e
accurately-timed shells burst, not over, but amidst the aerostats,
enveloping their cars in a momentary mist of fire. The intense heat
evolved must have suffocated their crews instantaneously. Even if it
had not done so their fate would have been scarcely less sudden or
terrible, for the fire falling in the cars exploded their own shells
even before it burst their gas-envelopes. With a roar and a shock as
though heaven and earth were coming together, a vast dazzling mass of
flame blazed out, darkening the daylight by contrast, and when it
vanished again there was not a fragment of the thirteen aerostats to
be seen.

"So ends the Tsar's brief empire of the air!" said Arnold, as the
smoke of the explosion drifted away. "And twenty-four hours more
should see the end of his earthly Empire as well."

"I hope so," said Natasha's voice at his elbow. "This awful
destruction is sickening me. I knew war was horrible, but this is
more like the work of fiends than of men. There is something
monstrous, something superhumanly impious, in blasting your
fellow-creatures with irresistible lightnings like this, as though
you were a god instead of a man. Will you not be glad when it is
over, Richard?"

"Glad beyond all expression," replied her lover, the angry light of
battle instantly dying out of his eyes as he looked upon her sweetly
pitiful face. "But tell me, what success has my angel of mercy had in
pleading for the lives of her enemies?" he continued, slipping his
arm through hers, and leading her aft.

"I don't know yet, but my father told me to ask you to go to him as
soon as you could leave the deck. Go now, and, Richard, remember what
I said to you when you offered me the empire of the world as we were
going to Aeria. No one has such influence with the Master as you
have, for you have given him the victory and delivered his enemies
into his hands. For my sake, and for Humanity's, let your voice be
for mercy and peace--surely we have shed blood enough now!"

"It shall, angel mine! For your sweet sake I would spare even
Alexander Romanoff himself and all his Staff."

"You will never be asked to do that," said Natasha quietly, as Arnold
disappeared down the companion-way.

It was nearly an hour before he came on deck again, and by this time
the _Ithuriel_, constantly moving to and fro over London, so that any
change in the course of events could be at once reported to Natas,
had shifted her position to the southward, a