tipulations arranged between himself and the
confidential agent of the American Government, the blockading
flotilla of dynamite cruisers ought to have sailed from America as
soon as the cypher message containing the news of the battle of Dover
reached New York. The message had been duly sent _via_ Queenstown and
New York, and had been acknowledged in the usual way, but no definite
reply had come to it, and a month had elapsed without the appearance
of the promised squadron. The explanation of this will be readily
guessed. The American end of the Queenstown cable had been
reconnected with Washington, but it was under the absolute control of
Tremayne, who permitted no one to use it save himself.

Other messages had been sent to which no reply had been received, and
a swift French cruiser, which had been launched at Brest since the
battle of Dover, had been dispatched across the Atlantic to discover
the reason of this strange silence. She had gone, but she had never
returned. The Atlantic highway appeared to be barred by some
invisible force. No vessels came from the westward, and those which
started from the east were never heard of again.

His Majesty had treated the summons of the President of the
Federation with silent contempt, just as such a victorious autocrat
might have been expected to do. True, he knew the terrific power
wielded by the Terrorists through their aerial fleet, and he had an
uncomfortable conviction, which refused to be entirely stifled, that
in the days to come he would have to reckon with them and it.

But that a member of the Terrorist Brotherhood could by any possible
means have placed himself at the head of any body of men sufficiently
numerous or well-disciplined to make them a force to be seriously
reckoned with in military warfare, his Majesty had never for a moment
believed.

And, more than this, however disquieting might be the uncertainty due
to the ominous silence on the other side of the Atlantic, and the
non-arrival of the expected fleet, there stood the great and
significant fact that the army of the League had been permitted,
without molestation either from the Terrorists or the Federation in
whose name they had presumed to declare war upon him, not only to
destroy what remained of the British fleet, but to completely invest
the very capital of Anglo-Saxondom itself.

All this had been done; the sacred soil of Britain itself had been
violated by the invading hosts; the army of d