Here was the culmination of the knavish trickery of these conscienceless pirates who had attacked the port. A torpedo had been exploded in the harbour, an unfinished fort had been mined and blown up, and all this had been done to frighten him--a British soldier--in command of a strong fort well garrisoned and fully supplied with all the munitions of war. In the fear that his fort would be destroyed by a mystical bomb, he was expected to march to a place of safety with all his forces. If this should be done it would not be long before these crafty fellows would occupy the fort, and with its great guns turned inland, would hold the city at their mercy. There could be no greater insult to a soldier than to suppose that he could be gulled by a trick like this. No thought of actual danger entered the mind of the commandant. It had been easy enough to sink a great torpedo in the harbour, and the unguarded bluffs of Fort Pilcher offered every opportunity to the scoundrels who may have worked at their mines through the nights of several months. But a mine under the fort which he commanded was an impossibility; its guarded outposts prevented any such method of attack. At a bomb, or a dozen, or a hundred of the Syndicate's bombs he snapped his fingers. He could throw bombs as well. Nothing would please him better than that those ark-like ships in the offing should come near enough for an artillery fight. A few tons of solid shot and shell dropped on top of them might be a very conclusive answer to their impudent demands. The letter from the Syndicate, together with his own convictions on the subject, were communicated by the commandant to the military authorities of the port, and to the War Office of the Dominion. The news of what had happened that day had already been cabled across the Atlantic back to the United States, and all over the world; and the profound impression created by it was intensified when it became known what the Syndicate proposed to do the next day. Orders and advices from the British Admiralty and War Office sped across the ocean, and that night few of the leaders in government circles in England or Canada closed their eyes. The opinions of the commandant of the fort were received with but little favour by the military and naval authorities. Great preparations were already ordered to repel and crush this most audacious attack upon the port, but in the mean time it was highly desirable that the utmost caution and prudence should be observed. Three men-of-war had already been disabled by the novel and destructive machines of the enemy, and it had been ordered that for the present no more vessels of the British navy be allowed to approach the crabs of the Syndicate.