The minutes and the hours passed swiftly, as all Fate-laden time does pass, and so the grey morning of a momentous day dawned over the western Yorkshire moors. Just as they were beginning to think about breakfast one of Lennard's assistants came down from the observatory with a copy of an aerogram which read:

"Begins. PARMENTER, Whernside. Pleased to hear of your arrival. Proposition laid before His Majesty in Council and accepted. Hope to see you and your friends during the day.—CHAMBERLAIN. Ends."

"Well, I guess that's all right, gentlemen," said Mr Parmenter, as he handed the aerogram across the big table littered with maps, plans and drawings of localities terrestrial and celestial.

The aerogram passed round and Mr Parmenter continued: "You see, gentlemen, although the United States has the friendliest of feelings towards the British Empire, still, as the President told me the day before yesterday, this invasion of Britain is not our fight, and he does not see his way to making formal declaration of war; so he just gave me a permit for these ships to leave American territory on what the Russians and others call a scientific expedition in order to explore the upper regions of the air and demonstrate the possibility of navigating the air without using gas as lifting power—and that's just how we've got here with our clearance papers and so on all in order; and that means, gentlemen, that we are here, not as citizens of the United States or any other country, but just as a trading company with something to hire out.

"John Castellan, as you will remember from what has been said, sold his Flying Fishes to the German Emperor. Mr Lennard has proved to us by Castellan's own handwriting that he is prepared to sell them back to the British Government at a certain price—and that price is my daughter. Our answer to that is the hiring of our fleet to the British Government, and that offer has been accepted on terms which I think will show a very fair profit when the war is over and we've saved the world."

"I don't think it will take very long to stop the war," said the creator of the aerial battle-fleet, in his quiet voice. "Saving the world is, of course, another matter which no doubt we can leave safely in the hands of Mr Lennard. And now," he continued more gravely, "when is the news of the actual coming of the comet to be made public? It seems to me that everything more or less hangs upon that. The German Emperor, and, therefore, his Allies and, no doubt, half the astronomers of Europe, have been informed of Mr Lennard's discovery. They may or may not believe it, and if they don't we can't blame them because it was only given to them without exact detail."

"And a very good thing too," laughed Lennard, "considering the eccentric way in which the comet is behaving. But everything is settled now, unless, of course, some other mysterious influence gets to work; and, another thing, it's quite certain that before many days the comet must be discovered by other observatories."

"Then, Mr Lennard," said Mr Parmenter, "we've been first in the field so far and I reckon we'd better stop there. Pike's Peak, Washington and Arequipa are all on to it. Europe and Australia will be getting there pretty soon, so I don't think there's much the matter with you sending a message to Greenwich this morning. The people there will find it all right and we can run across from London when we've had our talk with the Prime Minister and post them up in any other details they want. I'll send a wire to Henchell and tell him to hurry up with his gun at Pittsburg and send on news to all the American observatories. Then we'll have breakfast and, as it's a cloudy morning, I think we might start right away for London in the Auriole and get this business fixed up. The enemy doesn't know we're here at all, and so long as we keep above the clouds there's no fear of anyone seeing us. The world has only forty-four more days to live, so we might as well save one of those days while we can."

The result of the somewhat informal council of war, for, in sober truth, it was nothing else, was that the commanders of the airships were invited to breakfast and the whole situation was calmly and plainly discussed by those who from the morning would probably hold the fate of the world in their hands. Not the least important of the aerograms which had been received during the early morning had been one, of course in code, from Captain Erskine of the Ithuriel from Harwich, welcoming the aerial fleet and giving details of his movements in conjunction with it for the next ten days. The aerogram also gave the positions of the lighters loaded with ammunition which he had deposited round the English shores in anticipation of its arrival.

Soon after eight o'clock a heavy mist came down over Whernside and its companion heights, and Mr Parmenter went to one of the windows of the big dining-room and said:

"I reckon this will just about fit us, Mr Lennard, so, if you've got your portmanteau packed, have it sent up to the Auriole at once, and we'll make a start."

Within thirty minutes the start was made, and with it began the most marvellous experience of Gilbert Lennard's life, not even excepting his battle-trip in the conning-tower of the Ithuriel.



CHAPTER XXXIV

THE "AURIOLE"

"All aboard, I think, Captain Roker," said Mr Parmenter, as he walked last to the top of the gangway ladder, and stood square-footed on the white deck of the Auriole.

"All aboard, sir," replied Hiram Roker, "and now I reckon you'll have to excuse me, because I've got to go below just to see that everything's in working order."

"That's all right, Mr Roker. I know where your affections are centred in this ship. You go right along to your engines, and Mr Hingeston will see about the rest of us. Now then, Mr Lennard, you come along into the conning-tower, and whatever you may have seen from the conning-tower of the Ithuriel, I reckon you'll see something more wonderful still before we get to London. You show the way, Newson. See, here it is, just about the same. We've stolen quite a lot of ideas from your friend Erskine; it's a way we've got on our side, you know. But this is going to be one of the exceptions; if we win we are going to pay."

Lennard followed Mr Parmenter down the companion-way into the centre saloon of the Auriole, and through this into a narrow passage which led forward. At the end of this passage was a lift almost identical with that on the Ithuriel. He took his place with Mr Parmenter and Mr Hingeston on this and it rose with them into a little oval chamber almost exactly like the conning-tower of the Ithuriel, with the exception that it was built entirely of hardened papier-mache and glass.

"You see, Mr Lennard," said Mr Parmenter, "we don't want armour here. Anything that hits us smashes us, and that's all there is to it. Our idea is just to keep out of the way and do as much harm as we can from the other side of the clouds. And now, Newson, if you're ready, we might as well get to the other side and have a look at the sun. It's sort of misty and cheerless down here."

"Just as easy as saying so, my dear Ratliffe. I reckon Hiram's got about ten thousand horse-power waiting to be let loose; so we may as well let them go. Hold on, Mr Lennard, and don't breathe any more than you can help for a minute or two."

Lennard, remembering his cruise in the Ithuriel, held on, and also, after filling his lungs, held his breath. Mr Hingeston took hold of the steering-wheel, also very much like that of the Ithuriel, with his left hand, and touched in quick succession three buttons on a signal-board at his right hand.

At the first touch nothing happened as far as Lennard could see or hear. At the second, a soft, whirring sound filled the air, growing swiftly in intensity. At the third, the mist which enveloped Whernside began, as it seemed to him, to flow downwards from the sky in long wreaths of smoke-mingled steam which in a few moments fell away into nothingness. A blaze of sunlight burst out from above—the earth had vanished—and there was nothing visible save the sun and sky overhead, and an apparently illimitable expanse of cloud underneath.

"There's one good thing about airships," said Mr Hingeston, as he took a quarter turn at the wheel, "you can generally get the sort of climate and temperature you want in them." He put his finger on a fourth button and continued: "Now, Mr Lennard, we have so far just pulled her up above the mist. You'll have one of these ships yourself one day, so I may as well tell you that the first signal means 'Stand by'; the second, 'Full power on lifting fans'; the third, 'Stand by after screws'; and the fourth—just this—"

He pushed the button down as he spoke, and Lennard saw the brilliantly white surface of the sunlit mist fall away before and behind them. A few moments later he heard a sort of soft, sighing sound outside the conning-tower. It rose quickly to a scream, and then deepened into a roar. Everything seemed lost save the dome of sky and the sun rising from the eastward. There was nothing else save the silver-grey blur beneath them. As far as he was concerned for the present, the earth had ceased to exist for him five minutes ago.

He didn't say anything, because the circumstances in which he found himself appeared to be more suitable for thinking than talking; he just stood still, holding on to a hand-grip in the wall of the conning-tower, and looked at the man who, with a few touches of his fingers, was hurling this aerial monster through the air at a speed which, as he could see, would have left the Ithuriel out of sight in a few minutes.

In front of Hingeston as he sat at the steering-wheel were two dials. One was that of an aneroid which indicated the height. This now registered four thousand feet. The other was a manometer connected with the speed-gauge above the conning-tower, and the indicator on this was hovering between one hundred and fifty and a hundred and sixty.

