_Flying Fishes_ fell in little fragments into the water,
splashing here and there as though they had been shingle ballast thrown
out of a balloon.

True, Garrison Fort had been blown up by the aerial torpedoes, and the
same fate was befalling the great forts at Tilbury, but their gallant
defenders did not die in vain, and, although the remainder of the aerial
squadron were able to go on and do their work of destruction on London,
whither the _Ithuriel_ could not follow them, the wrecks of six
battleships, a dozen destroyers and ten transports strewed the
approaches to the Thames and the Medway, while nearly thirty thousand
soldiers and sailors would never salute the flag of Czar or Kaiser
again.

In all the history of war no such loss of men, ships and material had
ever taken place within the short space of three days and a few hours.
Four great fleets and nearly a hundred thousand men had been wiped out
of existence since the assault on Southern England had begun, and even
now, despite the airships, had the millions of Britain's able-bodied
men, who were grinding their teeth and clenching their fists in impotent
fury, been trained just to shoot and march, it would have been possible
to take the invaders between overwhelming masses of men--who would hold
their lives as nothing in comparison with their country's honour--and
the now impassable sea, and drive them back into it. But although men
and youths went in their tens of thousands to the recruiting stations
and demanded to be enlisted, it was no use. Soldiers are not made in a
day or a week, and the invaders of England had been making them for
forty years.

While the Kaiser and Count von Moltke were going through Lennard's
papers, and coming to the decision to send them to Potsdam, Lord
Whittinghame's motor, instead of returning to Chatham, was running up to
Whitstable to answer the telegram which Lennard had received at
Rochester. The German flag cleared them out of Canterbury. It was
already known that they had been received by the Kaiser, and therefore
their persons were sacred. In consequence of the loss of the squadron
attacking the Thames and Medway, and the destruction of the Ramsgate
flotilla, the country was not occupied by the enemy north of the great
main road through Canterbury and Faversham, and that was just why the
_Ithuriel_ was lying snugly in the mouth of the East Swale River, about
three miles from the little town, with a shabby-looking lighter