Volume 101 — MR. PUNCH'S NAVAL NOVEL.
Reading edition
[Mr. Punch has observed with much gratification the success of various brochures professing to give, under the disguise of retrospect, a prophetic but accurate account of the naval battle of the immediate future. Mr. Punch has read them carefully over and over again. For some time he has been living, so to speak, in the midst of magnificent iron-clad fleets. In vain have torpedoes been launched on their occasionally death-dealing mission against him, in vain have immense shells exploded in his immediate neighbourhood. Nothing, not even the ramming of one whole squadron by another, has succeeded in daunting him. He has remained immovable in the midst of an appalling explosion which reduced a ship's company to a heap of toe-nails. And now, his mind fired by the crash of conflict and the intoxication of almost universal slaughter, he proposes to show the world how a naval novel that means to be accurate as well as vivid, to be bought by the public in thousands as well as to teach useful lessons to politicians and sailors, ought really to be written. Mr. Punch may as well state that he has not submitted this story to any naval experts. His facts speak for themselves, and require no merely professional approval to enhance their value.]