"Does that really mean we're travelling over a hundred and fifty miles an hour?" he said.

"Getting on for a hundred and sixty," said Mr Parmenter, taking out his watch. "You see, according to that last wire I sent, we're due in the gardens of Buckingham Palace at ten-thirty sharp, and so we have to hustle a bit."

"Well," replied Lennard, "I must confess that I thought that my little trip in the Ithuriel took me to something like the limits of everyday experience; but this beats it. Whatever you do on the land or in the water you seem to have something under you—something you can depend on, as it were—but here, you don't seem to be anywhere. A friend of mine told me that, after he had taken a balloon trip above the clouds and across the Channel, but he was only travelling forty miles an hour. He had somewhat a trouble to describe that, but this, of course, gets rather beyond the capabilities of the English language."

"Or even the American," added Mr Hingeston, quietly.

"Why, yes," said Mr Parmenter, rolling a cigarette, "I believe we invented the saying about greased lightning, and here we are something like riding on a streak of it."

"Near enough!" laughed Lennard. "We may as well leave it at that, as you say. Still, it is very, very wonderful."

And so it was. As they sped south the mists that hung about the northern moors fell behind, and broken clouds took their place. Through the gaps between these he could see a blur of green and grey and purple. A few blotches of black showed that they were passing over the Lancashire and Midland manufacturing towns; then the clouds became scarcer and an enormous landscape spread out beneath them, intersected by white roads and black lines of railways, and dotted by big patches of woods, long lines of hedgerows and clumps of trees on hilltops. Here and there the white wall of a chalk quarry flashed into view and vanished; and on either side towns and villages came into sight ahead and vanished astern almost before he could focus his field-glasses upon them.

At about twenty minutes after the hour at which they had left Whernside, Mr Hingeston turned to Mr Parmenter and said, pointing downward with the left hand:

"There's London, and the clouds are going. What are we to do? We can't drop down there without being seen, and if we are that will give half the show away. You see, if Castellan once gets on to the idea that we've got airships and are taking them into London, he'll have a dozen of those Flying Fishes worrying about us before we know what we're doing. If we only had one of those good old London fogs under us we could do it."

"Then what's the matter with dropping under the smoke and using that for a fog," said Mr Parmenter, rather shortly. "The enemy is still a dozen miles to southward there; they won't see us, and anyhow, London's a big place. Why, look there now! Talking about clouds, there's the very thing you want. Oceans of it! Can't you run her up a bit and drop through it when the thing's just between us and the enemy?"

As he spoke, Lennard saw what seemed to him like an illimitable sea of huge spumy billows and tumbling masses of foam, which seemed to roll and break over each other without sound. The silent cloud-ocean was flowing up from the sou'west. Mr Hingeston took his bearings by compass, slowed down to fifty miles an hour, and then Lennard saw the masses of cloud rise up and envelop them.

For a few minutes the earth and the heavens disappeared, and he felt that sense of utter loneliness and isolation which is only known to those who travel through the air. He saw Mr Hingeston pull a lever with his right hand and turn the steering-wheel with his left. He felt the blood running up to his head, and then came a moment of giddiness. When he opened his eyes the Auriole was dropping as gently as a bird on the wing towards the trees of the garden behind Buckingham Palace.

"I reckon you did that quite well, Newson," said Mr Parmenter, looking at his watch. "One hour and twenty-five minutes as you said. And now I'm going to shake hands with a real king for the first time."



CHAPTER XXXV

THE "AURIOLE" HOISTS THE WHITE ENSIGN

Rather to Mr Parmenter's surprise his first interview "with a real king" was rather like other business interviews that he had had; in fact, as he said afterwards, of all the business men he had ever met in his somewhat varied career, this quiet-spoken, grey-haired English gentleman was about the best and 'cutest that it had ever been his good fortune to strike.

The negotiations in hand were, of course, the hiring of the Syndicate's fleet of airships to the British Empire during the course of the war. His Majesty had summoned a Privy Council at the Palace, and again Mr Parmenter was somewhat surprised at the cold grip and clear sight which these British aristocrats had in dealing with matters which he thought ought to have been quite outside their experience. Like many Americans, he had expected to meet a sort of glorified country squire, fox-hunter, grouse-killer, trout and salmon-catcher, and so on; but, as he admitted to Lennard later on, from His Majesty downwards they were about the hardest crowd to do business with that he had ever struck.

The terms he offered were half a million a week for the services of twenty-five airships till the war was ended. Two were retained as guardians for Whernside House and the observatory, and three for the Great Lever colliery, and this left twenty, not counting the original Columbia, which Mr Parmenter had bought as his aerial yacht, available for warlike purposes.

The figure was high, as the owners of the aerial battle-fleet admitted, but war was a great deal dearer. They guaranteed to bring the war to a stop within fourteen days, by which time Britain would have a new fleet in being which would be practically the only fleet capable of action in western waters with the exception of the Italian and the American. Given that the Syndicate's airships, acting in conjunction with the Ithuriel and the twelve of her sisters which were now almost ready for launching, could catch and wipe out the Flying Fishes, either above the waters or under them, the result would be that the Allies, cut off from their base of supplies, and with no retreat open to them, would be compelled to surrender; and Mr Parmenter did not consider that five hundred thousand pounds a week was too much to pay for this.

At the conclusion of his speech, setting forth the position of the Syndicate, he said, with a curious dignity which somehow always comes from a sense of power:

"Your Majesty, my Lords and gentlemen, I am just a plain American business man, and so is my friend, the inventor of these ships. We have told you what we believe they can do and we are prepared to show you that we have not exaggerated their powers. There is our ship outside in the gardens. If your Majesty would like to take a little trip through the air and see battle, murder and sudden death—"

"That's very kind of you, Mr Parmenter," laughed His Majesty, "but, much as I personally should like to come with you, I'm afraid I should play a certain amount of havoc with the British Constitution if I did. Kings of England are not permitted to go to war now, but if you would oblige me by taking a note to the Duke of Connaught, who has his headquarters at Reading, and then, if you could manage it under a flag of truce, taking another note to the German Emperor, who, I believe, has pitched his camp at Aldershot, I should be very much obliged."

"Anything your Majesty wishes," replied Mr Parmenter. "Now we've fixed up the deal the fleet is at your disposal and we sail under the British flag; though, to be quite honest, sir, I don't care about flying the white flag first. We could put up as pretty a fight for you along the front of the Allies as any man could wish to see."

"I am sorry, Mr Parmenter," laughed His Majesty, "that the British Constitution compels me to disappoint you, but, as some sort of recompense, I am sure that my Lords in Council will grant you permission to fly the White Ensign on all your ships and the Admiral's flag on your flagship, which, I presume, is the one in which you have come this morning. It is unfortunate that I can only confer the honorary rank of admiral upon Mr Hingeston, as you are not British subjects."

"Then, your Majesty," replied Mr Parmenter, "if it pleases you, I hope you will give that rank to my friend Newson Hingeston, who, as I have told you, has been more than twenty years making these ships perfect. He has created this navy, so I reckon he has got the best claim to be called admiral."

"Does that meet with your approval, my lords?" said the King.

And the heads of the Privy Council bowed as one in approval.

"I thank your Majesty most sincerely," said Hingeston, rising. "I am an American citizen, but I have nothing but British blood in my veins, and therefore I am all the more glad that I am able to bring help to the Motherland when she wants it."

"And I'm afraid we do want it, Mr Hingeston," said His Majesty. "Make the conditions of warfare equal in the air, and I think we shall be able to hold our own on land and sea. Your patent of appointment shall be made out at once, and I will have the letters ready for you in half an hour. And now, gentlemen, I think a glass of wine and a biscuit will not do any of us much harm."

The invitation was, of course, in a certain sense, a command, and when the King rose everyone did the same. While they were taking their wine and biscuits in the blue drawing-room overlooking St James's Park, His Majesty, who never lost his grip of business for a moment, took Lennard aside and had a brief but pregnant conversation with him on the subject of the comet, and as a result of this all the Government manufactories of explosives were placed at his disposal, and with his own hand the King wrote a permit entitling him to take such amount of explosives to Bolton as he thought fit. Then there came the letters to the Duke of Connaught and the German Emperor, and one to the Astronomer Royal at Greenwich.

