still too
far off for her light gun to do any damage, and the projectile fell
spent into the sea nearly five hundred yards short.

Immediately after this came a third shell from the French cruiser,
and this, by an unlucky chance, struck the forecastle of the yacht,
burst, and tore away several feet of the bulwarks, and, worse than
all, killed four of her crew instantly.

"First blood!" said Tremayne to himself through his clenched teeth.
"That shall be an unlucky shot for you, my friend, if we reach the
air-ship before you sink us."

Meanwhile the two cruisers, each approaching the other at a speed of
more than twenty miles an hour, had got within shot. A puff of smoke
spurted out from the side of the latest comer. The well-aimed
projectile passed fifty yards astern of the _Lurline_, and struck the
advancing torpedo-boat square on the bow.

The next instant it was plainly apparent that there was nothing more
to be feared from her. The solid shot had passed clean through her
two sides. Her nose went down and her stern came up. Then bang went
another gun from the British cruiser. This time the messenger of
death was a shell. It struck the inclined deck amidships, there was a
flash of flame, a cloud of steam rose up from her bursting boilers,
and then she broke in two and vanished beneath the smooth-rolling
waves.

Two minutes later the duel began in deadly earnest. The tricolor ran
up to the masthead of the French cruiser, and jets of mingled smoke
and flame spurted one after the other from her sides, and shells
began bursting in quick succession round the rapidly-advancing
Englishman. Evidently the Frenchman, with his remaining torpedo-boat,
thought himself a good match for the British cruiser, for he showed
no disposition to shirk the combat, despite the fact that he was so
near to the cruising ground of a powerful squadron.

As the two cruisers approached each other, the fire from their heavy
guns was supplemented by that of their light quick-firing armament,
until each of them became a floating volcano, vomiting continuous
jets of smoke and flame, and hurling showers of shot and shell across
the rapidly-lessening space between them.

The din of the hideous concert became little short of appalling, even
to the most hardened nerves. The continuous deep booming of the heavy
guns, as they belched forth their three-hundred-pound projectiles,
mingled with the sharp ringing reports of the thirty and forty pound
qu