nclusion of the war the aerial fleet was increased to
twenty-five vessels exclusive of the flagship. The number of
war-balloons was raised to fifty, and three millions of Federation
soldiers were held ready for active service until the conclusion of
the war in the East between the Moslems and Buddhists. By November
the Moslems were victors all along the line, and during the last week
of that month the last battle between Christian and Moslem was fought
on the Southern shore of the Bosphorus.

All communications with the Asiatic and African shores of the
Mediterranean were cut as soon as it became certain that Sultan
Mohammed Reshad, at the head of a million and a half of victorious
Moslems, and supported by Prince Abbas of Egypt at the head of seven
hundred thousand more, was marching to the reconquest of Turkey. The
most elaborate precautions were taken to prevent any detailed
information as to the true state of things in Europe reaching the
Sultan, as Tremayne and Arnold had come to the conclusion that it
would be better, if he persisted in courting inevitable defeat, that
it should fall upon him with crushing force and stupefying
suddenness, so that he might be the more inclined to listen to reason
afterwards.

The Mediterranean was patrolled from end to end by air-ships and
dynamite cruisers, and aerial scouts marked every movement of the
victorious Sultan until it became absolutely certain that his
objective point was Scutari. Meanwhile, two millions of men had been
concentrated between Galata and Constantinople, while another million
occupied the northern shore of the Dardanelles. An immense force of
warships and dynamite cruisers swarmed between Gallipoli and the
Golden Horn. Twenty air-ships and forty-five war-balloons lay outside
Constantinople, ready to take the air at a moment's notice.

The conqueror of Northern Africa and Southern Asia had only a very
general idea as to what had really happened in Europe. His march of
conquest had not been interrupted by any European expedition. The
Moslems of India had exterminated the British garrisons, and there
had been no attempt at retaliation or vengeance, as there had been in
the days of the Mutiny. England, he knew, had been invaded, but
according to the reports which had reached him, none of the invaders
had ever got out of the island alive, and then the English had come
out and conquered Europe. Of the wonderful doings of the aerial
fleets only the vaguest ru