Then His Majesty and the members of the Council inspected the aerial warship lying on the great lawn in the gardens, and with his own hands King Edward ran the White Ensign to the top of the flagstaff aft; at the same moment the Prince of Wales ran the Admiral's pennant up to the masthead. Everyone saluted the flag, and the King said:

"There, gentlemen, the Auriole is a duly commissioned warship of the British Navy, and you have our authority to do all lawful acts of war against our enemies. Good-morning! I shall hope to hear from you soon."

"I'm sorry, your Majesty," said Mr Parmenter, "that we can't fire the usual salute. These guns of ours are made for business, and we don't have any blank charges."

"I perfectly understand you, Mr Parmenter," replied His Majesty with a laugh. "We shall have to dispense with the ceremony. Still, those are just the sort of guns we want at present. Good-morning, again."

His Majesty went down the gangway and Admiral Hingeston, with Mr Parmenter and Lennard, entered the conning-tower. The lifting-fans began to whirr, and as the Auriole rose from the grass the White Ensign dipped three times in salute to the Royal Standard floating from the flagstaff on the palace roof. Then, as the driving propellers whirled round till they became two intersecting circles of light, the Auriole swept up over the tree-tops and vanished through the clouds. And so began the first voyage of the first British aerial battleship.

The Duke of Connaught had his headquarters at Amersham Hall School on the Caversham side of the Thames, which was, of course, closed in consequence of the war, and half an hour after the Auriole had left the grounds of Buckingham Palace she was settling to the ground in the great quadrangle of the school. The Duke, with Lord Kitchener and two or three other officers of the Staff, were waiting at the upper end where the headmaster's quarters were. As the ship grounded, the gangway ladder dropped and Mr Parmenter said to Lennard:

"That's Lord Kitchener, I see. Now, you know him and I don't, so you'd better go and do the talking. We'll come after and get introduced."

"Ah, Mr Lennard," said Lord Kitchener, holding out his hand. "You're quite a man of surprises. The last time I went with you to see the Kaiser in a motor-car, and now you come to visit His Royal Highness in an airship. Your Royal Highness," he continued, turning to the Duke, "this is Mr Lennard, the finder of this comet which is going to wipe us all out unless he wipes it out with his big gun, and these will be the other gentlemen, I presume, whom His Majesty has wired about."

"Yes," replied Lennard, after he had shaken hands. "This is Mr Parmenter whose telescope enabled me to find the comet, and this is Mr—or I ought now to say Admiral—Hingeston, who had the honour of receiving that rank from His Majesty half an hour ago."

"What!" exclaimed the Duke. "Half an hour! Are you quite serious, gentlemen? The telegram's only just got here."

"Well, your Royal Highness," said Mr Parmenter, "that may be because we didn't come full speed, but if you would get on board that flagship, sir, we'd take you to Buckingham Palace and back in half an hour, or, if you would like a trip to Aldershot to interview the German Emperor, and then one to Greenwich, we'll engage to have you back here safe by dinner time."

"Nothing would delight me more," replied the Duke, smiling, "but at present my work is here and I cannot leave it. Lord Kitchener, how would you like that sort of trip?"

"If you will give me leave till dinner-time, sir," laughed K. of K., "there's nothing I should like better."

"Oh, that goes without saying, of course," replied the Duke, "and now, gentlemen, I understand from the King's telegram that there are one or two matters you want to talk over with us. Will you come inside?"

"If your Royal Highness will excuse me," said Admiral Hingeston, "I think I'd better remain on board. You see, we may have been sighted, and if there are any of those Flying Fishes about you naturally wouldn't want this place blown to ruins; so, while you are having your talk, I reckon I'll get up a few hundred feet, and be back, say, in half an hour."

"Very well," said the Duke. "That's very kind of you. Your ship certainly looks a fairly capable protector. By the way, what is the range of those guns of yours? I must say they have a very business-like look about them."

"Six thousand yards point blank, your Royal Highness," replied the Admiral, "and, according to elevation, anything up to fifteen miles; suppose, for instance, that we were shooting at a town. In fact, if we were not under orders from His Majesty to fly the flag of truce I would guarantee to have all the Allied positions wrecked by to-morrow morning with this one ship. As you will see from the papers which Mr Parmenter and Mr Lennard have brought, nineteen other airships are coming south to-night and, unless the German Emperor and his Allies give in, the war will be over in about six days."

"And when you come back to dinner to-night, Admiral Hingeston, you will have my orders to bring it to an end within that time."

"I sincerely hope so, sir," replied Admiral Hingeston, as he raised his right hand to the peak of his cap. "I can assure you, that nothing would please me better."

As the lifting-fans began to spin round and the Auriole rose from the gravelled courtyard, Lord Kitchener looked up with a twinkle in his brilliant blue eyes and said:

"I wonder what His Majesty of Germany will think of that thing when he sees it. I suppose that means the end of fighting on land and sea—at least, it looks like it."

"I hope to be able to convince your lordship that it does before to-morrow morning," said Lennard, as they went towards the dining-room.

Then came half an hour's hard work, which resulted in the allotment of the aerial fleet to positions from which the vessels could co-operate with the constantly increasing army of British citizen-soldiers who were now passing southward, eastward and westward, as fast as the crowded trains could carry them. Every position was worked out to half a mile. The details of the newly-created fleet in British waters and of those ships which were arriving from the West Indies and the Mediterranean were all settled, and, as the clock in the drawing-room chimed half-past eleven, the Auriole swung down in a spiral curve round the chimney-pots and came to rest on the gravel.

"There she is; time's up!" said Lord Kitchener, rising from his seat. "I suppose it will only take us half an hour or so to run down to Aldershot. I wonder what His Majesty of Germany will say to us this time. I suppose if he kicks seriously we have your Royal Highness's permission to haul down the flag of truce?"

"Certainly," replied the Duke. "If he does that, of course, you will just use your own discretion."



CHAPTER XXXVI

A PARLEY AT ALDERSHOT

Lord Kitchener had probably never had so bitter an experience as he had when the Auriole began to slow down over the plain of Aldershot. Never could he, or any other British soldier, have dreamt six months ago that the German, Austrian, French and Russian flags would have been seen flying side by side over the headquarters of the great camp, or that the vast rolling plains would be covered, as they were now, by hosts of horse, foot and artillery belonging to hostile nations.

He did not say anything, neither did the others; it was a time for thinking rather than talking; but he looked, and as Lennard watched his almost expressionless face and the angrily-glittering blue eyes, he felt that it would go ill with an enemy whom K. of K. should have at his mercy that day.

But all the bitterness of feeling was by no means on one side. It so happened that the three Imperial leaders of the invaders and General Henriot, the French Commander-in-Chief, were holding a Council of War at the time when the Auriole made her appearance. Of course, her arrival was instantly reported, and as a matter of fact the drilling came to a sudden momentary stop at the sight of this amazing apparition. The three monarchs and the great commander immediately went outside, and within a few moments they were four of the angriest men in England. A single glance, even at that distance, was enough to convince them that, at anyrate in the air, the Flying Fishes would be no match for an equal or even an inferior number of such magnificent craft as this.

"God's thunder!" exclaimed the Kaiser, using his usual expletive. "She's flying the White Ensign and an admiral's pennant, and, yes, a flag of truce."

"Yes," said the Tsar, lowering his glasses, "that is so. What has happened? I certainly don't like the look of her; she's an altogether too magnificent craft from our point of view. In fact it would be decidedly awkward if the English happened to have a fleet of them. They would be terribly effective acting in co-operation with that submarine ram. Let us hope that she has come on a message of peace."

"I understood, your Majesty," said the Kaiser, shortly, "that we had agreed to make peace at Windsor, and nowhere else."

"Of course, I hope we shall do so," said the Tsar, "but considering our numbers, and the help we have had from Mr Castellan's fleet, I'm afraid we are rather a long time getting there, and we shall be longer still if the British have any considerable number of ships like this one."

