He reduced the speed to thirty knots, rose for a moment till the conning-tower was just above the water, took his bearings, sank, called for full speed, and in four minutes the ram crashed into the _Alger's_ stern, carried away her sternpost and rudder, and smashed her propellers. The _Ithuriel_ passed on as if she had hit a log of wood and knocked it aside. A slight turn of the steering-wheel, and within four minutes the ram was buried in the vitals of the _Suchet_. Then the _Ithuriel_ reversed engines, the fore screw sucked the water away, and the cruiser slid off the ram as she might have done off a rock. As she went down, the _Ithuriel_ rose to the surface. The third cruiser, the _Davout_, was half a mile away. She had changed her course and was evidently making frantic efforts to get back to sea. "Going to warn the fleet, are you, my friend?" said Erskine, between his teeth. "Not if I know it!" He asked for full speed again and the terror-stricken Frenchmen saw the monster, just visible on the surface of the water, flying towards them in the midst of a cloud of spray. A sheep might as well have tried to escape from a tiger. Many of the crew flung themselves overboard in the madness of despair. There was a shock and a grinding crash, and the ram bored its way twenty feet into the unarmoured quarter. Then the _Ithuriel's_ screws dragged her free, and the _Davout_ followed her sisters to the bottom of the Channel. CHAPTER XII HOW LONDON TOOK THE NEWS The awaking of England on the morning of the twenty-sixth of November was like the awaking of a man from a nightmare. Everyone who slept had gone to sleep with one word humming in his brain--war--and war at home, that was the terrible thought which robbed so many millions of eyes of sleep. But even those who slept did not do so for long. At a quarter to one a sub-editor ran into the room of the chief News Editor of the _Daily Telegraph_, without even the ceremony of a knock. "What on earth's the matter, Johnson?" exclaimed the editor. "Seen a ghost?" "Worse than that, sir. Read this!" said the sub-editor, in a shaking voice, throwing the slip down on the desk. "My God, what's this?" said the editor, as he ran his eye along the slip. "'Portsmouth bombarded from the air. Hillsea, Portsmouth, Gilkicker and Southsea Castle destroyed. Practically defenceless. Fleet Reserve Squadrons sailing.'" The words were hardly out of his mouth before another man came running in with a slip. "'_Jupiter_ and _Hannibal_ torpedoed by submarine. _Spartiate_ blown up by aerial torpedo.'" Then there came a gap, as though the men at the other end had heard of more news, then followed--"'_Mars_, _Prince George_, _Victorious_, all torpedoed. Cruisers escaped to sea. No news of _Ithuriel_, no torpedo attack up to present.'"