The World Peril of 1910

It so happened that on the first night the German Emperor saw the comet without the aid of a telescope he was attacked by one of those fits of hysteria which, according to ancie...

After dinner Lennard excused himself, saying that he wanted to make a few more calculations; and then he got outside and lit his pipe, and walked up the winding path towards the...

All the ships able to take their place in the fighting-line were left outside. The French prisoners were disembarked and their places taken by drafts from the British warships,...

It takes a good deal to shake the nerves of British naval officer or seaman, but those on board the ships of the Spithead Squadron would have been something more than human if t...

When they got to the end of the Railway Pier where the pinnace was lying panting and puffing, a Flag-Lieutenant touched his cap to Erskine, took him by the arm and led him aside...

When the destruction of the forts and the sinking of the battleships at Portsmouth had been accomplished, John Castellan made about the greatest mistake in his life, a mistake w...

The morning was spent in a general overhaul of the observatory and the laboratory in which Lennard had discovered and perfected the explosive which had been used with such deadl...

As it happened, it was a fine, cold wintry day that dawned as the two great fleets drew towards each other. As Denis Castellan said, "It was a perfect jewel of a day for a holy...

The _Flying Fish_, the prototype of the extraordinary craft which played such a terrible part in the invasion of England, was a magnified reproduction, with improvements which s...

When Lennard entered the little drawing-room in the house in Westbourne Terrace, where Norah Castellan and her aunt were staying, he had decided to do something which, without h...

The speeches in the House of Commons and in the House of Peers were being printed even as they were spoken; hundreds of printing-presses were grinding out millions of copies of...

Denis Castellan had put the situation tersely, but with a considerable amount of accuracy. Earth and sea and sky were ablaze with swarms of shooting, shifting lights, which kept...

In spite of the bold front that he had assumed during the interview, the strain, not exactly of superstition but rather of supernaturalism which runs so strongly in the Kaiser's...

The awaking of England on the morning of the twenty-sixth of November was like the awaking of a man from a nightmare. Everyone who slept had gone to sleep with one word humming...

On the evening of the same day, Mr Chamberlain, the Prime Minister, rose amidst the tense silence of a crowded House to make another announcement, which was not altogether uncon...

On the first day of July, 1908, a scene which was destined to become historic took place in the great Lecture Theatre in the Imperial College at Potsdam. It was just a year and...

Happily for the defenders of Britain the fleet of aërial submarines, from which so much had been expected for offensive purposes during the proposed "triumphal march" on London,...

In twenty minutes the _Ithuriel_ ran alongside the _Britain_, which was one of the five most formidable battleships in existence. For five years past a new policy had been pursu...

The next day was a busy one, not only for Lennard himself but for others whose help he had come to enlist in the working out of the Great Experiment.

Rather to Mr Parmenter's surprise his first interview "with a real king" was rather like other business interviews that he had had; in fact, as he said afterwards, of all the bu...

Although Lennard had always recognised the possibility of such a catastrophe as that which John Castellan threatened, and had even taken such precautions as he could to prevent...

At daybreak on the nineteenth, to the utter amazement of everyone who was not "in the know," the Imperial yacht, _Hohenzollern_, was found off Tilbury, flying the Imperial Germa...

Lennard's first feelings after the receipt of Mr Parmenter's cablegram, and the casting of the vast mass of metal which was to form the body of the great cannon, were those of d...

It was a few minutes after four bells on a grey morning in November 1909 that Lieutenant-Commander Francis Erskine, in command of his Majesty's Fishery Cruiser, the _Cormorant_,...

Within five minutes they were seated in the big Napier, with ninety horse-power under them, and a possibility of eighty miles an hour before them. A white flag was fastened to a...

The scene had shifted back from the royal city of Potsdam to the little coast town in Connemara. John Castellan was sitting on a corner of his big writing-table swinging his leg...

Lord Kitchener had probably never had so bitter an experience as he had when the _Auriole_ began to slow down over the plain of Aldershot. Never could he, or any other British s...

When Lennard got out of the train at St Pancras that evening, he found such a sight as until a day or so ago no Londoner had ever dreamed of. But terrible as the happenings were...

Just at the north of the summit on the top of which the observatory was built there was an oval valley, or perhaps it might be better described as an escarpment, a digging away...

About eight o'clock, as the half-wrecked victors and vanquished were slowly struggling into the half-ruined harbour, five winged shapes became visible against the grey sky over...

By a curious coincidence which, as events proved, was to have some serious consequences, almost at the same moment that Commander Erskine began to write his report on the strang...

Although the Tsar had made trips with John Castellan in the _Flying Fish_, he had never had quite such an aërial experience as his trip to Greenwich. The _Auriole_ rose vertical...

The _Ithuriel_ had orders to call at Folkestone and Dover in order to report the actual state of affairs there to the Commander-in-Chief by telegraph if Erskine could get ashore...

A huge, black shape loomed up into the moonlight. As she came nearer Lennard could see that the vessel carried a big mast forward with a fighting-top, two funnels a little aft o...

It was on the day following the destruction of Dover that the news of the actual landing of the French and German forces had really taken place at the points selected by Castell...

The defenders of Dover, terribly as they had suffered, and hopeless as the defence really now seemed to be, were still not a little cheered by the tidings of the complete and cr...

Of course it was raining. Rain and fine-spun cotton thread are Bolton's specialities, the two chief pillars of her fame and prosperity, for without the somewhat distressing supe...

"That's all right, Mr Roker. I know where your affections are centred in this ship. You go right along to your engines, and Mr Hingeston will see about the rest of us. Now then,...

This was the all-important news which the inhabitants of every town which possessed a well-informed newspaper read the next morning. It was, in the more important of them, follo...