"Airships or no airships," replied William the Second, "whatever message this ship is bringing, I will listen to nothing but surrender while I have an Army Corps on English soil. They must be almost beaten by this time; they can't have any more men to put in the field, while we have millions. To go back now that we have got so far would be worse than defeat—it would be disaster. Of course, your Majesty can have no more delusions than I have on that subject."

A conversation on almost similar terms had been taking place meanwhile between the Emperor of Austria and General Henriot. Then the Auriole, after describing a splendid curve round the headquarters, dropped as quietly as a bird on the lawn in front, the gangway ladder fell over along the side, and Lord Kitchener, in the parade uniform of a general, descended and saluted the four commanders.

"Good-morning, your Majesties. Good-morning, General Henriot."

"I see that your lordship has come as bearer of the flag of truce this time," said the Kaiser, when salutes had been exchanged, "and I trust that in the interests of humanity you have come also with proposals which may enable us to put an honourable end to this terrible conflict, and I am sure that my Imperial brothers and the great Republic which General Henriot represents will be only too happy to accede to them."

The others nodded in approval, but said nothing, as it had been more or less reluctantly agreed by them that the War Lord of Germany was to be the actual head and Commander-in-Chief of the Allies. K. of K. looked at him straight in the eyes—not a muscle of his face moved, and from under his heavy moustache there came in the gentlest of voices the astounding words:

"Yes, I have come from His Majesty King Edward with proposals of surrender—that is to say, for your surrender, and that of all the Allied Forces now on British soil."

William the Second literally jumped, and his distinguished colleagues stared at him and each other in blank amazement. By this time Lennard had come down the gangway ladder, and was standing beside Lord Kitchener. Mr Parmenter and the latest addition to the British Naval List were strolling up and down the deck of the Auriole smoking cigars and chatting as though this sort of thing happened every day.

"I see that your Majesty hardly takes me seriously," said Lord Kitchener, still in the same quiet voice, "but if your Majesties will do Mr Lennard and myself the favour of an interview in one of the rooms here, which used to belong to me, I think we shall be able to convince you that we have the best of reasons for being serious."

"Ah, yes, Mr Lennard," replied the Kaiser, looking at him with just a suspicion of anxiety in his glance. "Good-morning. Have you come to tell us something more about this wonderful comet of yours? It seems to me some time making itself visible."

"It is visible every night now, your Majesty," said Lennard; "that is, if you know where to look for it."

"Ah, that sounds interesting," said the Tsar, moving towards the door. "Suppose we go back into the Council Room and hear something about it."

As they went in the Auriole rose from the ground, and began making a series of slow, graceful curves over the two camps at the height of about a thousand feet. Neither Mr Parmenter, nor his friend the Admiral, knew exactly how far the flag of truce would be respected, and, moreover, a little display of the Auriole's powers of flight might possibly help along negotiations, and, as a matter of fact, they did; for the sight of this huge fabric circling above them, with her long wicked-looking guns pointing in all directions, formed a spectacle which to the officers and men of the various regiments and battalions scattered about the vast plain was a good deal more interesting than it was pleasant. The Staff officers knew, too, that the strange craft possessed two very great advantages over the Flying Fishes; she was much faster, and she could rise direct from the ground—whereas the Fishes, like their namesakes, could only rise from the water. In short, it did not need a soldier's eye to see that all their stores and magazines, to say nothing of their own persons, were absolutely at the mercy of the British aerial flagship. The Flying Fishes were down in the Solent refitting and filling up with motive power and ammunition preparatory to the general advance on London.

As soon as they were seated in the Council Chamber it did not take Lord Kitchener and Lennard very long to convince their Majesties and General Henriot that they were very much in earnest about the matter of surrender. In fact, the only terms offered were immediate retirement behind the line of the North Downs, cessation of hostilities and surrender of the Flying Fishes, and all British subjects, including John Castellan, who might be on board them.

"The reason for that condition," said Lord Kitchener, "Mr Lennard will be able to make plain to your Majesties."

Then Lennard handed Castellan's letter to the Kaiser, and explained the change of calculations necessitated by the diversion of the planet from its orbit.

"That is not the letter of an honest fighting man. I am sure that your Majesties will agree with me in that. I may say that I have talked the matter over with Mr Parmenter and our answer is in the negative. This is not warfare; it is only abduction, possibly seasoned with murder, and we call those things crimes in England, and if such a crime were permitted by those in whose employment John Castellan presumably is, we should punish them as well as him."

"What!" exclaimed the Kaiser, clenching his fists, "do you, a civilian, an ordinary citizen, dare to say such words to us? Lord Kitchener, can you permit such an outrage as this?"

"The other outrage would be a much greater one, especially if it were committed with the tacit sanction of the three greatest Powers in Europe," replied K. of K., quietly. "That is one of our chief reasons for asking for the surrender of the Flying Fishes. There is no telling what harm this wild Irishman of yours might do if he got on the loose, not only here but perhaps in your own territories, if he were allowed to commit a crime like this, and then went, as he would have to do, into the outlaw business."

"I think that there is great justice in what Lord Kitchener says," remarked His Majesty of Austria. "We must not forget that if this man Castellan did run amok with any of those diabolical contrivances of his, he would be just as much above human law as he would be outside human reach. I must confess that that appears to me to be one of the most serious features in the situation. Your Majesties, as well as the French Government, are aware that I have been all along opposed to the use of these horrible engines of destruction, and now you see that their very existence seems to have called others into being which may be even more formidable."

"Mr Lennard can tell your Majesties more about that than I can," said K. of K., with one of his grimmest smiles.

"As far as the air is concerned," said Lennard, very quietly, "we can both out-fly and out-shoot the Flying Fishes; while as regards the water, eleven more Ithuriels will be launched during the week. We have twenty-five airships ready for action over land or sea, and, for my own part, I think that if your Majesties knew all the details of the situation you would consider the terms which his lordship has put before you quite generous. But, after all," he continued, in a suddenly changed tone, "it seems, if you will excuse my saying so, rather childish to talk about terms of peace or war when the world itself has less than six weeks to live if John Castellan manages to carry out his threat."

"And you feel absolutely certain of that, Mr Lennard?" asked the Tsar, in a tone of very serious interest. "It seems rather singular that none of the other astronomers of Europe or America have discovered this terrible comet of yours."

"I have had the advantage of the finest telescope in the world, your Majesty," replied Lennard, with a smile, "and of course I have published no details. There was no point in creating a panic or getting laughed at before it was necessary. But now that the orbit has altered, and the catastrophe will come so much sooner, any further delay would be little short of criminal. In fact, we have to-day telegraphed to all the principal observatories in the world, giving exact positions for to-night, corrected to differences of time and latitude. We shall hear the verdict in the morning, and during to-morrow. Meanwhile we are going to Greenwich to get the observatory there to work on my calculations, and if your Majesties would care to appoint an officer of sufficient knowledge to come with us, and see the comet for himself, he will, I am sure, be quite welcome."

"A very good suggestion, Mr Lennard," said Lord Kitchener, "very."

"Then," replied the Tsar, quickly, "as astronomy has always been a great hobby with me, will you allow me to come? Of course, you have my word that I shall see nothing on the journey that you don't want me to see."

"We shall be delighted," said the British envoy, cordially, "and as for seeing things, you will be at perfect liberty to use your eyes as much as you like."

The Tsar's august colleagues entered fully into the sporting spirit in which he had made his proposal, and a verbal agreement to suspend all hostilities till his return was ratified in a glass of His Majesty of Austria's Imperial Tokay.



CHAPTER XXXVII

THE VERDICT OF SCIENCE

Although the Tsar had made trips with John Castellan in the Flying Fish, he had never had quite such an aerial experience as his trip to Greenwich. The Auriole rose vertically in the air, soared upward in a splendid spiral curve, and vanished through the thin cloud layer to the north-eastward. Twenty minutes of wonder passed like so many seconds, and Admiral Hingeston, beside whom he was standing in the conning-tower, said quietly:

"We're about there, your Majesty."

