y and weekly press, the strange adventures of
Louis Holt had been dismissed, as of doubtful authenticity, into the
limbo of exhausted sensations.

One man, however, had laid the story to heart somewhat more
seriously, and that was Richard Arnold, who, on reading it, had
formed the resolve that, if ever his dream of aerial navigation were
realised, the first use he would make of his air-ship would be to
discover and rescue the lonely travellers who were isolated from the
rest of the world in the strange, inaccessible region of which the
manuscript had given a brief but graphic and fascinating account. He
was now carrying out that resolve, and at the same time working out a
portion of a plan that was not his own, and which he had been very
far from foreseeing when he made the resolution.

Louis Holt's original MS. had been purchased by the President of the
Inner Circle, and the _Ariel_ was now, in fact, on a voyage of
exploration, the object of which was the discovery of this unknown
region, with a view to making it the seat of a settlement from which
the members of the Executive could watch in security and peace the
course of the tremendous struggle which would, ere long, be shaking
the world to its foundations.

In such a citadel as this, fenced in by a series of vast natural
obstacles, impassable to all who did not possess the means of aerial
locomotion, they would be secure from molestation, though all the
armies of Europe sought to attack them; and the _Ariel_ could, if
necessary, traverse in twenty-five hours the three thousand odd miles
which separated it from the centre of Europe.

After the rescue of Natasha and the Princess on the Tobolsk road, the
_Ariel_, in obedience to the orders of the Council, had shaped her
course southward to the western slopes of the Hindu Kush, in order to
be present at the prearranged attack of the Cossacks on the British
reconnoitring force.

Arnold's orders were simply to wait for the engagement, and only to
watch it, unless the British were attacked in overwhelming numbers.
In that case he was to have dispersed the Russian force, as the plan
of the Terrorists did not allow of any advantage being gained by the
soldiers of the Tsar in that part of the world just then.

As the British had defeated them unaided, the _Ariel_ had taken no
part in the affair, and, after vanishing from the sight of the
astonished combatants, had proceeded upon her voyage of discovery.

As a good m