With bated breath the Secret Agents watched.
Why had Moyen bidden them turn their attention to these sh.e.l.ls of erstwhile naval grandeur?
This time no gasps broke from the lips of the Secret Agents. Not even the sound of breathing could be heard. Just the sighing of wind through the superstructures of a hundred ships, the whispering of waves against rusted bulkheads.
Almost imperceptibly at first the towering dreadnought in the foreground began to move! Slowly, the water swirling about her, she backed away from her anchor, tightening the curve of the anchor chain! Water quivered about the point of the chain"s contact with the waves!
Quickly the eyes of the Secret Agents swept along the street of ships.
The same backward motion, of dragging against their anchor chains, was visible at the bow of each warship!
With not a soul aboard them, the ships were waking into strange and awesome life, dragging at their anchors, like hounds pulling at leashes to be free and away!
"How are they doing it?" It was almost a whisper from the President.
"Some electro-magnetic force, sir!" stated Prester Kleig. "Professor Blaine, that is your province! Please note what is happening, and advise us at once if you see how they are doing it!"
A grunt of affirmation from surly, obese Professor Blaine.
All eyes turned back again to the miracle of the moving ships. One by one, with crashes which echoed and re-echoed through the Secret Room, the anchor chains of the dreadnoughts parted. The ends of them swung from the prows of the warships, while the severed portions splashed into the Roads, and the waters hid them from view.
The great dreadnought in the foreground swung slowly about until her prow was pointed in the direction of the open sea, and though no sea was running, no smoke rose from her funnels, she got slowly, ponderously under way, and started out the Roads. Behind her, in formation, the other ships swung into line.
In a matter of seconds, faster than any of these vessels had ever traveled before, they were racing in column for the open Atlantic. And from the sound apparatus came wails and shrieks of terror, the lamentations of men and women frightened as they had never been frightened before.
The sh.o.r.es behind the moving column of ships was moment by moment growing blacker with people--a black sea of people, whose faces were white as chalk with terror.
But on, out to sea, moved the column of brave ships.
A new note entered into the picture, as from all sides airplanes of many makes swooped in, and swept back and forth over the moving ships, while hooded heads looked out of pits, and faces of pilots were aghast at what they saw.
A ghost column of ships, moving out to sea, speed increasing moment by moment unbelievably. Even now, five minutes after the first dreadnought had started seaward, the wake of each ship spread away on either hand in the two sides of a watery triangle whose walls were a dozen feet high--racing for the sh.o.r.es with all the sullen majesty of tidal waves.
The crowds gave back, and their screams rose into the air in a frightened roar of appalling sound.
Even now, so rapidly did the warships travel, many of the planes could throttle down, so that they flew directly above the heaving decks of the runaway warships.
"Get word to them!" cried Prester Kleig suddenly. "Get word to them that if they follow the ships out to sea not a pilot will escape alive!"
One of the Secret Agents rose and hurried from the Secret Room, traveling at top speed for the first of the many doors enroute to the broadcasting tower from which all the planes could be reached at once.
Prester Kleig turned back to the magic screen of Maniel.
The warships, water thrown aside by the lifting thrust of their forefeet in mountains that raced landward with ever-increasing fury, were clearing the Roads and swinging south by east, heading into the wastes of the Atlantic. As they cleared the land, and open water for unnumbered miles lay ahead, the speed of the mighty ships increased to a point where they rode as high on the water as racing launches, and the creaking and groaning of their rusty bolts and spars were a continual paean of protest in the sound apparatus accompanying the showing of the miracle on the screen.
"They"re heading straight for the spot where that super-submarine lies!"
said the President, and no one answered him.
Prester Kleig, watching, was racing over in his mind what he could recall of his country"s armament. Warships were useless, as was being proved here before his eyes. But there still remained airplanes, in countless numbers, which could be diverted from ocean travel and from routine business, to battle this menace of Moyen.
But....
He shuddered as he pictured in his mind"s eye the meeting of his country"s flower of flying manhood with the monsters of Moyen.
His eyes, as he thought, were watching the racing of those ocean greyhounds, out to sea. They were now out of sight of land, and still some of the planes followed them.
A half hour pa.s.sed, and then....
The American pilots, in obedience to the radio signals, turning back from this strange phenomenon of the ghost column of capital ships.
Simultaneously, out of the sky dead ahead, dropped the first flight of Moyen"s aero-subs.
At the same moment the mysterious power which had dragged the ships to sea was withdrawn, and the warships, with no hands to guide them, swung whither they willed, and floated in as many directions as there were ships, under their forward momentum. There were a score of collisions, and some of the ships were in sinking condition even before the aero-subs began their labors.
The remaining ships floated high out of the water, because they carried no ballast, and from all sides the aero-subs of Moyen settled to the task of destruction--destruction which was simply a warning of what was to come: Moyen"s manner of proving to the Americas the fact that he was all-powerful.
"G.o.d, what fools!" cried Prester Kleig.
The rearmost of the American aviators had looked back, had seen the first of the aero-subs drop down among the doomed ships. Instantly he turned out to sea again, signalling as he did so to the nearest other planes. And in spite of the radio warning a hundred planes answered that signal and swept back to investigate this new mystery.
"They"re going to death!" groaned the President.
"Yes," said Kleig, softly, "but it saves us ordering others to death.
Perhaps we may learn something of value as we watch them die!"
CHAPTER VII
_Golden Oblivion_
"This," said Prester Kleig, as coldly precise as a judge p.r.o.nouncing sentence of death, "will precipitate the major engagement with Moyen"s forces. The fools, to rush in like this, when they have been warned! But even so, they are magnificent!"
The pilots of the aero-subs must instantly have noticed the return of the American pilots, for some of the aero-subs which had dropped to the ocean"s surface rose again almost instantly, and swept into battle formation above the drifting hulks of the warships.
The Americans were wary. They drew together like frightened chickens when a hawk hovers above them, and watched the activities of the aero-subs, every move of each one being at the same time visible and audible to the Secret Agents in the Capitol"s Secret Room.
The aero-subs which had submerged singled out their particular prey among the floating ships, and the Secret Agents, trying to see how each separate act of destruction was accomplished, watched the aero-sub in the foreground, which happened to be concentrating on the dreadnought which had led the ghost-march of the warships out to sea.