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The blockade had been broken on the east, and, therefore, all hope of reducing the city by famine was at an end. Their own war-balloons had been either captured or destroyed, thousands of their men had deserted to the enemy, and multitudes more had been slain. Every position was dominated by the captured aerostats and the air-ships of the Terrorists.
Of the two fleets of war-balloons there remained twenty-two aerostats in the hands of the Terrorists, while the twenty-five sent by the Tsar against the air-ships had retired at nightfall to the depot at Muswell Hill to replenish their stock of fuel and explosives.
And all about him on the quickening breeze, the spiders' air-ships, their air bundles and air sheets, seemed to him to hurry in a conscious pursuit. Clatter, clatter, thud, thud, the man with the silver bridle rode, heedless of his direction, with his fearful face looking up now right, now left, and his sword arm ready to slash.
Josiah said he believed they wuz dangerous, but the head of this company told me with his own mouth that he had traveled over fifteen States in air-ships and had never been hurt or even skairt, and I told Josiah that wuz more than he could say of our wheel-barrow that had never been out of Jonesville.
When, war broke out it is probable that Germany possessed at least thirteen air-ships which had fulfilled very difficult tests. One had flown 1800 miles in a single journey. Thus the East Coast of England, representing a return journey of less than 600 miles was well within their range of action.
Fatal accidents of this kind were to be expected; nevertheless it is a fact that the disasters which have befallen aeronauts have been comparatively few, considering the extreme danger to which they are necessarily exposed, not only from the delicacy of the materials, with which they operate, and the uncertainty of the medium through which they move, but, particularly, because of the impossibility of giving direction to their air-ships, or to arrest their progress through space.
Air-ships, however, were not exempt from danger, although the precautions against it were ingenious and carefully observed. The Mizora people could tell the approach of a storm, and the exact time it would arrive. They had signal stations established for the purpose, all over the country.
After that we will keep the magazine of bombs and the secret of the poison in the custody of men of our own caste, so that the troops commanding the air-ships will never again feel that sense of power which now possesses them." These plans met with general approval. "But what are we to do with the coming outbreak?" asked one of the councilors. "I have thought of that, too," replied the Prince.
All Cairo was out, inhabitants and strangers alike, strangers especially, conceiving it part of their "money's worth" never to miss a sunset, and beyond Cairo, where the Pyramids lifted their summits aloft, stern points of warning or menace from the past to the present and the future, a crowd of tourists with their Arab guides were assembled, staring upward in, amazement at a white wonder in the red sky, a great air-ship, which, unlike other air-ships, was noiseless, and that moved vast wings up and down with the steady, swift rhythm of a bird's flight, as though of its own volition.
A few days later Bert's ship lost her rudder and mainmast in a gale. The crew ran out of food and subsisted on fish. They saw strange air-ships going eastward near the Azores and landed to get provisions and repair the rudder at Teneriffe. There they found the town destroyed and two big liners, with dead still aboard, sunken in the harbour.
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