e-postcard to
a five-guinea reproduction of the actual thing, there was still an air
of unconvincing unreality about. Of course it might be coming, but it
was still very far away, and it might not arrive after all. Yet when
that fateful night had passed and millions of sleepless eyes had seen
the south-western stars shining through a pale luminous mist extended in
the shape of two vast filmy wings with a brighter spot of yellow flame
between them, the whole matter seemed to take on a very different and a
much more serious aspect.

The fighting had come to a sudden stop, as though by a mutually tacit
agreement. Not even the German Emperor could now deny that Lennard had
made no idle threat at Canterbury when he had given him the destruction
of the world as an alternative to the conquest of Britain. Still, he did
not quite believe in the possibility of that destruction even yet, in
spite of what the Tsar had told him and what he had learned from other
sources. He still wanted to fight to a finish, and, as Deputy European
Providence, he had a very real objection to the interference of
apparently irresponsible celestial bodies with his carefully-thought-out
plans for the ordering of mundane civilisation on German commercial
lines. Whether they liked it or not, it must be the best thing in the
end for them: otherwise how could He have come to think it all out?

Meanwhile, to make matters worse from his point of view, John Castellan
had refused absolutely to accept any modification of the original terms,
and he had replied to an order from headquarters to report himself and
the ships still left under his control by loading the said ships with
ammunition and motive power and then disappearing from the field of
action without leaving a trace as to his present or future whereabouts
behind him, and so, as far as matters went, entirely fulfilling the
Tsar's almost prophetic fears.

And then, precisely at the hour, minute and second predicted, five
hours, thirty minutes and twenty-five seconds, a.m., on the 31st of
March, the comet became visible in daylight about two and a half degrees
south-westward of the Morning Star. Twenty-four hours later the two
wings came into view, and the next evening the Invader looked like some
gigantic bird of prey swooping down from its eyrie somewhere in the
heights of Space upon the trembling and terrified world. The
professional prophets said, with an excellent assumption of absolute
conviction