dently no airships with the force, as, if there had been,
they would certainly have been hovering over the town and shelling
Shorncliffe Barracks and the forts from the air. A brisk artillery duel
was proceeding between the land batteries and the squadron, and the
handsome town was already in flames in several places.

Erskine, of course, recognised at once that this attack was simultaneous
with that on Dover; the object of the enemy being obviously the capture
of the shore line of railway between the two great Channel ports, which
would provide the base of a very elongated triangle, the sides of which
would be roughly formed by the roads and railways running to the
westward and southward through Ashford and Maidstone, and to the
northward and eastward through Canterbury, Faversham and Sittingbourne,
and meeting at Rochester and Chatham, where the land forces of the
invaders would, if all went well, co-operate with the sea forces in a
combined attack on London, which would, of course, be preceded by a
bombardment of fortified positions from the air.

Knowing what he did of the disastrous results of the battle of
Portsmouth, he came to the conclusion that it was his duty to upset this
plan of attack at all hazards, so he called Castellan up into the
conning-tower and asked his advice on the situation.

"I see just what you mean, Erskine," replied the Lieutenant, when he had
taken a good look at the map of Kent, "and it's my opinion that you'll
do more to help London from here and Dover just now than you will from
the Thames. Those French cruisers are big ones, though I don't quite
recognise which they are, and they carry twice or three times the metal
that those miserable forts do--which comes of trusting everything to the
Fleet, as though these were the days of wooden walls and sails instead
of steam battleships, fast cruisers and destroyers, to say nothing of
submarines and airships. These Frenchies here don't know anything about
the hammering they've got at Portsmouth and the capture of the
transports, so they'll be expecting that force to be moving on London by
the Brighton and South Coast line instead of re-building our forts and
dockyards; so you go in and sink and smash everything in sight. That's
just my best advice to you."

"It seems pretty rough on those chaps on the transports, doesn't it?"
said Erskine, with a note of regret in his voice. "We sha'n't be able to
pick up any of them. It will be pretty like