Page:Robert William Cole - The Struggle for Empire; A Story of the Year 2236 (1900).djvu/190

178 dearly for their success; numbers of their finest war-ships were strewn about on the violated Anglo-Saxon soil.

A continual stream of half-wrecked monsters was descending from the battle area and making for the various dockyards. Huge first-class battleships with yawning rents in their sides and riddled by shot, with hardly a quarter of their crews left, could only just reach a place of safety. Their outsides bore the ghastly traces of the terrible contest. The twisted metalwork was covered with blood, human bodies were lying about in the pierced compartments torn almost to ribbons, and arms, legs, and headless trunks were squashed between bent metal plates and rods, or rammed up between the machinery. Other war-ships staggered along with great pieces shot off the bows or stern, and a whole side blown completely away. A few that came were mere heaps of battered metal, with only a few men left alive. A few heroic men brought back