Invasion (31 page)

He laid down a metal plate and lowered the cup over it. “See here, first powder quite unrestrained.” A cascade of black grains poured from the measuring funnel and settled in a pyramid.

“Mr. Duckitt, clear the range!”

Every man stepped back to a safe distance. “Fire the charge!”

The gunner blew on his portfire and touched off the powder. It flared up high in a bright, firework-like glare, with a vigorous but impotent hiss. When they tramped back to the apparatus the gauge had not moved.

Without comment Fulton produced a coconut-sized sphere. “Charge this, if you please,” he said to the gunner, and explained to Kydd, “This is, then, the same amount, within a half-inch clay jacket.” Match was inserted and lit. The onlookers retired hastily.

It detonated with a satisfying flash and a clap of thunder that echoed back from the soaring cliff-face. After a moment pieces of the jacket were heard skittering about. Fulton plunged into the eddying smoke and inspected the result, noting down the reading. “One inch clay,” he intoned, resetting the indicator.

This time the explosion had a vicious ring and the shattered clay whipped through the air overhead, falling into the shallows in myriad splashes. Fulton took the reading from the canted arm, then became thoughtful. “I'd hoped the effect would scale, but it does not. This is not double the impetus.”

“Meaning?”

“To multiply this force and be sure to sink a well-found man-o'-war will take either a mort more powder or a jacket so heavy as to cause the torpedo to sink. I must think again.”

The next day a three-inch jacket was tested, which confirmed the problem: a larger charge in the same case had the puzzling result of a lower indication on the gauge than expected. “I wonder if it's the greater bulk of the powder smothering the speed of burning?” Fulton mused.

“Beg pardon, sir,” Duckitt interjected, “an' have ye considered corned powder a-tall?”

“What's that?”

“New, like. Sifted mill cakes, hardened 'n' rolled in graphite. Makes f'r rare consistent firing.”

“Have we any?” Kydd asked.

“Aye, sir. Costs a pretty penny—we keeps it f'r the chase guns only.”

Duckitt was dispatched to find it and Kydd asked Fulton, “If the explosion is within the sea, will not the water pressing on your, er, container, act t' tamp it like the clay jacket?”

“Coffer. That's what we call 'em,” he replied, distracted. “Why, yes, I'm supposing it will, but how do I take the measure of an underwater blast, pray?”

Nowhere in Kydd's experience in the Navy had he ever come across explosions occurring beneath the surface. His question, however, seemed to have sparked something in Fulton, for the next trial was with small submersible casks.

“From the boat, if you please.” The match was started and the cask head thumped home, then the whole was allowed to sink on a line to an improvised buoy, nervous oarsmen sparing nothing to make certain the boat was nowhere near the spot.

In a deathly silence all eyes were on the barely ruffled innocent surface of the water. A sub-sea thump was more felt than heard, followed a second later by the bursting upward of a white geyser, which subsided to an ugly, roiling scar in the sea.

“We take it by the height of the splash,” Fulton said defensively, selecting another, larger cask. “We'll see if this scales up.” There was another tense wait, and once more the plume rose skyward.

“Better!” Fulton said, with relief, lowering his improvised quadrant. Kydd pulled out his pocket watch and consulted it pointedly.

“Don't worry, Mr. Firebrand, I'm satisfied an' will now move forward.”

“So this means—”

At that moment a naval cutter was sighted, making her way prettily towards them. “A very good morning to you, gentlemen!” Popham said breezily, when he had stepped onto the shore. “Do I see your new curiosities performing to satisfaction?”

Fulton busied himself obstinately among the apparatus in the arms chest, leaving it to Kydd to answer. “Mr. Francis is moving forward this day, sir, on account he has achieved satisfaction in the matter of the, er, coffer.”

“Splendid,” Popham said heartily, “as it will please their lordships to hear.” His tone became more serious. “The descent on Boulogne has been sanctioned at the highest, and time is now of the essence. Is there anything whatsoever that I might do for your American?”

Kydd detected a note of anxiety and guessed that there was more to the question than had been said, but before he could answer Fulton swung round, his face dark. “Yes, there is, Mr. Englishman—perhaps you'd keep clear of the works. There's enough to worry on without we have sightseers.”

Popham gave a wintry smile. “Do tell me your concerns. I'm no stranger to novelties of a mechanical nature, sir,” he encouraged.

Fulton hesitated. “It's the fault of your committee. Without I have a submarine, how do I attack with a torpedo? If it's agreed that it be done unseen, do they propose I use ships' boats splashing along with oars in full sight of the enemy? Or like the ancient Greeks, by swimmers with a torpedo under each arm?”

“There are other ways of approaching a prey,” Popham responded.

“Flying over it in a balloon?”

“I'm reminded of my service off the coast of the Coromandel. There we encountered nightly the thievery of the native peoples—”

“Captain, I'm very engaged today, If you've—”

“—who could approach unseen to within close hail except in the brightest moonlight.”

“Swimming.”

“No, Mr. Francis. In a species of native craft called a catamaran. This has the property that it lies very close to the water, being of two hull forms joined by a central bracing. I'm sanguine it can be made strong enough to deliver your torpedoes.”

“Low in the water?”

“Inches only.”

“Then we have a possibility.”

Fulton looked speculatively at Popham, who hastened to add, “Leave it to me. I know an amiable shipwright who will be persuaded to produce one immediately for our consideration. In the meanwhile you shall be free to concentrate on your curiosities.”

“It won't do! I calculate we'll need all of thirty minutes, if not the hour, to make our approach by stealth. An' if that's with slowmatch it'll die of suffocation long since.”

“A different kind o' fuse, Toot?”

“There isn't any not using fire, damn it all to hell! If we were going in with a submarine, there'd be none of this.”

Kydd's heart went out to him: to be pressured so and in a situation not of his making was taking its toll. “Can you not—a mechanical fuse o' sorts?”

Fulton looked up with red-rimmed eyes. “There's no such. Not even . . . Wait! I have it.” He laughed. “Why not? Mechanical—an automatic self-igniter.”

He pulled out his notepad and, with hurried strokes, sketched in a gear train and cams, then a striker plate and cocking detent. “Yes! Does not consume air, and can do its deadly work in secret, deep beneath the waves until it knows its time has come. Then, without warning, heroically sacrifices itself in one hellish detonation.”

Kydd shuddered at the picture but he had to see things through. “It must be made of brass or some such, else the seawater will turn it to rust in quick time, and that'll cost you not a little.”

“Hang the cost! Set the price of one squiddy bit of brass clockwork against that of a man-o'-war? There's no argument, my friend.”

Despite his disquiet, Kydd found Fulton's sudden enthusiasm infectious.

“I've some drawings to make,” Fulton continued, “and I'd be much obliged should you scare up a watchmaker who'll relish a challenge.”

Kydd was later entertained by the sight of Fulton explaining to the bemused craftsman the operation of a delay mechanism that, at its culmination, instead of setting off an alarm actuated something that looked suspiciously like a gunlock.

“So. We have figures on depth to tamping effect for a given charge, as may be scaled up. A form of watertight carcass has been devised, proof to the depths it will be used, and if our crafty captain is to be believed, a near invisible means of launching the beasts. Now, with our automatic fuse in construction we can turn our minds to assembling them all into a fearsome weapon of war.”

The first torpedo was impressively huge: more than twelve feet long, square sectioned and with symmetrically sharp front and rear. It was ballasted to ride just beneath the sea surface and had within it twenty watertight compartments ready to receive their lethal cargo of explosives.

“My friend, I do intend now to test its force. Just for this I won't be needing either the catamarans or the automaton igniter. However, the concussion will set up such a commotion that I'd rather be elsewhere than here, further away from the ladies of Dover in their parlours.”

It was eventually agreed that Shell Ness, a few hours sail around North Foreland at the tip of the Isle of Sheppey would suit. It was low, scrubby and desolate, with nothing but one or two empty shepherds' huts.

Teazer
's deck bore three torpedoes lashed down securely, long, tar-dark coffers that, in their deadly menace, made hardened seamen tiptoe nervously past them. It was necessary to wait at anchor while their promised victim, a decrepit fishing-boat, was towed into the bleak mudflats. It was old but of a size, and to Kydd seemed to assume a pathetic dignity as it was led to its place of sacrifice.

No time was wasted: the coffer was lowered into the sea, grappled by the pinnace crew and manhandled round to face the target. The men strained at their oars, the torpedo wallowing sullenly after them until they reached the vessel's side where it was left.

The gunner in the gig then gingerly started the match fuse and hastily pulled away. An expectant hush fell over
Teazer
as all aboard waited and stared at the tethered victim in horrified fascination.

Kydd aimed his telescope while Fulton had his improvised quadrant trained ready. Time passed in breathless silence. Suddenly the sea at the waterline shot up in a huge pall of white, suffused with gun-flash and smoke, and a clap of thunder rolled round the bay, sending countless sea-birds to flight.

Fulton grunted in satisfaction as he noted the height of the plume and grinned sideways at Kydd, but when it had subsided, the fishing-boat was still there. Motioning the gig alongside, Kydd went out with him to inspect the result.

Part of the vessel's side was stove in and gaping, but otherwise only a large area of scorched timber gave evidence of the cataclysm—and she was still afloat.

“What in Hades . . . ?” Fulton said, almost to himself, as he poked at the scarified hull and peered up at the crazily hanging gaff-yard. Then he collected himself and added calmly, “But, then, this is our sea in its tamping. It works to satisfaction yet directs its force in the main to the line of least resistance, which is to the vertical. Hmm— this is a setback, I cannot deny it.”

Yet by the time they had returned to
Teazer
Fulton had his answer. “We use two torpedoes, one each side, and crush the ship between their vehemence.”

The two remaining coffers were swayed down and put in the water, but at the long-suffering victim, another difficulty presented itself. “Mr. Duckitt, they must explode together, as near as you please.” This was a tall order, but the gunner bent his best efforts in cutting the match to the exact same mark. He borrowed a boatswain's call to sound the precise time to the gunner's mate on the opposite side to light the fuse.

A double roar saw the vessel hidden in smoke and spray but when it dissipated, there was the satisfying sight of blackened wreckage settling beneath the waves. “The coffer size must increase, of course, but with an automatic fuse we will have a good result,” Fulton said briskly.

The catamaran was as strange a craft as Kydd had ever seen: two long, slender hulls joined with an open framework. The two oars-men would take position on a narrow bench running fore and aft, set well down—in fact, they would be sitting in the sea. Their silhouette would be inches high only, a cunning device to allow them to close invisibly with the target before launch. Popham was clearly pleased and accepted the flattering comments about his contribution, then motioned the vessel to be brought alongside.

“Shall we make trial of it?” Kydd said jovially. “Come now, you men, who'll volunteer?”

As always in the Navy, the out-of-routine had instant appeal and this promised at the very least a skylark in the summer sea for the lucky pair selected. They settled into their subsea seats to much ribaldry, and it was quickly clear that, barely head and shoulders above the surface, they would be more difficult to spot even than a small ship's boat.

The testing time was as night drew in. For some reason the darkling sea took on a feeling of looming menace; unknown shadows moving restlessly.

“Who's to come forward then, you idlers?” Kydd called encouragingly, to the knot of onlookers. This time there were no takers. “That fine pair of this afternoon, you've had your amusement, so step up, my lads, and see what it's like to earn your grog.”