Fox of France

The sun had just set when Murphy's boat left the pier. Murphy was a captain in the Irish Navy and had fished in these waters for more than ten years before becoming an honorable Irish Navy soldier. He knew the sea as well as his wife's, um, temper.

For more than a year, he has been carrying out a task, which is to monitor this narrow section of sea around Belfast. When the weather is fine, you can clearly see the whole section of the sea when you climb a high watchtower. Even if it is a small fishing boat, you don’t want to escape the watchtower’s surveillance, but it’s different at night. Taco can't keep an eye on what's going on at night. Although someone installed a huge listening device in the nearby sea water, trying to use this to hear the sound of ships, especially steam ships passing by, the sound of machinery. But this soon proved to be basically unreliable-the current here is part of the warm Atlantic Current, and the direction of the current is from south to north. Because the sea surface here is narrow, the speed of the sea current is quite fast. Most of the time, the underwater listener hears the noise of the sea current. And for the sake of concealment, the British fleet can float along the current at night without turning on the steam engine.

Therefore, there is only one way to monitor at night, and that is to send small boats directly to the sea to monitor closely.

Each sea ship carries several rockets. If the enemy fleet is found, the small ship will launch rockets to warn the watchtower on the shore. Then, of course, he ran away in a hurry, hoping to rely on the cover of night to escape the tracking British warship.

Generally speaking, once the British fleet is discovered, it will probably only speed up, rather than go to the second place to find trouble with a small boat. Coupled with the cover of night, there is still a great chance of successful escape.

But in recent months, things have changed. That is, as the seasons change, the cold air going south meets the humid air brought by the warm Atlantic current, so there will be heavy fog almost every day. The sea fog usually does not dissipate until near noon. Therefore, ships that are on duty in the strait at night to monitor the movement of the strait often have to stay until almost noon, when the sea fog completely dissipates before returning.

This poses more dangers. Opposite there is an Englishman's wharf, where a cruiser is located. One of the ship's missions was to hunt down Irish ships that were monitoring the British fleet here. In the absence of sea fog the threat posed by this ship is rather limited because at night it is higher than the Irishman's boat, so the Irishman's boat sees it looking up against a brighter sky in the background ; while the English looked down at the Irish boat, and the Irish boat disappeared completely in the dark sea. Therefore, the Irish are more likely to find the British. can be avoided far in advance. Not to mention, the British steam-powered cruisers had sound, so it was easier for the Irish sloops to avoid them at night.

But when there is sea fog, the situation is different. Before the sea fog dissipates, the situation is not much different from nighttime, but when the sea fog dissipates and the sun rises in the morning, it is completely different. When the sun rises, Everyone knows it well, so they can always retreat when the time is right.

But when the sea fog will dissipate is really hard to say, so if the retreat is early and the sea fog does not dissipate for a long time, it may allow the British fleet to slip past. But if the retreat is late, the sea fog clears, and they go to find that the British cruiser is not far away from them, it will be really troublesome.

Two days ago, there was a ship that retreated a little late, and even the ship and its people were caught by the British. I don't know what's going on now?

Murphy and his two subordinates rowed the oars together, and the boat rowed along the small river towards the sea. The docks for small boats dare not be built on the seashore, because the British will come and bombard the docks.

The boat rowed eastward along the creek for about one kilometer, rounded a small mound, and sailed into the sea. The two navy soldiers quickly raised the gray-blue sails, and the boat sailed towards the depths of the sea.

When they arrived at the predetermined position, Murphy anchored, and the two soldiers also lowered the sails—the current is very fast in the strait, and if they don't anchor, they will easily drift away from their position, and It is too tiring to have to adjust the sails to contend with the current, so anchoring has become the most commonly used method. Of course, if there is any emergency and it is too late to pull the anchor, then the rope can only be cut.

If it was in the past, the unit price would definitely be reluctant to just cut off the anchor cable and throw away the iron anchor. But now, this thing can be reimbursed to the French, so even the most frugal Irish fighters feel that it is nothing to cut this thing.

After the anchor is laid, the few people are actually fine. The two soldiers were in charge of watching the sea, while Murphy skillfully took out the fishing rod, loaded the bait, and started fishing here. Anyway, for the matter of raking grass and beating rabbits, it is also a good thing to be able to catch two fish back and improve the food for everyone.

The boat was dangling on the sea, and the three of them were all fine at this time, so they started bragging. Time passed slowly like this. In the process, they seemed to have encountered a school of herring, and Murphy pulled up more than twenty herrings in one breath.

Murphy pulled one up, and the other fighter cut off the head of the flying fish with one knife, and ripped off the internal organs along the way, then shaved off the bone with two knives, stuck a little salt on it, and stuffed it directly into the fish. into his own mouth.

This is a typical Dutch way of eating; if you pay more attention to it, add some spices to marinate together, and then eat it with salad and potatoes, this is the German way of eating; if you only remove the internal organs, put the head up If the dough is baked into bread looking up at the starry sky, that is the British way of eating; if it is dried with smoke and eaten as dried fish, it is French food; if it is made into cans, um, it is the notorious Swedish way of eating . On this boat, of course, they can only adopt the simplest way of eating in the Netherlands.

Twenty Atlantic herrings stuffed all three to their stomachs. The rest is ready to take home. At this time, the fog on the sea gradually rose, and it was impossible to see anything a little further away. At this time, the three of them not only rely on their eyes, but even more often rely on their ears to pay attention to the movement of the sea.

