When the _Ithuriel_ disappeared and his torpedo struck a piece of floating wreckage and exploded with a terrific shock, John Castellan, standing in the conning-tower directing the movements of the _Flying Fish_, naturally concluded that he had destroyed a British submarine scout. He knew of the existence, but nothing of the real powers of the _Ithuriel_. The only foreigner who knew that was Captain Count Karl von Eckstein, and he was locked safely in a cabin on board her.
He had been searching the under-waters between Nettlestone Point and Hayling Island for hours on the look-out for British submarines and torpedo scouts, and had found nothing, therefore he was ignorant of the destruction which the _Ithuriel_ had already wrought, and as, of course, he had heard no firing under the water, he believed that the three destroyers supported by the _Dupleix_ and _Leger_ had succeeded in slipping through the entrance to Spithead.
He knew that a second flotilla of six destroyers with three swift second-class cruisers were following in to complete the work, which by this time should have begun, and that after them came the main French squadron, consisting of six first-class battleships with a screen of ten first and five second-class cruisers, the work of which would be to maintain a blockade against any relieving force, after the submarines and destroyers had sunk and crippled the ships of the Fleet Reserve and cut the connections of the contact mines.
He knew also that the _See Adler_, which was _Flying Fish II._, was waiting about the Needles to attack Hurst Castle and the forts on the Isle of Wight side, preparatory to a rush of two battleships and three cruisers through the narrows, while another was lurking under Hayling Island ready to take the air and rain destruction on the forts of Portsmouth before the fight became general.
What thoroughly surprised him, however, was the absolute silence and inaction of the British. True, two shots had been fired, but whether from fort or warship, and with what intent, he hadn't the remotest notion. The hour arranged upon for the general assault was fast approaching. The British must be aware that an attack would be made, and yet there was not so much as a second-class torpedo boat to be seen outside Spithead. This puzzled him, so he decided to go and investigate for himself. He took up a speaking-tube and said to his Lieutenant, M'Carthy--one of too many renegade Irishmen who in the terrible times that were to come joined their country's enemies as Lynch and his traitors had done in the Boer War: