een people. Questions were asked, and the doctor at
Bert's side answered, "Ja! Ja!" several times, also something about
"Kopf." With a certain urgency he got Bert rather unwillingly to his
feet. Two huge soldiers in grey advanced upon Bert and seized hold of
him. "'Ullo!" said Bert, startled. "What's up?"

"It is all right," the doctor explained; "they are to carry you."

"Where?" asked Bert, unanswered.

"Put your arms roundt their--hals--round them!"

"Yes! but where?"

"Hold tight!"

Before Bert could decide to say anything more he was whisked up by the
two soldiers. They joined hands to seat him, and his arms were put about
their necks. "Vorwarts!" Some one ran before him with the portfolio, and
he was borne rapidly along the broad avenue between the gas generators
and the airships, rapidly and on the whole smoothly except that once or
twice his bearers stumbled over hose-pipes and nearly let him down.

He was wearing Mr. Butteridge's Alpine cap, and his little shoulders
were in Mr. Butteridge's fur-lined overcoat, and he had responded to Mr.
Butteridge's name. The sandals dangled helplessly. Gaw! Everybody seemed
in a devil of a hurry. Why? He was carried joggling and gaping through
the twilight, marvelling beyond measure.

The systematic arrangement of wide convenient spaces, the quantities
of business-like soldiers everywhere, the occasional neat piles of
material, the ubiquitous mono-rail lines, and the towering ship-like
hulls about him, reminded him a little of impressions he had got as
a boy on a visit to Woolwich Dockyard. The whole camp reflected the
colossal power of modern science that had created it. A peculiar
strangeness was produced by the lowness of the electric light, which
lay upon the ground, casting all shadows upwards and making a grotesque
shadow figure of himself and his bearers on the airship sides, fusing
all three of them into a monstrous animal with attenuated legs and an
immense fan-like humped body. The lights were on the ground because
as far as possible all poles and standards had been dispensed with to
prevent complications when the airships rose.

It was deep twilight now, a tranquil blue-skyed evening; everything rose
out from the splashes of light upon the ground into dim translucent
tall masses; within the cavities of the airships small inspecting
lamps glowed like cloud-veiled stars, and made them seem marvellously
unsubstantial. Each airship had its name in black lette