A third was met by a storm of shells from the air-ships, which burst round her and under her just as she came to the surface, and blew her out of the water in fragments. Heedless of this, a fourth plunged fiercely through the foaming area of the explosion, and had wrecked two more Moslem vessels before a shell smashed her propeller and laid her helpless on the water. Two of the Moslems instantly backed out and rushed at her, tearing two great ragged holes in her side and sinking her instantly, only to be sunk themselves in turn by a fifth charge from below. Scarcely had this last foe disappeared in safety than a swarm of torpedoes, converging from all sides, encircled the remaining Moslem battleships. Some plunged beneath the waves to escape them, but these never reappeared. The remainder, torn and twisted and shattered by a series of explosions that flung the water mountains high all round them, sank like stones, and when the sea once more settled down, the grim work of death had been completed. The fate which had so swiftly overwhelmed the expedition that had set out from Alexandria had almost simultaneously befallen four other expeditions which had started at the same hour from Tripoli, Tunis, Algiers, and Oran. The one disaster had been an almost exact reproduction of the others. The same order, formation, and tactics had been observed in each of the five cases, and each of the five squadrons of transports and fleets of submarine battleships had been overwhelmed and completely destroyed by the same mysterious fate. Of five hundred transports and the same number of battleships which Sultan Khalid had possessed at sunrise on that fatal 16th of May not a single one remained by sundown, and of the more than three million souls who had manned the five fleets not one man survived. Of the strength or the losses of the enemy that had wrought this appalling and unheard-of destruction within such a brief space of time nothing could, in the nature of the case, be known by those who had seen only some of its effects from the decks of the air-ships which floated almost helplessly over the waves which were engulfing their naval consorts. The work of annihilation had for the most part been done in the dim and silent depths of the sea, and all that they knew was the number of those of their own comrades who had gone to battle and never returned. And yet to all practical intents and purposes these five stupendous blows which had simultaneously crushed the Moslem sea-power and half crippled the military strength of the Sultan had been struck by one hand. In other words, the victory of the Mediterranean was due to two inventions which had been made and perfected by Max Ernstein, who had been transferred from Kerguelen and appointed Admiral in Command of the whole Mediterranean forces of the Federation.