and
descended from their vantage ground to the assault on London, where
the old Lion at bay was waiting for them with claws bared and teeth
grinning defiance.

CHAPTER XLIV.

THE TURN OF THE BATTLE-TIDE.

The force which the Tsar had detached to operate against the
Federation Army of the North left the headquarters at eleven o'clock,
and proceeded in four main divisions by Edmonton, Chingford,
Chigwell, and Romford. The aerostats, regulating their speed so as to
keep touch with the land force, maintained a position two miles ahead
of it at three thousand feet elevation.

Strict orders had been given to press on at the utmost speed, and to
use every means to discover the Federationists, and bring them to an
engagement with as little delay as possible; but they marched on hour
after hour into the dusk of the early winter evening, with the sounds
of battle growing fainter in their rear, without meeting with a sign
of the enemy.

As it would have been the height of imprudence to have advanced in
the dark into a hostile country occupied by an enemy of great but
unknown strength, General Pralitzin, the Commander of the Russian
force, decided to bring his men to a halt at nightfall, and therefore
took up a series of positions between Cheshunt, Epping, Chipping
Ongar, and Ingatestone. From these points squadrons of Cossacks
scoured the country in all directions, north, east, and west, in
search of the so far invisible army; and at the same time he sent
mounted messengers back to headquarters to report that no enemy had
been found, and to ask for further orders.

The aerostats slowed down their engines until their propellers just
counteracted the force of the wind and they hung motionless at a
height of a thousand feet, ranged in a semicircle about fifteen miles
long over the heads of the columns.

All this time the motions of the Russian army had been watched by the
captain of the _Ithuriel_ from an elevation of eight thousand feet,
five miles to the rear. As soon as he saw them making preparations
for a halt, and had noticed the disposition of the aerostats, he left
the conning-tower which he had occupied nearly all day, and went into
the after saloon, where he found Natas and Natasha examining a large
plan of London and its environs.

"They have come to a halt at last," he said. "And if they only remain
where they are for three hours longer, we have the whole army like
rats in a trap, war-balloons and all.