to Woolwich and other important places on both
sides as their big guns could achieve. Four _Flying Fishes_ accompanied
this division.

Such was the general plan of action on that fatal night. Confident in
the terrific powers of their Aerial Squadrons, and ignorant of the
existence of the _Ithuriel_, the Allied Powers never considered the
possibilities of anything but rapid victory. They knew that the forts
could no more withstand the shock of the bombardment from the air than
battleships or cruisers could resist the equally deadly blow which these
same diabolical contrivances could deliver under the water.

They had not the slightest doubt but that forts would be silenced and
fleets put out of action with a swiftness unknown before, and then the
crowded transports would follow the victorious fleets, and the military
promenade upon London would begin, headed by the winged messengers of
destruction, from which neither flight nor protection was possible.

Of course, the leaders of the Allies were in ignorance of the
misfortunes they had suffered at Portsmouth and Folkestone. All they
knew they learned from aerograms, one from Admiral Durenne off the Isle
of Wight saying that the Portsmouth forts had been silenced and the
Fleet action had begun, and another from the Commodore of the squadron
off Folkestone saying that all was going well, and the landing would
shortly be effected: and thus they fully expected to have the three
towns and the entrance to the Thames at their mercy by the following
day.

Certainly, as far as Dover was concerned, things looked very much as
though their anticipations would be realised, for when the _Ithuriel_
arrived upon the scene, Dover Castle and its surrounding forts were
vomiting flame and earth into the darkening sky, like so many volcanoes.
The forts on Admiralty Pier, Shakespear Cliff, and those commanding the
new harbour works, had been silenced and blown up, and the town and
barracks were in flames in many places.

The scene was, in short, so inhumanly appalling, and horror followed
horror with such paralysing rapidity, that the most practised
correspondents and the most experienced officers, both afloat and
ashore, were totally unable to follow them and describe what was
happening with anything like coherence. It was simply an inferno of
death and destruction, which no human words could have properly
described, and perhaps the most ghastly feature of it was the fact that
there wa