicate
had in a certain way suffered from the manner in which the battle in
the channel had been conducted. Every newspaper urged that if the
repeller carried guns capable of throwing the bombs which the Syndicate
professed to use, there was no reason why every ship in the British
fleet should not have been destroyed. But as the repeller had not
fired a single shot at the fleet, and as the battle had been fought
entirely by the crabs, there was every reason to believe that if there
were such things as motor-guns, their range was very short, not as
great as that of the ordinary dynamite cannon. The great risk run by
one of the crabs in order to disable a dynamite gun-boat seemed an
additional proof of this.

It was urged that the explosions in the water might have been produced
by torpedoes; that the torpedo-boat which had been destroyed was so
near the repeller that an ordinary shell was sufficient to accomplish
the damage that had been done.

To gainsay these assumptions was imperative on the Syndicate's forces.
To firmly establish the prestige of the instantaneous motor was the
object of the war. Crabs were of but temporary service. Any nation
could build vessels like them, and there were many means of destroying
them. The spring armour was a complete defence against ordinary
artillery, but it was not a defence against submarine torpedoes. The
claims of the Syndicate could be firmly based on nothing but the powers
of absolute annihilation possessed by the instantaneous motor-bomb.

About nine o'clock on the appointed morning, Repeller No. 11, much to
the surprise of the spectators on the high grounds with field-glasses
and telescopes, steamed away from Caerdaff. What this meant nobody
knew, but the naval military observers immediately suspected that the
Syndicate's vessel had concentrated attention upon Caerdaff in order to
go over to Ireland to do some sort of mischief there. It was presumed
that the crabs accompanied her, but as they were now at their fighting
depth it was impossible to see them at