"Greenwich already," exclaimed the Tsar, pulling out his watch. "It is forty miles, and we have not been quite twenty minutes yet."

"That's about it," said the Admiral, "this craft can do her two miles a minute, and still have a good bit in hand if it came to chasing anything."

He pulled back a couple of levers as he spoke and gave a quarter turn to the wheel. The great airship took a downward slide, swung round to the right, and in a few moments she had dropped quietly to the turf of Greenwich Park alongside the Observatory.

Lennard's calculations had already reached the Astronomer Royal, and he and his chief assistant had had time to make a rapid run through them, and they had found that his figures, and especially the inexplicable change in the orbit, tallied almost exactly with observations of a possibly new comet for the last two months or so.

They were not quite prepared for the coming of an Imperial—and hostile—visitor in an airship, accompanied by the discoverer of the comet, the millionaire who owned the great telescope, and an American gentleman in the uniform of a British admiral; but those were extraordinary times, and so extraordinary happenings might be expected. The astronomer and his staff, being sober men of science, whose business was with other worlds rather than this one, accepted the situation calmly, gave their visitors lunch, talked about everything but the war, and then they all spent a pleasant and instructive afternoon in a journey through Space in search of the still invisible Celestial Invader.

When they had finished, the two sets of calculations balanced exactly—to the millionth of a degree and the thousandth of a second. At ten seconds to twelve, midnight, May the first, the comet, if not prevented by some tremendously powerful agency, would pierce the earth's atmosphere, as Lennard had predicted.

"It is a marvellous piece of work, Mr Lennard, however good an instrument you had. As an astronomer I congratulate you heartily, but as citizens of the world I hope we shall be able to congratulate you still more heartily on the results which you expect that big gun of yours to bring about."

"I'm sure I hope so," said Lennard, toying rather absently with his pencil.

"And if the cannon is not fired, and the Pittsburg one does not happen to be exactly laid, for there is a very great difference in longitude, what will be the probable results, Mr Astronomer?" asked the Tsar, upon whom the lesson of the afternoon had by no means been lost.

"If the comet is what Mr Lennard expects it to be, your Majesty," was the measured reply, "then, if this Invader is not destroyed, his predictions will be fulfilled to the letter. In other words, on the second of May there will not be a living thing left on earth."

At three minutes past ten that evening the Tsar looked into the eye-piece of the Greenwich Equatorial, and saw a double-winged yellow shape floating in the centre of the field of vision. He watched it for long minutes, listening to the soft clicking of the clockwork, which was the only sound that broke the silence. During the afternoon he had seen photographs of the comet taken every night that the weather made a clear observation possible. The series tallied exactly with what he now saw. The gradual enlargement and brightening; the ever-increasing exactness of definition, and the separation of the nucleus from the two wings. All that he had seen was as pitilessly inexorable as the figures which contained the prophecy of the world's approaching doom. He rose from his seat and said quietly, yet with a strange impressiveness:

"Gentlemen, I, for one, am satisfied and converted. What the inscrutable decrees of Providence may or may not be, we have no right to inquire; but whether this is a judgment from the Most High brought upon us by our sins, or whether it is merely an ordinary cataclysm of Nature against which we may be able to protect ourselves, does not come into the question which is in dispute amongst us. Humanity has an unquestioned right to preserve its existence as far as it is possible to do so. If it is possible to arrange for another conference at Aldershot to-morrow, I think I may say that there will be a possibility of arriving at a reasonable basis of negotiations. And now, if it is convenient, Lord Kitchener, I should like to get back to camp. Much has been given to me to think about to-night, and you know we Russians have a very sound proverb: 'Take thy thoughts to bed with thee, for the morning is wiser than the evening.'"

"That, your Majesty, has been my favourite saying ever since I knew that men had to think about work before they were able to do it properly." So spoke the man who had worked for fourteen years to win one battle, and crush a whole people at a single stroke—after which he made the best of friends with them, and loyal subjects of his Sovereign.

They took their leave of the astronomer and his staff, and a few minutes later the Auriole, still flying the flag of truce, cleared the tree-tops and rose into the serene starlit atmosphere above them.

When the airship had gained a height of a thousand feet, and was heading south-west towards Aldershot at a speed of about a hundred miles an hour, the Admiral noticed a shape not unlike that of his own vessel, on his port quarter, making almost the same direction as he was. The Tsar and Lord Kitchener were sitting one on either side of him, as he stood at the steering-wheel, as the ominous shape came into view.

"I'm afraid that's one of your Flying Fishes, your Majesty, taking news from the Continent to Aldershot. Yes, there goes her searchlight. She's found us out by now. She knows we're not one of her crowd, and so I suppose we shall have to fight her. Yes, I thought so, she means fight. She's trying to get above us, which means dropping a few of those torpedoes on us, and sending us across the edge of eternity before we know we've got there."

"You will, of course, do your duty, Admiral," replied the Tsar very quietly, but with a quick tightening of the lips. "It is a most unfortunate occurrence, but we must all take the fortune of war as it comes. I hope you will not consider my presence here for a moment. Remember that I asked myself."

"There won't be any danger to us, your Majesty," replied the Admiral, with a marked emphasis on the "us." "Still, we have too many valuable lives on board to let him get the drop on us."

As he spoke he thrust one lever on the right hand forward, and pulled another back; then he took the telephone receiver down from the wall, and said:

"See that thing? She's trying to get the drop on us. Full speed ahead: I'm going to rise. Hold on, gentlemen."

They held on. The Tsar saw the jumping searchlights, which flashed up from the little grey shape to the southward, suddenly fall away and below them. The Admiral touched the wheel with his left hand, and the Auriole sprang forward. The other tried to do the same, but she seemed to droop and fall behind. Admiral Hingeston took down the receiver again and said:

"Ready—starboard guns—now: fire!"

Of course, there was no report; only a brilliant blaze of light to the southward, and an atmospheric shock which made the Auriole shudder as she passed on her way. The Tsar looked out to the spot where the blaze of flame had burst out. The other airship had vanished.

"She has gone. That is awful," he said, with a shake in his voice.

"As I said before, I'm sorry, your Majesty," replied the Admiral, "but it had to be done. If he'd got the top side of us we should have been in as little pieces as he is now. I only hope it's John Castellan's craft. If it is it will save a lot of trouble to both sides."

The Tsar did not reply. He was too busy thinking, and so was Lord Kitchener.

That night there were divided counsels in the headquarters of the Allies at Aldershot, and the Kaiser and his colleagues went to bed between two and three in the morning without having come to anything like a definite decision. As a matter of fact, within the last few hours things had become a little too complicated to be decided upon in anything like a hurry.

While the potentates of the Alliance were almost quarrelling as to what was to be done, the Auriole paid a literally flying visit to the British positions, and then the hospitals. At Caversham, Lennard found Norah Castellan taking her turn of night duty by the bedside of Lord Westerham, who had, after all, got through his desperate ride with a couple of bullets through his right ribs, and a broken left arm; but he had got his despatches in all the same, though nearly two hours late—for which he apologised before he fainted. In one of the wards at Windsor Camp he found Auriole, also on night duty, nursing with no less anxious care the handsome young Captain of Uhlans who had taken Lord Whittinghame's car in charge in Rochester. Mrs O'Connor had got a badly-wounded Russian Vice-Admiral all to herself, and, as she modestly put it, was doing very nicely with him.

Meanwhile the news of the truce was proclaimed, and the opposing millions laid themselves down to rest with the thankful certainty that it would not be broken for at least a night and a day by the whistle of the life-hunting bullet or the screaming roar and heart-shaking crash of the big shell which came from some invisible point five or six miles away. In view of this a pleasant little dinner-party was arranged for at the Parmenter Palace at eight the next evening. There would be no carriages. The coming and parting guests would do their coming and going in airships. Mr Parmenter expressed the opinion that, under the circumstances, this would be at once safer and more convenient.

But before that dinner-party broke up, the world had something very different from feasting and merrymaking, or even invasion and military conquest or defeat, to think of.

