Had the Italian Admiral been able to send a torpedo-boat or two after the fugitives they would no doubt soon have been overhauled, yet circumstances had prevented this and the Lola had consequently escaped.

In the night the British Mediterranean fleet, cruising down from Malta, had come into the roadstead, and at the signal from the flagship had maneuvered and dropped anchor, forming a long line of gigantic battleships, swift cruisers, torpedo-boat destroyers, torpedo-boats, despatch-boats, and other craft extending for several miles along the coast.

A few minor engagements in the North Sea, in which light cruisers and torpedo-boat destroyers were concerned, served only to deepen the mystery.

A WRECK During the first three months of the war the German cruiser Emden, operating principally in the Indian ocean, played havoc with British merchantmen, sinking over twenty vessels engaged in far Eastern commerce, besides a Russian cruiser and a French torpedo-boat.

In a sea battle off Zeebrugge, Holland, on January 23, fourteen German torpedo-boat destroyers, attempting to leave port, were attacked by a British flotilla and seven of them were reported sunk.

The approach areas were patrolled at the time, so far as numbers admitted, by patrol craft (trawlers, torpedo-boat destroyers, and sloops), and ships with specially valuable cargoes were given directions to proceed to a certain rendezvous on the outskirts of the area, there to be met by a destroyer or sloop, if one was available for the purpose.

The motor launches were employed for anti-submarine work, fitted with hydrophones, and worked in company with drifters and torpedo-boat destroyers, or in minesweeping in areas in which their light draught rendered it advantageous and safer to employ them instead of heavier draught vessels to locate minefields, and in the Dover area they were largely used to work smoke screens for operations on the Belgian coast.

[ships of war] man-of-war; destroyer; submarine; minesweeper; torpedo-boat, torpedo-destroyer; patrol torpedo boat, PT boat; torpedo- catcher, war castle, H.M.S.; battleship, battle wagon, dreadnought, line of battle ship, ship of the line; aircraft carrier, carrier.

It is true that the destroyer has been gradually converted into a larger torpedo-boat.

In the Straits of Dover, an hour or so out from Folkestone, we ran through a fleet of British warships guarding the narrow roadstead between France and England; and a torpedo-boat destroyer sidled up and took a look at us.

By them we were marched next day to the wharf and suddenly there translated into the upper ether by the German admiral and his thoughtful aid, who, on their way to the headquarters of the land forces across the strait, whirled us over in style in a torpedo-boat.

[Illustration: THE STEAM TURBINE-DRIVEN VELOX, OF THE BRITISH NAVY The fastest torpedo-boat destroyer.]

In England, about five years before the Arrow's achievement, a little torpedo-boat, scarcely bigger than a launch, set the whole world talking by travelling at the rate of thirty-nine and three-fourths miles an hour.

"A torpedo-boat is headed straight for us," cried the man at the port, and at the same moment came the call for general quarters.

As the men ran to their stations the word was passed from one to the other, "A Spanish torpedo-boat is headed for us.

The torpedo-boat flew the Stars and Stripes, but the heavy smoke concealed it, and the officers, perceiving the opportunities for testing the men, let it be believed that a boat belonging to the enemy was bearing down on them.

[Illustration: LAKE'S SUBMARINE TORPEDO-BOAT PROTECTOR

He is a kind of spy-destroyer performing in his sphere the same service that the torpedo-boat destroyer does in its domain.

It will be a trifling countershock to wing an aeroplane or so, or blow a torpedo-boat out of the water.

But to-day there is something more: there is a submersible that is like a submarine protected by a ship's hull which is able to go hidden between the two waters and, at the same time, can navigate over the surface better than a torpedo-boat....

To-day, in addition, we have Schichau, White, Herreshoff, Creusot, Thomson, and others, forming a competitive body of high speed torpedo-boat builders who are daily making new and rapid developmentalmost too rapid, in fact, for the military student to follow.

And now, having given the enemy's battle-ship every possible advantage, the reader will allow me to bring on my little torpedo-boat.

These messages stated that Nissr had been sighted in flames and falling, in North latitude 19°, 35'; longitude 28°, 16', or about two hundred and fifty miles north-west of the Cape Verdes; that wreckage from her had been observed somewhat south of that point; and that bodies floating in vacuum-belts had been recovered by a Spanish torpedo-boat.

I should say, sir, it was a torpedo-boat or a destroyer, under forced draft.

The torpedo-boat destroyers were sunk off the entrance to the harbor.