If the enemy should live to come within range of these forts he would find that his troubles were only now beginning in earnest. The great 16-inch rifled guns at Willets Point have a seven-mile range, up past Stepping Stone Light and Execution Rock. They could easily dispose of any number of torpedo-boats trying to destroy submarine mines. More destructive than all these is the "dynamite gun," a tube of steel fifty feet long, and with a bore of fifteen inches. This throws a long cigar-shaped slug of explosive gelatine, more powerful than dynamite, and weighing about two hundred pounds. The shell is driven out of the gun by compressed air.
It is not at all likely that we could get together a fleet of battle-ships of sufficient numbers to cope with the enemy's great squadron. Still, the _Maine_, the _Texas_, and half a dozen other fighting ships, each one of which is equal to anything in the foreign navy, would be assembled in the Hudson River awaiting the arrival of the invaders. As soon as the news of their progress down the Sound was telegraphed to this city, they would steam up the East River, take their stations within the arc of the forts at Willets Point and Fort Schuyler, and add their broadsides to the defence of New York. Is there any fleet in the world that could force its way past such an opposition? No American thinks so.
[1] Begun in HARPER'S ROUND TABLE No. 852.
"Stop her! Stop the boat, quick! Bonny is overboard!" shouted Alaric, frantically, as he realized the nature of the catastrophe that had just occurred through his awkwardness. As he shouted he sprang to the jib-halyard, and casting it off allowed the sail to come down by the run; his sole idea of checking the headway of a sailing craft being to reduce her canvas.
He was about to let go both throat and peak halyards, and so bring down the big mainsail also, when, with a bellow of rage and a marvellous disregard of his lameness, Captain Duff rushed forward and snatched the ropes from the lad's hands.
"You thundering blockhead!" he roared. "What d'ye mean by lowering a sail without orders? H'ist it again! H'ist it, d'ye hear?"
"And you want to leave him to drown? Don't ye know that if he's alive he's drifted astarn by this time? Ef you had any sense you'd be out in the dinghy looking fur him."