30 COAST DEFENCE AGAINST TORPEDO-BOAT ATTACK. 
herself discovered, this is not the way a cleverly handled boat conducts 
its business. Handled, as our navy do handle them, with infinite 
nerve and patience, moving dead slow, stoked with such ability that 
not a spark leaves the funnel, a torpedo-boat is most difficult to detect 
and at any considerable range is often passed over unobserved by 
wandering rays. As the ray approaches, she perhaps, turns end on to 
it and stops; when, even if seen, she is often mistaken for a small 
fishing boat or something drifting, an error which even good look¬ 
outs are apt to fall into if a boat patiently waits without attempting to 
move, even though a round or two is fired at her. The best method 
of testing what a doubtful object may be is to take her range, bearing 
and speed (if it is thought unadvisable to waste much ammunition at 
extreme ranges), as quickly as possible and pass on with the light, to 
try and convey to the boat the impression that she has not been 
observed. Allow a few minutes to elapse and come back on her. If 
she has moved a considerable distance at a different rate in the 
interval, it is a torpedo-boat and it is as well to sink her; if she has 
not moved she is doing no harm, and the process can be repeated at 
intervals. Subsequent observation may show that she is creeping 
slowly up and it then becomes time to expend ammunition on her and 
make her either rush in or go out to sea again. 
It undetected by a wandering beam and a torpedo-boat desires to 
cross a fixed ray which she cannot get round by going far enough out, 
she either lies quietly just outside the fixed ray, in what has been 
termed by the lookouts the ‘'dark ray,” where she is quite invisible, 
and waits until a carbon needs changing to slip easily through, or else 
steams slowly up along the ‘ dark ray 3 until she gets as close as the 
land will allow her to the light, and seeks to destroy it with her fire so 
as to enable other boats to get to the ship which forms the objective 
_ of the attack. Various attempts are made to deceive, 
practiced by A torpedo-boat may come up boldly with navigation 
torpedo-boats. lights boomed out to represent the lights of a friendly 
merchant vessel, for her own navigation lights are 
too close together to be mistaken. Such lights, however, are 
necessarily rather close to the surface of the water and the interval 
between them and their reflection is too small to deceive an expert for 
long, or prevent him examining her with the beam. If guns are low 
sited, boats may float smoke barrels with the tide across the electric 
rays with a view to making them dim, but this has generally proved a 
failure from one cause or another. The presence of smoke in an 
unaccountable place only serves as a warning to guns to keep a brighter 
lookout. Smoke barrels do not seem to affect high sited lookouts 
and guns at all. Every vessel approaching, no matter what may be 
known of her, must be carefully examined. No trick is more common 
than for a flotilla of torpedo-boats to come up on the off side of a 
merchant vessel approaching a harbour with a view to a sudden rush 
if they can get close enough unobserved; in such a case a careful 
examination under the light will generally exhibit an abnormal 
lengthening of the vessel from time to time as one torpedo-boat or 
