noon
The ordinary l8-inch Whiteheads , moreover , were replaced by a longer design running 6,000 yards , the added length being occupied by the flask , whose compressed air runs the engine , they not sinking on finishing their course : so , if they missed , there they lay , a trap of 380 pounds of gun-cotton in the course of the numerous moving foe . With these three forms of the same plague the _ Boodah _ hunted the fleeing ships , and drove them stumbling through complicated miseries , amazed and thunderstruck : so that seventy-three only , several of them half-wrecks , reached her twenty-five mile limit ; and , there , over the mines of the _ Solon _ , reassembled . Amid the throng on his ruined roof Hogarth watched their flight and the ever-coming boatloads of blue-jackets through a mist of smoke and the after-smell of war , while under the sea wide eyes in hosts were a-gaze at a windfall of 2,400 bodies . About half-past four captains and commanders of the survivors were in the ward-room of the Second-in-Command on the _ Orion _ -- the _ Queen Mary _ gone -- when he , with splendid infatuation , proposed a return to the attack , with a change of tactics to concentration upon one side only of the _ Boodah _ ; but the foreigners pointed out the obvious added dangers ; and in the midst of a wrangle a dispatch-boat from the _ Solon _ , eleven miles south , arrived , demanding the usual sea-rent , by draft , if not in gold ; so out , at this unlooked-for incident , broke a new quarrel , the British for a whole hour resisting the inexorable ; till the _ Solon _ Lieutenant , his eyes moist with pleading , explained their helplessness , adding that war between the four Powers had been declared that day at noon from the Stock Exchange steps : and only then the Vice-Admiral , breaking into tears , yielded to destiny . Hogarth , meanwhile , was like a wild man , imprisoned , till his yacht returned at dusk with her excursionists ; and without delay he was on her , and away for England . In England , meantime , was nothing but dismay . The Government , whose defeat was accidental , on being hurriedly patched up , threw itself passionately into the work of defence , calling up every enrolled man , while at regimental centres the enlistment of volunteers went forward , Weedon alone turning out 7,000 rifles a day .