e concentrated fire of millions of
rifles, and his regiments torn to fragments by the incessant storm of
explosives from the sky.

Hour after hour the savage fight went on, and the grey and red lines
fought their way up and up the slopes, drawing the ring of flame and
steel closer and closer round the summit of the hill on which the
Autocrat of the North stood waiting for the hour of his fate to
strike.

The last line of the defenders of the position was reached at length.
For an hour it held firm in spite of the fearful odds. Then it
wavered and bent, and swayed to and fro in a last agony of
desperation. The encircling lines seemed to surge backwards for a
space. Then came a wild chorus of hurrahs, a swift forward rush of
levelled bayonets, the clash of steel upon steel--and then butchery,
vengeful and pitiless.

The red tide of slaughter surged up to the very walls of the Palace.
Only a few yards separated the foremost ranks of the victorious
assailants from the little group of officers, in the midst of which
towered the majestic figure of the White Tsar--an emperor without an
empire, a leader without an army. He strode forward towards the line
of bayonets fringing the crest of the hill, drew his sword, snapped
the blade as a man would break a dry stick, and threw the two pieces
to the ground, saying in English as he did so--

"It is enough, I surrender!"

Then he turned on his heel, and with bowed head walked back again to
his Staff.

Almost at the same moment a blaze of white light appeared in the sky,
a hundred feet above the heads of the vast throng that encircled the
Palace. Millions of eyes were turned up at once, and beheld a vision
which no one who saw it forgot to the day of his death.

The ten air-ships of the Terrorist fleet were ranged in two curves on
either side of the _Ithuriel_, which floated about twenty feet below
them, her silvery hull bathed in a flood of light from their electric
lamps. In her bow, robed in glistening white fur, stood Natasha,
transfigured in the full blaze of the concentrated searchlights. A
silence of wonder and expectation fell upon the millions at her feet,
and in the midst of it she began to sing the Hymn of Freedom. It was
like the voice of an angel singing in the night of peace after
strife.

Men of every nation in Europe listened to her entranced, as she
changed from language to language; and when at last the triumphant
strains of the Song of the Revolution cam