With salvos of cannon and music of bands, the gaily-decked fleet sped out to sea. Through the narrow channel they steamed, past Point Loma, with brow of purple and feet of foam. When they reached the open sea, they spread out in line abreast, the _Siva_ taking a position on the extreme north, and slackening her speed a little so as to accommodate it to that of her companions. Arrived at the scene of the proposed experiment, sixteen miles west of San Diego bar, the speed of all the vessels was slackened so as to afford only steerage way, and the _Esmeralda_ was signaled to leave her position next the _Siva_, and steam away at full speed to the north. Simultaneously with this order, the hatches on the _Siva_ were opened, chains and ropes tightened, the vast power of the engines applied, and the _Stromboli_, with her crew and cargo in place, was lifted from the hold of the _Siva_, swung over the side, and launched in the ocean. It was four minutes from the time the whistle sounded until the launch of the _Stromboli_, and in the meantime the _Esmeralda_ steamed quite one mile away. The _Siva_ was a few hundred yards ahead of the other vessels, and the _Stromboli_ was launched form her port side, so that the launch was witnessed by those who thronged the starboard side of the other vessels. The entire fleet then resumed its former rate of speed, and the distance between it and the _Esmeralda_ was soon placed at one mile, at which it was subsequently maintained. The _Stromboli_ glided away for a minute on the surface of the sea, and then, admitting water to the space between her steel shells, rapidly sank to a depth of forty feet. The _Esmeralda_ was still at full speed, and making twenty knots an hour, but the _Stromboli_ was pushing her way under the sea, propelled by her powerful electric engines, at the rate of twenty-five knots an hour, and in fifteen minutes had overtaken the doomed vessel, and was preparing to make fast the torpedo which should destroy her. One pair of great steel claws, holding a chain basket containing five hundred pounds of potentite set by clockwork to explode in sixty minutes, was, by the power of the electric engine, raised above the cigar-shaped steel monster gliding through the cool, quiet waters, and driven through the plates of the _Esmeralda_, just forward of the stern of that vessel. A second was placed amidship, and a third near the bow.