The surrounding gradually lit up, the night had passed, and it was about seven o'clock in the morning, and this was the time when vigilance was most needed. From here, it is about 70 kilometers to the Campbelltown exit. At the speed of the British fleet, if they pass here at this time, they will be able to reach the Campbelltown exit around ten o'clock. The fog usually begins to dissipate at this time. Then the British fleet will turn to the direction of Tenish. There are many hidden reefs in this area, but the time of today's tide also happens to be at this time. The tidal height in this area is the highest along the entire British coast, and even reaches 8 meters when the tide level is the highest. Of course, this is only the case during astronomical high tides, but even if it is not an astronomical high tide, when the tide is high, the sea level rises by more than five meters. In this way, the British fleet can rush to the Tenish Waterway as quickly as possible. As long as they enter the Tenish Waterway, the French cannot stop them from appearing in the North Sea.

It's just that the fog was still thick at this time, and the three of them couldn't see anything, so they could only prick up their ears to listen. Not long after, they faintly heard mechanical sounds coming from the south.

"There's movement!" Murphy lowered his voice. Although he knew it didn't make much sense, in fact he spoke in a normal voice, and his voice didn't travel very far, and the English certainly couldn't hear him.

But with the faint voice heard now, it is still hard to tell whether it is the British fleet or the cruiser that is specifically looking for trouble for them. Murphy and another soldier used the winch to pull the anchor up— —If you can not lose it, it is better not to lose it. The other warrior continued to monitor the movement on the sea and was ready to raise the sail.

The anchor was pulled up, and several men hoisted the sail together.

At this time, the sound of the machine became more and more obvious. Although the sea fog was still very thick, the sound seemed to come from several places. It was obviously a fleet.

"Captain, look over there." A soldier pointed to the south.

Murphy narrowed his eyes, as if he saw a red light.

This is the anti-collision light on the warship. The red light has a longer wavelength, so it can better penetrate the fog and be seen at a longer distance. Then more red anti-collision lights appeared in their field of vision.

"Raise the sails." Murphy whispered.

The gray-blue sails were raised, and the boat began to move westward. The fog was too thick, and when they saw the red anti-collision lights, the British ships were not too far away from them. At this time, they hurriedly made way to the west for a while, only to avoid directly colliding with others.

Murphy carefully counted the number of red lights passing in front of him. There were a lot of them, and there might be some farther away that he didn't see, so this was probably the main British fleet. The next phenomenon strengthened his judgment even more, that is, his boat rolled suddenly and severely. This is not the direction of the waves. This kind of rolling can only be caused by one reason, and that is the swell caused by the passing of the big ship. This shows that the warships passing here are very large.

"Get ready to launch the rocket, and then we'll run," Murphy ordered.

Naturally, the news of the rocket launch could not be concealed from the British fleet passing through this sea area, but as Murphy predicted, the British did not intend to stop here at all, and then play hide-and-seek with them in the thick fog. Their time was precious, So they didn't even slow down, but continued heading north.

Lord George Kirkburn, Admiral of the Fleet, knew that the fleet was exposed when he saw the rocket and heard the loud noise when it exploded. When he reached the exit of Campbelltown, it is likely that the French fleet was already there Get ready. But now he has no chance of turning back. The current situation in the United Kingdom can no longer allow the fleet to turn back. Either it will break the blockade and win a big victory; or it will be a domestic revolution.

As far as his original intention is concerned, he doesn't want to take such a risk at this time-in fact, the navy has just completed the basic training of the new warships, and it cannot fully exert the full strength of these new warships. But he also knew that Britain now had no time to wait.

"I can only hope that God will bless the King," thought Lord Kirkburn.

The news of the presence of the British fleet immediately passed through the telegraph system and reached Admiral Brues. At that time, the admiral was once again studying possible naval battles in front of the chart. And when his adjutant Pierre told him that the British fleet was really coming this way, Admiral Brues was stunned. It took him a while to realize that God really helped him.

"Thanks to our Father in Heaven. May your kingdom come soon, Amen!" He drew the cross on his chest, then stabilized his emotions, and said, "Pierre, immediately notify all captains to come to me Come here for a little meeting. Also, get all the warships on fire."

Ten minutes later, all captains were in place. Pierre, the adjutant of Admiral Brues, read the relatively simple information to them—because of the heavy fog, it could only be concluded that a huge fleet passed by, and some of the ships were very large. But more information, he can't see. Therefore, there is naturally no information such as the composition of the British fleet in this information. But that's not a big deal. Everyone knows exactly what size fleet the British have in the Irish Sea.

Admiral Brues assigned a combat mission. Although the distribution of this combat mission was already known to everyone, he still emphasized it again. Then it is to encourage everyone to fight the enemy bravely and make contributions.

Then the captains returned to their own warships. At around 8:30, all the ships were fired and pressurized, and the entire fleet left the anchorage and began to approach Campbelltown.

At around 9:30, the fleet arrived in the waters near Campbelltown. At this time, the fog had not cleared, but according to calculations, the British fleet would appear in front of them in at most one hour.

"There is a safe passage in the minefield of the British. But the width of this safe passage must be limited, and it must not be enough for the entire fleet to form. Therefore, when the enemy ships come out, they must take advantage of the T-head Give it up. We must seize this opportunity and hit them hard!" Admiral Bryes thought as he looked at the fog that was slowly thinning in front of him with satisfaction.