s said it would be done some
day. Build flying navies next, and be fighting in the clouds. Then
there'll be general smash. Serve 'em right. Fools to fight. Why can't
they live in peace?"

While Louis Holt was running along in this style, jerking his words
out in little short snappy sentences, and fussing about round the
air-ship, she had sunk gently to the earth, and her passengers had
disembarked.

Arnold for the time being took no notice of the questions with regard
to the motive-power, but introduced first himself, then the ladies,
and then Colston, to Louis Holt, who may be described here, as
elsewhere, as a little, bronzed, grizzled man, anywhere between
fifty-five and seventy, with a lean, wiry, active body, a good square
head, an ugly but kindly face, and keen, twinkling little grey eyes,
that looked straight into those of any one he might be addressing.

The introductions over, he was invited on board the _Ariel_, and a
few minutes later, in the deck-saloon, he was chattering away
thirteen to the dozen, and drinking with unspeakable gusto the first
glass of champagne he had tasted for nearly five years.

CHAPTER XVIII.

A NAVY OF THE FUTURE.

Arnold's instructions from the Council had been to remain in Aeria,
and make a thorough exploration of the wonderful region described in
Louis Holt's manuscript, until the time came for him to meet the
_Avondale_, the steamer which was to bring out the materials for
constructing the Terrorists' aerial navy.

Louis Holt and his faithful retainer, during the three years and a
half that they had been shut up in it from the rest of the world, had
made themselves so fully acquainted with its geography that very
little of its surface was represented by blanks on the map which the
former had spent several months in constructing, and so no better or
more willing guides could have been placed at their service than they
were.

Holt was an enthusiastic naturalist, and he descanted at great length
on the strangeness of the flora and fauna that it had been his
privilege to discover and classify in this isolated and hitherto
unvisited region. It appeared that neither its animals nor its plants
were quite like those of the rest of the continent, but seemed rather
to belong to an anterior geological age.

From this fact he had come to the conclusion that at some very remote
period, while the greater portion of Northern Africa was yet
submerged by the waters of that oce