ave been compelled to do under the old conditions
of warfare, to fight its way across the narrow strip of water, there
is little doubt but that the issue of the day would have been very
different, and that what had been left of it would have been driven
back, shattered and defeated, to the shelter of the French shore
batteries.

But, in accordance with the invariable tactics of the League, the
first and most deadly assault was delivered from the air. The
war-balloons stationed themselves above the fortifications on land,
totally ignoring the presence of the fleet, and a few minutes after
ten o'clock began to rain their deadly hail of explosives down upon
them. Fifteen were placed over Dover Castle, and five over the fort
on the Admiralty Pier, while the rest were distributed over the town
and the forts on the hills above it. In an hour everything was in a
state of the most horrible confusion. The town was on fire in a
hundred places from the effects of the fire-shells. The Castle hill
seemed as if it had been suddenly turned into a volcano; jets of
bright flame kept leaping up from its summit and sides, followed by
thunderous explosions and masses of earth and masonry hurled into the
air, mingled with guns and fragments of human bodies.

The end of the Admiralty Pier, with its huge blocks of stone wrenched
asunder and pulverised by incessant explosions of dynamite and
emmensite, collapsed and subsided into the sea, carrying fort, guns,
and magazine with it; and all along the height of the Shakespeare
cliff the earthworks had been blown up and scattered into dust, and a
huge portion of the cliff itself had been blasted out and hurled down
on to the beach.

Meanwhile the victims of this terrible assault had, in the nature of
the case, been able to do nothing but keep up a vertical fire, in the
hope of piercing the gas envelopes of the balloons, and so bringing
them to the earth. For more than an hour this fusilade produced no
effect; but at length the concentrated fire of several Maxim and
Nordenfelt guns, projecting a hail of missiles into the sky, brought
about a result which was even more disastrous to the town than it was
to its assailants.

Four of the aerostats came within the zone swept by the bullets.
Riddled through and through, their gas-holders collapsed, and their
cars plunged downwards from a height of more than 5000 feet. A few
seconds later four frightful explosions burst forth in different
parts of t