The result of Lennard's telegrams and cables had been that every powerful telescope in the civilised world had been turned upon that distant region of the fields of Space out of which the Celestial Invader was rushing at a speed of thousands of miles a minute to that awful trysting-place, at which it and the planet Terra were to meet and embrace in the fiery union of death.

From every observatory, from Greenwich to Arequipa, and from Pike's Peak to Melbourne, came practically identical messages, which, in their combined sense, came to this:

"Lennard's figures absolutely correct. Collision with comet apparently inevitable. Consequences incalculable."



CHAPTER XXXVIII

WAITING FOR DOOM

This was the all-important news which the inhabitants of every town which possessed a well-informed newspaper read the next morning. It was, in the more important of them, followed by digests of the calculations which had made this terrific result a practical certainty. These, again, were followed by speculations, some deliberately scientific, and some wild beyond the dreams of the most hopeless hysteria.

Men and women who for a generation or so had been making large incomes by prophesying the end of the world as a certainty about every seven years—and had bought up long leaseholds meanwhile—now gambled with absolute certainty on the shortness of the public memory, revised their figures, and proved to demonstration that this was the very thing they had been foretelling all along.

First—outside scientific circles—came blank incredulity. The ordinary man and woman in the street had not room in their brains for such a tremendous idea as this—fact or no fact. They were already filled with a crowd of much smaller and, to them, much more pressing concerns, than a collision with a comet which you couldn't even see except through a big telescope: and then that sort of thing had been talked and written about hundreds of times before and had never come to anything, so why should this?

But when the morning papers dated—somewhat ominously—the twenty-fifth of March, quarter day, informed their readers that, granted fine weather, the comet would be visible to the naked eye from sunset to sunrise according to longitude that night, the views of the man and the woman who had taken the matter so lightly underwent a very considerable change.

While the comet could only be seen, save by astronomers, in the photographs that could be bought in any form from a picture-postcard to a five-guinea reproduction of the actual thing, there was still an air of unconvincing unreality about. Of course it might be coming, but it was still very far away, and it might not arrive after all. Yet when that fateful night had passed and millions of sleepless eyes had seen the south-western stars shining through a pale luminous mist extended in the shape of two vast filmy wings with a brighter spot of yellow flame between them, the whole matter seemed to take on a very different and a much more serious aspect.

The fighting had come to a sudden stop, as though by a mutually tacit agreement. Not even the German Emperor could now deny that Lennard had made no idle threat at Canterbury when he had given him the destruction of the world as an alternative to the conquest of Britain. Still, he did not quite believe in the possibility of that destruction even yet, in spite of what the Tsar had told him and what he had learned from other sources. He still wanted to fight to a finish, and, as Deputy European Providence, he had a very real objection to the interference of apparently irresponsible celestial bodies with his carefully-thought-out plans for the ordering of mundane civilisation on German commercial lines. Whether they liked it or not, it must be the best thing in the end for them: otherwise how could He have come to think it all out?

Meanwhile, to make matters worse from his point of view, John Castellan had refused absolutely to accept any modification of the original terms, and he had replied to an order from headquarters to report himself and the ships still left under his control by loading the said ships with ammunition and motive power and then disappearing from the field of action without leaving a trace as to his present or future whereabouts behind him, and so, as far as matters went, entirely fulfilling the Tsar's almost prophetic fears.

And then, precisely at the hour, minute and second predicted, five hours, thirty minutes and twenty-five seconds, a.m., on the 31st of March, the comet became visible in daylight about two and a half degrees south-westward of the Morning Star. Twenty-four hours later the two wings came into view, and the next evening the Invader looked like some gigantic bird of prey swooping down from its eyrie somewhere in the heights of Space upon the trembling and terrified world. The professional prophets said, with an excellent assumption of absolute conviction, that it was nothing less awful than the Destroying Angel himself in propria persona.

At length, when excitement had developed into frenzy, and frenzy into an almost universal delirium, two cablegrams crossed each other along the bed of the Atlantic Ocean. One was to say that the Pittsburg gun was ready, and the other that the loading of the Bolton Baby—feeding, some callous humorist of the day called it—was to begin the next morning. This meant that there was just a week—an ordinary working week, between the human race and something very like the Day of Judgment.

The next day Lennard set all the existing wires of the world thrilling with the news that the huge projectile, charged with its thirty hundredweight of explosives, was resting quietly in its place on the top of a potential volcano which, loosened by the touch of a woman's hand, was to hurl it through space and into the heart of the swiftly-advancing Invader from the outmost realms of Space.



CHAPTER XXXIX

THE LAST FIGHT

It so happened that on the first night the German Emperor saw the comet without the aid of a telescope he was attacked by one of those fits of hysteria which, according to ancient legend, are the hereditary curse of the House of Brandenburg. He had made possible that which had been impossible for over a thousand years—he had invaded England in force, and he had established himself and his Allies in all the greatest fortress-camps of south-eastern England. After all, the story of the comet might be a freak of the scientific imagination; there might be some undetected error in the calculations. One great mistake had been made already, either by the comet or its discoverer—why not another?

"No," he said to himself, as he stood in front of the headquarters at Aldershot looking up at the comet, "we've heard about you before, my friend. Astronomers and other people have prophesied a dozen times that you or something like you were going to bring about the end of the world, but somehow it never came off; whereas it is pretty certain that the capture of London will come off if it is only properly managed. At anyrate, I am inclined to back my chances of taking London against yours of destroying it."

And so he made his decision. He sent a telegram to Dover ordering an aerogram to be sent to John Castellan, whose address was now, of course, anywhere in the air or sea; the message was to be repeated from all the Continental stations until he was found. It contained the first capitulation that the War Lord of Germany had ever made. He accepted the terms of his Admiral of the Air and asked him to bring his fleet the following day to assist in a general assault on London—London once taken, John Castellan could have the free hand that he had asked for.

In twelve hours a reply came back from the Jotunheim in Norway. Meanwhile, the Kaiser, as Generalissimo of the Allied Forces, telegraphed orders to all the commanders of army corps in England to prepare for a final assault on the positions commanding London within twenty-four hours. At the same time he sent telegraphic orders to all the centres of mobilisation in Europe, ordering the advance of all possible reinforcements with the least delay. It was his will that four million men should march on London that week, and, in spite of the protests of the Emperor of Austria and the Tsar, his will was obeyed.

So the truce was broken and the millions advanced, as it were over the brink of Eternity, towards London. But the reinforcements never came. Every transport that steamed out of Bremen, Hamburg, Kiel, Antwerp, Brest or Calais, vanished into the waters; for now the whole squadron of twelve Ithuriels had been launched and had got to work, and the British fleets from the Mediterranean, the China Seas and the North Atlantic, had once more asserted Britain's supremacy on the seas. In addition to these, ten first-class battleships, twelve first and fifteen second-class cruisers and fifty destroyers had been turned out by the Home yards, and so the British Islands were once more ringed with an unbreakable wall of steel. One invasion had been accomplished, but now no other was possible. The French Government absolutely refused to send any more men. The Italian armies had crossed the Alps at three points, and every soldier left in France was wanted to defend her own fortresses and cities from the attack of the invader.

But, despite all this, the War Lord held to his purpose; and that night the last battle ever fought between civilised nations began, and when the sun rose on the sixteenth of April, its rays lit up what was probably the most awful scene of carnage that human eyes had ever looked upon. The battle-line of the invaders had extended from Sheerness to Reading in a sort of irregular semicircle, and it was estimated afterwards that not less than a million and a half of killed and wounded men, fifty thousand horses and hundreds of disabled batteries of light and heavy artillery strewed the long line of defeat and conquest.

The British aerial fleet of twenty ships had made victory for the defenders a practical certainty. As Admiral Hingeston had told the Tsar, they could both out-fly and out-shoot the Flying Fishes. This they did and more. The moment that a battery got into position half a dozen searchlights were concentrated on it. Then came a hail of shells, and a series of explosions which smashed the guns to fragments and killed every living thing within a radius of a hundred yards. Infantry and cavalry shared the same fate the moment that any formation was made for an attack on the British positions; the storm of fire was made ten-fold more terrible by the unceasing bombardment from the air; and the brilliant glow of the searchlights thrown down from a height of a thousand feet or so along the lines of the attacking forces made the work of the defenders comparatively easy, for the man in a fight who can see and is not seen is worth several who are seen and yet fight in the dark.

