THE STOLEN SUBMARINE

Auckland Star, Volume XXXV, Issue 206, 29 August 1904, Page 6

THE STOLEN SUBMARINE

By G-BORG-E aRI^STTH.

BOOK lIL CHAPTER XI. HUNTED [JOWiV The reply from Petersburg and Port ,'rthur to Baron Ka?hain;.'s summons i> evacuate Port Arthur, Harbin, and j Yladivostoek was twofold. First came j flat refusal to do anything of the j s-ort as long as a Russian ship floated ! < r a Russian soldier v.ns nb'.e to carry | i<. rifle; and hard upon this came the v~ry much more p.. f tic.L 1 intimation 1 hat a Russian submarine bad destroyed the Japanese sqnadrun in Cheuiulyho, and would ta!.e t , . c Mikado's fleet : hip by ship and i 1 .■>: -v.v ii f?.i in de- ' il. This news v.., - received at Tokio . .id Nagasaki the iljy before Hillyer , cturned to the lattsi port fvc;u Yladi- ■ oatoek. '" That is rather .-■_ rious news, Mr > -illyer,"' said the Haron. alter Mark •:td rendered his account of his own doings, and the Minister had told him 'he news from Chemulpho. "This must 1.2 the second time that this vessel has scaped you. Unfortunately it does not s"em very likely that she can be found unless she happens to make one of her attacks at some place where your vessel happens to be at the time, and that does not seem a very likely coincidence. At the same iime, I am afraid that there is no limit to the amount of damage that she can do us, at any rate by eea." "As far as I can see, your Excellency," replied Hillyer, " there is only f.'ie thing to do, and that is patrol the c»ast by air and undersea between the •Torean channel and this port until we Mid her. She is perfectly certain to <!o one of two things, either make a i ish fqr the port or try and get northward through the strait. Possibly, she i! ay have a try for Ma-san-pho or Fu- ; an, but under any circumstances she T.nuot travel from Chemulpho to this jMirt or Ma-san-pho unless she is towed." "Ah, yes," said the Minister, "that proved by the papers which came inu> our hand's, thanks to your wonderful capture of tbe Donovod, but it seems to mc that our greatest danger lies in the vossibility of her being towed to withu striking distance and then making a rush for it." " I think I can guard against any:!ring of that sort, your Excellency, I retain anything in the nature of a surprise, provided you will keep all your vessels closely confined to poit and keep ihe aerial squadron, with the exception of my own vessel, patrolling the coast :;nd Strait. I will leave the Zanita here, as it is no use exposing her to any risk, and start out at once with the Mermaid nnd airship to see if I can't run this gootl lady to carth —or mud, us the case may be." He laughed rather grimly as he said this, and the Minister replied, >vith a tittle shrug of his shoulders: " Ah, yes, that is the worst of this new warfare which you have helped to bring into vogue. There is no mercy in it. for you have made surrender impossible." "I am not altogether sure of that, your Excellency. My idea is to make the game of war so costly that no one will care to fight, and 1 do not altogether despair of bringing this good lady and her submarine into port before she has done very much more damage." " Ah," said the Minister, "if you conld do that, Mr Hillyer, there is nothing that the Eniperor and his people would not give you in return for it." " I shall ask my own reward, your Excellency, when the time comes/ replied I liilyer, with a sudden change of man- j uer which the baron did not ut the time r'ully understand, " and if I am in a po- | sition to ask for it, 1 t.'unk it will be granted." " And if I am not trespassing on your confidence, sir," said the Minister, '" you svonld honour mc highly \s y<, u would allow mc to inquire the nature of the reward you desire. It is possible that I raay be of some service to you when you are about to niulie your request to His Majesty." " I shall aslc for peace, your Excellency," replied Hillyer, " and for the life of a certain Russian oiud.il, if he luippens to be alive'at the time. This must be the last war fought on land or -sea or in the air, and thai- i≤ why I refuse to tell even His Majesty himself the secret of the motive power which has given mc, and therefore, for the time being. Japan, the cunuiiand of the air. I will cither capture, or sink this vessel, and I will make it impossible far Russia to invade either Korea or Japan, and I shall be obliged if, during my absence, you will lay that proposition before His Majesty."' "And the alternative , ;" asked the Minister with v lift of his eyelids. " The alternative, your Excellency, "vrould be a dissolution of 1 he alliance between us. - ' replied Hillyor. gravely. "Tbe Empire of tbe Air und that of the Rising Sun would no longer be alKed." a I understand you," replied Baron Kashama., xnukingf one of tho.-e motions which bad distirguished thu ceremonious politeness of the old days. "It is • good thing that we who have been the last to enter the battlefields of the nations should, by the help of a son cf the greatest of the sea Powers, be the Irst to proclaim peace on earth." " And enforce it," added Hillyer, rather bitterly. "It has been proclaimed long enough, and by no one more loudly than Holy Russia herself. It v/ill be interesting to see what she has to say to the ultimatum which 1 hope to personally deliver at Petersburg before very long." That night the Marian and the Mermaid renewed their supplies of motive power, provisioos, and ammunition, and tie other five vessel? were got ready to take the air. All fhe Japanese war- ■ Mps were strictly confined to the harjour3. and all the entrances were promoted by mine 3 and boi.ms from v.liich L-etworke of chains hung down to the uja-bed. A complete change had thiw come over the face of the war. The situation would have been somewhat ludicrous had 11 not been charged with such tre-Boe-aaoua possibilities. Here were two

