eech, they had determined to take advantage of
the situation to the utmost.

In the guise of the United States Government the Ring had concluded a
secret treaty with the commanders of the League, in virtue of which,
at a stipulated point in the struggle, America was to declare war on
Britain, invade Canada by land, and send to sea an immense flotilla
of swift dynamite cruisers of tremendously destructive power, which
had been constructed openly in the Government dockyards, ostensibly
for coast defence, and secretly in private yards belonging to the
various Corporations composing the Ring.

This flotilla was to co-operate with the fleet of the League as soon
as England had been invaded, and complete the blockade of the British
ports. Were this once accomplished nothing could save Britain from
starvation into surrender, and the British Empire from disintegration
and partition between the Ring and the Commanders of the League, who
would then practically divide the mastery of the world among them.

On the night of the 4th of October the five words: "The hour and the
man," went flying over the wires from Washington throughout the
length and breadth of the North American Continent. The next morning
half the industries of the United States were paralysed; all the
lines of communication by telegraph and rail between the east and
west were severed, the shore ends of the Atlantic cables were cut, no
newspapers appeared, and every dockyard on the eastern coast was in
the hands of the Terrorists.

To complete the stupor produced by this swift succession of
astounding events, when the sun rose an air-ship was seen floating
high in the air over the ten arsenals of the United States--that is
to say, over Portsmouth, Charlestown, Brooklyn, League Island, New
London, Washington, Norfolk, Pensacola, Mare Island, and Port Royal,
while two others held Chicago and St. Louis, the great railway
centres for the west and south, at their mercy, and the _Ithuriel_,
with a broad red flag flying from her stern, swept like a meteor
along the eastern coast from Maine to Florida.

To attempt to describe the condition of frenzied panic into which the
inhabitants of the threatened cities, and even the whole of the
Eastern States were thrown by the events of that ever-memorable
morning, would be to essay an utterly hopeless task. From the
millionaire in his palace to the outcasts who swarmed in the slums,
not a man or a woman kept a cool head save