* * * * *

A new torpedo-boat, the _Holland_, has just been launched at
Elizabethport, N.J.

There has been a good deal of mystery all winter about the building of
this boat.

Some said she was being built for Cuba; others that Spain had bought
her.

No one was allowed to enter the yard where she was building, and the
strictest secrecy was kept as to her make and shape.

At last she has been completed and launched, but the inventor, Mr.
Holland, refuses to allow any one to look at his boat until he is quite
satisfied that she is perfect.

He claims for her that she can be navigated as well under water as above
it, and that she will ride on the surface of the waters, or plunge
beneath them, at the will of her master.

The _Holland_ is a gunboat, and will be armed with three kinds of guns:
one to fire on the surface of the water, a submarine gun to use under
the water, and torpedo tubes.

In attacking a vessel, the _Holland_ is intended to fire her
surface-guns, and as soon as she has done such damage as she can with
them, to sink down under the water. She is then to make for the enemy's