Aatirc? of "The Angel oi , the Revelation," "Brothers of Vote, Chain," "Tin White Witch of HayisUr," "Tbe World Hasten," etc.

great nations who had already 'begun what was expixvted to be the most determined and Woody fight of modern litnes. Their armies had taken the field, and their fleets had been at deathgrips on the water only a few days ago; and yet here they were with fleets imprisoned and armies paralysed, not dariivg to approach each other. After the events at New-chwang, Harbin, and Vladivostock, not only did the Russian land communications cease 1.0 operate, but there was a feeling of un easiness among the officers, and one nat unlike panic among the soldiers, whose superstitious terrors had been thoroughly aroused, which had already resulted in moral damage infinitely greater than even the physical destruction wroujii; by the attack of the airships. It has been proved again and again in military experience that there is nothing so demoralising to au army which has already taken the field as inaction and waiting for the unexpected. It was now clearly evident that these new and terrible adversaries which 'had so suddenly appeared on the scene held the Russian lines of communication a. their mercy. The Siberian Railway, never very efficient, would .be. almost worse than useless if its bridges could be blown up and its great junctions anu termini laid in ruins by an enemy who could not be struck 'back and whose movements could not be traced. Then, too, the cold weather was at an end, and the frozen wildernesses ot Manchuria were becoming vast wastes of mud and black oozy soil, which, save for the railway and the few military roads, were impassable for artillery or heavy wheeled transport. Thousands of men were coming eastward every day, hundreds of tons of food and stores were found to exist only on paper, disease was already decimating the halfstarved troops, disgusted and discouraged by the apparent impossibility of reaching th f enemy, and terrified by the probability of the appearance of these strange monsters of the air ■which could rain fire and death upon their camps as though they carried the very lightnings of heaven. The position of the Japanese land forces, both in Japan and Korea, was, of course, very much better, thanks to the magnificent organisation of the transport and commissariat and the protection afforded 'by the airships. But it was none the less, like the Russian)* one of paralysis. Until the Mermaid had hunted down, and either de- I stroyed or captured the Ifussian submarine, it was impossible to make any advance, since it would have been madness for transports laden with men and munitions of war to put to sea while thi3 invisible enemy could sink them at a stroke; and so the soldiers and the sailors of the Mikado found themselves just a.* powerless to get at the Russians as the ilussians were to get at them. Such .was the situation in the East which had been so suddenly brought about by the transfer of the fighting to the underseas and the upper air, and there were not wanting those in Japan who were asking themselves very anxiously what would come to pass it the duel between the Russian submarine and the Mermaid should result in favour of the former. One luckily-placed torpedo, and the command of the eea would pass from Japan to Russia, and all that had been achieved so far would be un done in a moment. No one was more fully aware of the extreme danger of the task which he had undertaken than Mark Hillyer himself was. In submarine fighting, just as in aerial warfare, there is hardly any alternative possible save victory or de struction. The crippled airship will come to the ground like a bird with a broken wing, and dash herself and her crew to pieces; the submarine whose plates are torn by ram or torpede sink.* 1 into the depths never to rise again, a? the terrible tragedy of peace in Spit head waters had proved all too conclusive ly. In calculating the chances, he found that he had three points in his favour I'irat came the airship, which he hi'l handed over for the present to Captain Merkett, and with which the .submarine ■vould be connected by a telephone wire. It was certain that L'Anonyme had to be towed whenever she had to cover any considerable -distance. That was clear, not only from the methods her commander had found it necessary to employ in getting out to the Far East, hut also from the papers captured on the Donovoi, and, thereCaptain Merkett would be able to warn him instantly of the presence of any suspicious vessel which might be towing L'Anonyme. Secondly, the Mermaid was able to act quite independently over an area of about 10,000 miles, thanks to the extreme condensation of the liquid gases from which she derived her motive power. Finally, from the slight knowledge which he already had about her engines he knew that he had an advantage of about ten knots over the Russian. Still. he fully recognised the importance of the unexpected, and he knew that a touch of the ram or the striking of a torpedo would bring the Mermaid's career to a swift and final conclusion. For these and other reasons, the night before he left Nagasaki, he executed a will in duplicate in which he left the whole of his own fortune, amounting to over a million sterling, "to Miss Marian Lonsdale absolutely," and these he left in the charge of Baron Kashama, addressed to his father, to be sent to Europe at the first opportunity. The Marian took the air, and the Mermaid sank below the waters of Nagasaki Bay at day-break on the following mil ruing. The airship, flying at a speed oi -10 miles an hour, headed away to the eastward, south of the Goto Islands, and then northward in the direction of Port Hamilton. If the submarine was coming southward from Chemulpho, she would naturally be towed down well out to sea and out of sight of land, then work her way by night among the islands which crowd the Korean Struits, and get as near to Nagasaki as possible before making her final rush. It was, therefore, Hillyer's object to catch her if possible in the open sea between Quelpaert Island and the Gotos, where plenty of sea-r»om would give Mm the advantage of his i superior speed. Meanwhile the Sokold, with the Sea Snake in tow, was steaming down the Yellow Sea in the direction of Quelpaert Island., keeping a very wary lookout, not only for hostile warships, but also for any merchant steamers which might recognise her and run into a Japanese port with the newe of her whereabouts.