But the assailants were exposed to an even more deadly danger than artillery or rifle fire. The catastrophe which had overwhelmed the British Fleet in Dover Harbour was repeated with ten-fold effect; but this time the tables were turned. The British aerial fleet hunted the Flying Fishes as hawks hunt partridges, and whenever one of them was found over a hostile position a shell from the silent, flameless guns hit her, and down she went to explode like a volcano amongst masses of cavalry, infantry and artillery, and of this utter panic was the only natural result.

Eleven out of the twelve Flying Fishes were thus accounted for. What had become of the twelfth no one knew. It might have been partially crippled and fallen far away from the great battlefield; or it might have turned tail and escaped, and in this case it was a practical certainty, at least in Lennard's mind, that it was John Castellan's own vessel and that he, seeing that the battle was lost, had taken her away to some unknown spot in order to fulfil the threat contained in his letter, and for this reason five of the British airships were at once despatched to mount guard over the great cannon at Bolton.

The defeat of the Allies both by land and sea, though accomplished at the eleventh hour of the world's threatened fate, had been so complete and crushing, and the death-total had reached such a ghastly figure, that Austria, Russia and France flatly refused to continue the Alliance. After all the tremendous sacrifice that had been made in men, money and material they had not even reached London. From their outposts on the Surrey hills they could see the vast city, silent and apparently sleeping under its canopy of hazy clouds, but that was all. It was still as distant from them as the poles; and so the Allies looked upon it and then upon their dead, and admitted, by their silence if not by their words, that Britain the Unconquered was unconquerable still.

The German Emperor's fit had passed. Even he was appalled when upon that memorable morning he received the joint note of his three Allies and learnt the awful cost of that one night's fighting.

Just as he was countersigning the Note of Capitulation in the headquarters at Aldershot, the Auriole swung round from the northward and descended on to the turf flying the flag of truce. He saw it through the window, got up, put his right hand on the butt of the revolver in his hip-pocket, thought hard for one fateful moment, then took it away and went out.

At the gate he met Lord Kitchener; they exchanged salutes and shook hands, and the Kaiser said:

"Well, my lord, what are the terms?"

K. of K. laughed, simply because he couldn't help it. The absolute hard business of the question went straight to the heart of the best business man in the British Army.

"I am not here to make or accept terms, your Majesty," he said. "I am only the bearer of a message, and here it is."

Then he handed the Kaiser an envelope bearing the Royal Arms.

"I am instructed to take your reply back as soon as possible," he continued. Then he saluted again and walked away towards the Auriole.

The Kaiser opened the envelope and read—an invitation to lunch from his uncle, Edward of England, and a request to bring his august colleagues with him to talk matters over. There was no hint of battle, victory or defeat. It was a quite commonplace letter, but all the same it was one of those triumphs of diplomacy which only the first diplomatist in Europe knew how to achieve. Then he too laughed as he folded up the letter and went to Lord Kitchener and said:

"This is only an invitation to lunch, and you have told me you are not here to propose or take terms. That, of course, was official, but personally—"

K. of K. stiffened up, and a harder glint came into his eyes.

"I can say nothing personally, your Majesty, except to ask you to remember my reply to Cronje."

The Kaiser remembered that reply of three words, "Surrender, or fight," and he knew that he could not fight, save under a penalty of utter destruction. He went back into his room, brought back the joint note which he had just received, and gave it to Lord Kitchener, just as it was, without even putting it into an envelope, saying:

"That is our answer. We are beaten, and those who lose must pay."

Lord Kitchener looked over the note and said, in a somewhat dry tone:

"This, your Majesty, I read as absolute surrender."

"It is," said William the Second, his hand instinctively going to the hilt of his sword. Lord Kitchener shook his head, and said very quietly and pleasantly:

"No, your Majesty, not that. But," he said, looking up at the four flags which were still flying above the headquarters, "I should be obliged if you would give orders to haul those down and hoist the Jack instead."

There was no help for it, and no one knew better than the Kaiser the strength there was behind those quietly-spoken words. The awful lesson of the night before had taught him that this beautiful cruiser of the air which lay within a few yards of him could in a few moments rise into the air and scatter indiscriminate death and destruction around her, and so the flags came down, the old Jack once more went up, and Aldershot was English ground again.

Wherefore, not to enter into unnecessary details, the Auriole, instead of making the place a wilderness as Lord Kitchener had quite determined to do, became an aerial pleasure yacht. Orderlies were sent to the Russian, Austrian and French headquarters, and an hour later the chiefs of the Allies were sitting in the deck saloon of the airship, flying at about sixty miles an hour towards London.

The lunch at Buckingham Palace was an entirely friendly affair. King Edward had intended it to be a sort of international shake-hands all round. The King of Italy was present, as the Columbia had been despatched early in the morning to bring him from Rome, and had picked up the French President on the way back at Paris. The King gave the first and only toast, and that was:

"Your Majesties and Monsieur le President, in the name of Humanity, I ask you to drink to Peace."

They drank, and so ended the last war that was ever fought on British soil.



EPILOGUE

"AND ON EARTH, PEACE!"

On the morning of the thirtieth of April, the interest of the whole world was centred generally upon Bolton, and particularly upon the little spot of black earth enclosed by a ring of Bessemer furnaces in the midst of which lay another ring, a ring of metal, the mouth of the great cannon, whose one and only shot was to save or lose the world. At a height of two thousand feet, twenty airships circled at varying distances round the mouth of the gun, watching for the one Flying Fish which had not been accounted for in the final fight.

The good town of Bolton itself was depopulated. For days past the comet had been blazing brighter and brighter, even in the broad daylight, and the reports which came pouring in every day from the observatories of the world made it perfectly clear that Lennard's calculations would be verified at midnight.

Mr Parmenter and his brother capitalists had guaranteed two millions sterling as compensation for such destruction of property as might be brought about by the discharge of the cannon, and, coupled with this guarantee, was a request that everyone living within five miles of what had been the Great Lever pit should leave, and this was authorised by a Royal Proclamation. There was no confusion, because, when faced with great issues, the Lancashire intellect does not become confused. It just gets down to business and does it. So it came about that the people of Bolton, rich and poor, millionaire and artisan, made during that momentous week a general flitting, taking with them just such of their possessions as would be most precious to them if the Fates permitted them to witness the dawn of the first of May.

The weather, strangely enough, had been warm and sunny for the last fortnight, despite the fact that the ever-brightening Invader from Space gradually outshone the sun itself, and so on all the moors round Bolton there sprang up a vast town of tents and ready-made bungalows from Chorley round by Darwen to Bury. Thousands of people had come from all parts of the kingdom to see the fate of the world decided. What was left of the armies of the Allies were also brought up by train, and all the British forces were there as well. They were all friends now for there was no more need for fighting, since the events of the next few hours would decide the fate of the human race.

As the sun set over the western moors a vast concourse of men and women, representing almost every nationality on earth, watched the coming of the Invader, brightening now with every second and over-arching the firmament with its wide-spreading wings. There were no sceptics now. No one could look upon that appalling Shape and not believe, and if absolute confirmation of Lennard's prophecy had been wanted it would have been found in the fact that the temperature began to rise after sunset. That had never happened before within the memory of man.

The crowning height of the moors which make a semicircle to the north-west of Bolton is Winter Hill, which stands about half-way between Bolton and Chorley, and, roughly speaking, would make the centre of a circle including Bolton, Wigan, Chorley and Blackburn. It rises to a height of nearly fifteen hundred feet and dominates the surrounding country for fully fifteen miles, and on the summit of this rugged, heather-clad moor was pitched what might be called without exaggeration the headquarters of the forces which were to do battle for humanity. A huge marquee had been erected in an ancient quarry just below the summit; from the centre pole of this flew the Royal Standard of England, and from the other poles the standards of every civilised nation in the world.

