haos of bloodshed, ruin and human misery
lay! And yet he felt not a tremor of compunction or of pity for the
thousands of brave men who would be flung dead and mangled and tortured
into the bloody mire of battle, for the countless homes that would be
left desolate, or for the widows and the fatherless whose agony would
cry to Heaven for justice on him.

No; these things were of no account in his eyes. Ireland must be free,
and the girl he had come to love so swiftly, and with such consuming
passion, must be his. Nothing else mattered. Was he not Lord of the Air,
and should the desire of his heart be denied him?

Thus mused John Castellan in the conning-tower of the _Flying Fish_, as
he circled slowly above the ruins of Dover, while the man who had
beaten him in the swimming-race was sitting in the observatory on
far-off Whernside, verifying his night's observations and calculating
for the hundredth time the moment of the coming of an Invader, compared
with which all the armed legions of Europe were of no more importance
than a swarm of flies.

When he had satisfied himself that Dover was quite defenceless he sent
one of the French _Flying Fishes_ across to Calais with a letter to the
District Commander, describing briefly what had taken place, and telling
him that it would be now quite safe for the transports to cross the
Straits and land the troops at Portsmouth, Newhaven, Folkestone, Dover
and Ramsgate.

He would station one of his airships over each of these places to
prevent any resistance from land or sea, and would himself make a
general reconnaissance of the military dispositions of the defenders. He
advised that the three _Flying Fishes_, which had been reserved for the
defence of the Kiel Canal, should be telegraphed for as convoys, as
there was now no danger of attack, and that the depot of torpedoes and
motive power for his ships should be transferred from Calais to Dover.

As soon as he had despatched this letter, Castellan ordered two of his
remaining ships to cruise northward to Ramsgate, keeping mainly along
the track of the railway, one on each side of it, and to wreck the first
train they saw approaching Dover, Deal, Sandwich and Ramsgate from the
north. The other two he ordered to take the Western Coast line as far as
Portsmouth, and do the same with trains coming east.

Then he swung the _Flying Fish_ inland, and took a run over Canterbury,
Ashford, Maidstone, Tonbridge, Guildford and Winchester