man had made war
on man may be dimly guessed from the fact that it cost the invaders two
months of incessant fighting and more than a million men before they
planted their guns along the ridges of the North Downs and the Surrey
Hills.

Meanwhile Gilbert Lennard passed his peaceful though anxious days
between Bolton and Whernside, while Auriole, Margaret Holker, Norah
Castellan and Mrs O'Connor, with hundreds of other heroines, were doing
their work of mercy in the hospital camps at the different bases behind
the fighting front. Lord Westerham, who had worked miracles in the way
of recruiting, was now in his glory as one of General French's Special
Service Officers, which, under such a Commander, is about as dangerous a
job as a man can find in the whole bloody business of war.

And still, as the pitiless human strife went on with its ceaseless
rattle of rifle fire, and the almost continuous roar of artillery, day
by day the Invader from Space grew bigger and brighter in the great
reflector, and day by day the huge cannon, which, in the decisive moment
of the world's fate, was to do battle with it, approached completion.

At midnight on the twelfth of March Tom Bowcock had announced that all
was ready for the casting. Lennard gave the order by electric signal.
The hundred converters belched their floods of glowing steel into what
had once been Great Lever pit; night was turned into day by a vast glow
that shot up to the zenith, and the first part of the great work was
accomplished.

At breakfast the next morning Lennard received the following cablegram
from Pittsburg:

"All ready. Crossing fourteenth. Give particulars of comet away
when you like. Pittsburg Baby doing well. How's yours?--PARMENTER."

In order to understand the full meaning of Mr Parmenter's curt cablegram
it will be necessary to go back for a little space to the day when he
made his hurried departure from the Clyde in the _Minnehaha_. It will be
remembered that he had that morning received a cablegram from New York.
This message had read thus:

"Complete success at last. Craft built and tried. Action and speed
perfect. Dollars out, hurry up.
"HINGESTON."

Now the signer of this cablegram, Newson Hingeston, was an old college
friend of Mr Parmenter's, and therefore a man of about his own age. He
was a born mathematician and engineer, and, like many another bef