But....
He shuddered as he pictured in his mind's eye the meeting of his country's flower of flying manhood with the monsters of Moyen.
His eyes, as he thought, were watching the racing of those ocean greyhounds, out to sea. They were now out of sight of land, and still some of the planes followed them.
A half hour passed, and then....
The American pilots, in obedience to the radio signals, turning back from this strange phenomenon of the ghost column of capital ships.
Simultaneously, out of the sky dead ahead, dropped the first flight of Moyen's aero-subs.
At the same moment the mysterious power which had dragged the ships to sea was withdrawn, and the warships, with no hands to guide them, swung whither they willed, and floated in as many directions as there were ships, under their forward momentum. There were a score of collisions, and some of the ships were in sinking condition even before the aero-subs began their labors.
The remaining ships floated high out of the water, because they carried no ballast, and from all sides the aero-subs of Moyen settled to the task of destruction—destruction which was simply a warning of what was to come: Moyen's manner of proving to the Americas the fact that he was all-powerful.
"God, what fools!" cried Prester Kleig.