He remembered how his ancestor, Richard Arnold, in the first Ithuriel, had rammed the Russian war-balloons to the north of Muswell Hill, and resolved to eclipse even that marvellous stroke of tactics. Obeying his will like a living creature, the mighty fabric under his control sank five thousand feet and then began to gather way on a slanting course towards the Moslem air-ships.
The propellers whirled faster and faster, and the quadruple wings undulated with ever-increasing velocity until the crowds in the streets of Alexandria saw something like a swift flash of blue light stream downward from the southern sky, and heard a long screaming roar as though the firmament was being rent in twain above them.
Then three of the air-ships floating in line above their heads seemed to break up and roll over. The crowds held their breath and pointed upwards with one accord in sudden horror, as the crippled air-ships dropped like stones towards the earth. In another moment they struck it, and then, as though the central fires of the earth had burst through in the heart of the great city, there came a crash and a shock that shook the ground like an earthquake spasm.
Three of the Air-Ships seemed to break up and roll over. [Page 259].
A vast dazzling volume of flame shot up from amidst a wide circle of blackened ruin, towers fell and roofs collapsed all round the focus of the explosion, the whole atmosphere above the city was convulsed, and the very sea itself seemed to writhe under the stress of the mighty shock, and so, leaving death and ruin and consternation behind her, the Avenger swept out over the Mediterranean at a speed that the eye could scarcely follow, after striking the first blow in the world-war of the twenty-first century.
To say that this sudden and unexpected catastrophe spread panic through the Moslem capital would be but a very inadequate description of the Avenger’s first blow in the world-war. Consternation, wild and unbounded, blanched every cheek, and made every heart stand still as the mighty roar of the explosion burst upon the deafened ears of the inhabitants and then instantly died into silence, broken only by the crash of falling ruins and the screams and groans of the wounded and dying.
The red spectre of war in its most frightful form had suddenly appeared to the terrified and horror-stricken vision of millions of men and women, scarce one of whom had ever seen a deed of violence done.
Khalid, like a wise leader, did all he could to prevent the panic spreading to the troops on board the transports by issuing peremptory orders for the expedition to start at once. At the same time he signalled for half a dozen air-ships to ascend as far as possible and attempt to discover the source from which the inexplicable attack had come, an errand destined to be entirely fruitless.