exclaimed, in surprise.

“Oh, the poor boat!” cried my mother.

“No fear of the boat,” said young Firebrand, “and as to the Nettle—why, my good fellow, I have felt our greatest ironclad, the mighty Thunderer, of which I have the honour to be an officer, quiver slightly from the explosion of a mere five-pounds torpedo discharged close alongside. Few people have an adequate conception of the power of explosives, and still fewer, I believe, understand the nature of the powers by which they are at all times surrounded. That 100-pounds torpedo, for instance, which has only caused us to quiver, would have blown a hole in our most powerful ship if fired in contact with it, and yet the cushion of water between it and the tiny launch that fired it is so tough as to be quite a sufficient protection to the boat, as you see.”

We did indeed “see,” for the waspish little boat emerged from the deluge she had raised and, steaming swiftly on, turned round and retraced her track. On reaching about the same position as to the Nettle, she repeated the experiment with her second torpedo.

“Splendid!” exclaimed young Naranovitsch, whose military ardour was aroused.

“It means, does it not,” said Bella, “a splendid ship destroyed, and some hundreds of lives lost?”

“Well—yes—” said Nicholas, hesitatingly; “but of course it does not always follow, you know, that so many lives—”

He paused, and smiled with a perplexed look. Bella smiled dubiously, and shook her head, for it did not appear to either of them that the exact number of lives lost had much to do with the question. A sudden movement of the visitors to the other side of the ship stopped the conversation.

They were now preparing to show the effect of a gun-cotton hand-grenade; in other words, a species of bomb-shell, meant to be thrown by the hand into an enemy’s boat at close-quarters. This really tremendous weapon was an innocent-looking disc or circlet of gun-cotton, weighing not more than eight ounces. Innocent it would, in truth, have been but for the little detonator in its heart, without which it would only have burned, not exploded. Attached to this disc was an instantaneous fuse of some length, so that an operator could throw the disc into a passing boat, and then fire the fuse, which would instantly explode the disc.

All this was carefully explained by Firebrand to my astonished mother, while 

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