The front of the marquee opened to the south eastward, and by the unearthly light of the comet the mill chimneys of Bolton, dominated by the great stack of Dobson & Barlow's, could be seen pointing like black fingers up to the approaching terror. In the centre of the opening were two plain deal tables. There was an instrument on each of them, and from these separate wires ran on two series of poles and buried themselves at last in the heart of the charge of the great cannon. Beside the instruments were two chronometers synchronised from Greenwich and beating time together to the thousandth part of a second, counting out what might perhaps be the last seconds of human life on earth.

Grouped about the two tables were the five sovereigns of Europe and the President of the French Republic, and with them stood the greatest soldiers, sailors and scientists, statesmen and diplomatists between east and west.

On a long deck chair beside one of the tables lay Lord Westerham with his left arm bound across his breast and looking little better than the ghost of the man he had been a month ago. Beside him stood Lady Margaret and Norah Castellan, and with them were the two men who had done so much to change defeat into victory; the captain and lieutenant of the ever-famous Ithuriel.

Never before had there been such a gathering of all sorts and conditions of men on one spot of earth; but as the hours went on and dwindled into minutes, all differences of rank and position became things of the past. In the presence of that awful Shape which was now flaming across the heavens, all men and women were equal, since by midnight all might be reduced at the same instant to the same dust and ashes. The ghastly orange-green glare shone down alike on the upturned face of monarch and statesman, soldier and peasant, millionaire and pauper, the good and the bad, the noble and the base, and tinged every face with its own ghastly hue.

Five minutes to twelve!

There was a shaking of hands, but no words were spoken. Norah Castellan stooped and kissed her wounded lover's brow, and then stood up and clasped her hands behind her. Lennard went to one of the tables and Auriole to the other.

Lennard had honestly kept the unspoken pact that had been made between them in the observatory at Whernside. Neither word nor look of love had passed his lips or lightened his eyes; and even now, as he stood beside her, looking at her face, beautiful still even in that ghastly light, his glance was as steady as if he had been looking through the eye-piece of his telescope.

Auriole had her right forefinger already resting on a little white button, ready at a touch to send the kindling spark into the mighty mass of explosives which lay buried at the bottom of what had been the Great Lever pit. Lennard also had his right forefinger on another button, but his left hand was in his coat pocket and the other forefinger was on the trigger of a loaded and cocked revolver. There were several other revolvers in men's pockets—men who had sworn that their nearest and dearest should be spared the last tortures of the death-agony of humanity.

The chronometers began to tick off the seconds of the last minute. The wings of the comet spread out vaster and vaster and its now flaming nucleus blazed brighter and brighter. A low, vague wailing sound seemed to be running through the multitudes which thronged the semicircle of moors. It was the first and perhaps the last utterance of the agony of unendurable suspense.

At the thirtieth second Lennard looked up and said in a quiet, passionless tone:

"Ready!"

At the same moment he saw, as millions of others thought they saw, a grey shape skimming through the air from the north-east towards Bolton. It could not be a British airship, for the fleet had already scattered, as the shock of the coming explosion would certainly have caused them to smash up like so many shells. It was John Castellan's Flying Fish come to fulfil the letter of his threat, even at this supreme moment of the world's fate.

Again Lennard spoke.

"Twenty seconds."

And then he began to count. "Nine—eight—seven—six—five—four—three—two—Now!"

The two fingers went down at the same instant and completed the circuits. The next, the central fires of the earth seemed to have burst loose. A roar such as had never deafened human ears before thundered from earth to heaven, and a vast column of pale flame leapt up with a concussion which seemed to shake the foundations of the world. Then in the midst of the column of flame there came a brighter flash, a momentary blaze of green-blue flame flashing out for a moment and vanishing.

"That was John's ship," said Norah. "God forgive him!"

"He will," said Westerham, taking her hand. "He was wrong-headed on that particular subject, but he was a brave man, and a genius. I don't think there's any doubt about that."

"It's good of you to say so," said Norah. "Poor John! With all his learning and genius to come to that—"

"We all have to get there some time, Norah, and after all, whether he's right or wrong, a man can't die better than for what he believes to be the truth and the right. We may think him mistaken, he thought he was right, and he has proved it. God rest his soul!"

"Amen!" said Norah, and she leant over again and kissed him on the brow.

Then came ten seconds more of mute and agonised suspense, and men's fingers tightened their grip on the revolvers. Then the upturned straining eyes looked upon such a sight as human eyes will never see again save perchance those which, in the fulness of time, may look upon the awful pageantry of the Last Day.

High up in the air there was a shrill screaming sound which seemed something like an echo of the roar of the great gun. Something like a white flash of light darted upwards straight to the heart of the descending Invader. Then the whole heavens were illumined by a blinding glare. The nucleus of the comet seemed to throw out long rays of many-coloured light. A moment later it had burst into myriads of faintly gleaming atoms.

The watching millions on earth instinctively clasped their hands to their ears, expecting such a sound as would deafen them for ever; but none came, for the explosion had taken place beyond the limits of the earth's atmosphere. The whole sky was now filled from zenith to horizon with a pale, golden, luminous mist, and through this the moon and stars began to shine dimly.

Then a blast of burning air swept shrieking and howling across the earth, for now the planet Terra was rushing at her headlong speed of nearly seventy thousand miles an hour through the ocean of fire-mist into which the shattered comet had been dissolved. Then this passed. The cool wind of night followed it, and the moon and stars shone down once more undimmed through the pure and cloudless ether.

Until now there had been silence. Men and women looked at each other and clasped hands; and then Tom Bowcock, standing just outside the marquee with his arm round his wife's shoulders, lifted up his mighty baritone voice and sang the lines:

"Praise God from whom all blessings flow!"

Hundreds and then thousands, then millions of voices took up the familiar strain, and so from the tops of the Lancashire moors the chorus rolled on from village to village and town to town, until with one voice, though with many tongues, east and west were giving thanks for the Great Deliverance.

But the man who, under Providence, had wrought it, seemed deaf and blind to all this. He only felt a soft trembling clasp round his right hand, and he only heard Auriole's voice whispering his name.

The next moment a stronger grip pulled his left hand out of his coat pocket, bringing the revolver with it, and Mr Parmenter's voice, shaken by rare emotion, said, loudly enough for all in the marquee to hear:

"We may thank God and you, Gilbert Lennard, that there's still a world with living men and women on it, and there's one woman here who's going to live for you only till death do you part. She told me all about it last night. You've won her fair and square, and you're going to have her. I did have other views for her, but I've changed my mind, because I have learnt other things since then. But anyhow, with no offence to this distinguished company, I reckon you're the biggest man on earth just now."

Soon after daybreak on the first of May, one of the airships that had been guarding Whernside dropped on the top of Winter Hill, and the captain gave Lennard a cablegram which read thus:

"LENNARD, Bolton, England: Good shot. As you left no pieces for us to shoot at we've let our shot go. No use for it here. Hope it will stop next celestial stranger coming this way. America thanks you. Any terms you like for lecturing tour.—HENCHELL."

Lennard did not see his way to accept the lecturing offer because he had much more important business on hand: but a week later, after a magnificent and, if the word may be used, multiple marriage ceremony had been performed in Westminster Abbey, five airships, each with a bride and bridegroom on board, rose from the gardens of Buckingham Palace and, followed by the cheers of millions, winged their way westward. Thirty-five hours later there was such a dinner-party at the White House, Washington, as eclipsed all the previous glories even of American hospitality.

Nothing was ever seen of the projectile which "The Pittsburg Prattler" had hurled into space. Not even the great Whernside reflector was able to pick it up. The probability, therefore, is that even now it is still speeding on its lonely way through the Ocean of Immensity, and it is within the bounds of possibility that at some happy moment in the future and somewhere far away beyond the reach of human vision, its huge charge of explosives may do for some other threatened world what the one which the Bolton Baby coughed up into Space just in the nick of time did to save this home of ours from the impending Peril of 1910.

THE END



COLSTON AND COY. LIMITED, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH