Rapids.

They were far less impressive than the German ships. He could not
judge the distance, and they flew edgeways to him, so as to conceal the
broader aspect of their bulk.

Bert stood there in the middle of the bridge, in a place that most
people who knew it remembered as a place populous with sightseers and
excursionists, and he was the only human being in sight there. Above
him, very high in the heavens, the contending air-fleets manoeuvred;
below him the river seethed like a sluice towards the American Fall. He
was curiously dressed. His cheap blue serge trousers were thrust into
German airship rubber boots, and on his head he wore an aeronaut's white
cap that was a trifle too large for him. He thrust that back to reveal
his staring little Cockney face, still scarred upon the brow. "Gaw!" he
whispered.

He stared. He gesticulated. Once or twice he shouted and applauded.

Then at a certain point terror seized him and he took to his heels in
the direction of Goat Island.

4

For a time after they were in sight of each other, neither fleet
attempted to engage. The Germans numbered sixty-seven great airships
and they maintained the crescent formation at a height of nearly four
thousand feet. They kept a distance of about one and a half lengths, so
that the horns of the crescent were nearly thirty miles apart. Closely
in tow of the airships of the extreme squadrons on either wing were
about thirty drachenflieger ready manned, but these were too small and
distant for Bert to distinguish.

At first, only what was called the Southern fleet of the Asiatics was
visible to him. It consisted of forty airships, carrying all together
nearly four hundred one-man flying-machines upon their flanks, and for
some time it flew slowly and at a minimum distance of perhaps a dozen
miles from the Germans, eastward across their front. At first Bert
could distinguish only the greater bulks, then he perceived the one-man
machines as a multitude of very small objects drifting like motes in the
sunshine about and beneath the larger shapes.

Bert saw nothing then of the second fleet of the Asiatics, though
probably that was coming into sight of the Germans at the time, in the
north-west.

The air was very still, the sky almost without a cloud, and the German
fleet had risen to an immense height, so that the airships seemed no
longer of any considerable size. Both ends of their crescent showed
plainly. As they beat southward they