th the telescope showed to the signal men, who had
established a new station on the Jersey highlands, that these mysterious
spheres were balloons; and that the ships were about to dispatch them,
was evident from the fact that small pilot-balloons were soon sent up.
These last were wafted directly toward the city.

What possible object could the Spanish war-vessels have in this, was a
question asked by every one, as soon as the intelligence became known.

The balloon which rose from the "Numancia" had a car attached, but there
was clearly no one in it. Therefore the balloons were not to be used for
purposes of observation.

The people in New York saw the balloons as they successively rose from
the four vessels, and wonderingly watched their progress.

They saw the first of them gently sail toward the city until about over
the Roman Catholic Cathedral on Fifth Avenue. Then a dark object seemed
to fall from the car, the lightened balloon shot upward, the object
struck the roof of the cathedral there was a fearful explosion, a
trembling of the earth as if an angry volcano were beneath, and the
crash of falling buildings followed.

Through the great clouds of dust and smoke it could be seen that not
only was the cathedral shattered, but that the walls of every building
adjacent to the square on which it stood were down.

_The Spaniards were dropping nitro-glycerine bombs into the city from
the balloons_. They knew how long it would take the breeze to waft the
air-ships over the built-up portion, and it was an easy matter to adjust
clock-work in the car to cause the dropping of the torpedo at about the
proper time.

Accuracy was not needed. A shell, filled with fifty or a hundred pounds
of dynamite or nitro-glycerine, would be sure to do terrible damage
anywhere within a radius of three miles around Madison Square.

A second balloon dropped its charge into the receiving reservoir in
Central Park, luckily doing no damage, but throwing up a tremendous jet
of water. The third and fourth balloons let fall their dejectiles, the
one among the tenements near Tompkins Square destroying an entire block
of houses simultaneously; the other on High Bridge, completely
shattering that structure, and so breaking the aqueduct through which
the city obtains its water supply.

The Spanish admiral now ceased firing voluntarily and sent a message by
flag-of-truce announcing his intention to continue the throwing of
balloon torpedoes in