e guns sent her to the
bottom of the sea, so severing the last link which had connected the
now isolated band of revolutionists with the world on which they were
ere long to declare war.

The naming of the fleet was by common consent left to Natasha, and
her half-oriental genius naturally led her to appropriately name the
air-ships after the winged angels and air-spirits of Moslem and other
Eastern mythologies. The flagship she named the _Ithuriel_, after the
angel who was sent to seek out and confound the Powers of Darkness in
that terrific conflict between the upper and nether worlds, which was
a fitting antetype to the colossal struggle which was now to be waged
for the empire of the earth.

Arnold's first task, as soon as the fleet finally took the air, was
to put the captains and crews of the vessels through a thorough
drilling in management and evolution. A regular code of signals had
been arranged, by means of which orders as to formation, speed,
altitude, and direction could be at once transmitted from the
flagship. During the day flags were used, and at night flashes from
electric reflectors.

The scene of these evolutions was practically the course taken by the
_Ariel_ from Aeria to the island; and as the captains and lieutenants
of the different vessels were all men of high intelligence, and
carefully selected for the work, and as the mechanism of the
air-ships was extremely simple, the whole fleet was well in hand by
the time the mountain mass of Aeria was sighted a week after leaving
the island.

Arnold in the _Ithuriel_ led the way to a narrow defile on the
south-western side, which had been discovered during his first visit,
and which admitted of entrance to the valley at an elevation of about
3000 feet. Through this the fleet passed in single file soon after
sunrise one lovely morning in the middle of June, and within an hour
the thirteen vessels had come to rest on the shores of the lake.

Then for the first time, probably, since the beginning of the world,
the beautiful valley became the scene of a busy activity, in the
midst of which the lean wiry figure of Louis Holt seemed to be here,
there, and everywhere at once, doing the honours of Aeria as though
it were a private estate to which the Terrorists had come by his
special invitation.

He was more than ever delighted with the air-ships, and especially
with the splendid proportions of the _Ithuriel_, and the brilliant
lustre of her polished