The twenty air-ships swept up out of the south at a speed of about a hundred miles an hour in the form of a wide crescent, with the Revenge in the centre. They slowed down as they neared the city, and the concentrated blaze of their lights soon fell upon the Sultan’s palace, the magnificent proportions of which distinguished it conspicuously even from the thousands of splendid edifices which adorned the Moslem metropolis.
Then, still keeping their relative positions with perfect accuracy, the winged vessels sank downwards and wheeled round until they faced the eastern terrace on which stood the Sultan with his Grand Vizier and the chief officers of his household, awaiting the coming of his aerial visitors.
The flotilla stopped a hundred feet from the terrace. Its search-lights were extinguished, but the strange and beautiful shapes of the cruisers of the air stood out sharply defined against the bright background formed by the myriad lights of the city.
The Revenge, flying the long vanished Imperial Standard of Russia, with its crowned black eagle on a broad ground of gold, at the mizzen, the white flag of peace at the main, and the Star and Crescent of the Moslem Empire at the fore, floated slowly forward till her shining ram projected over the parapet and her three keels rested lightly upon it.
Then one of the forward doors of the deck-chamber was drawn back by some invisible agency, and the Sultan saw standing in the opening such a vision of loveliness as he had never imagined even in his dreams of the houris of Paradise. Clothed, according to her invariable custom, in a plain clinging robe of royal purple, with no other ornament than a coronet, consisting of a plain broad band of gold from which rose above her temples two wings of silver filigree thickly encrusted with diamonds, Olga Romanoff stood upon the deck of her flagship the perfect incarnation of royal dignity and womanly beauty.
Khalid, who had advanced to the parapet as the squadron approached, saw instantly that this could be none other than the woman whom Alan Arnold had described as beautiful beyond description and evil beyond comprehension. Few men had seen so many beautiful women as he had, and there were scores of them waiting in his harem for the favouring glance that none could win from him; but no sooner did his upward glance rest upon the vision that was looking down upon him from the doorway of the deck-chamber of the Revenge than his eyes fell and his head bowed in the involuntary homage that the supreme beauty of such a woman has always claimed from such a man.
Evil she might be, but evil in such a shape might be something more than good in the eyes of some men, and of these Khalid the Magnificent was one. His hot Arab blood was aflame the instant that he looked upon her intoxicating loveliness, and half her errand was accomplished before a word had passed between them.
She returned his greeting with a gracious inclination of her wing-crowned head, and as she did so he said—
“The Tsarina is welcome! My house and all that is in it is hers if she will honour me by entering it, for she will make it more beautiful by her presence.”
“Your Majesty’s welcome is sweet in my ears,” she answered, almost insensibly adopting his Oriental style of speech, “for I come as a friend and I hope to go as an ally.”