He descended until the Isma was only floating about a thousand feet higher than the enemy, and then began to fly round and round in a wide circle, at a speed which made it practically impossible for her to be hit with a shell, save by the merest chance. The stranger, on sighting the fleet, slowed down and swung round to the northward, so as to have the advantage of being able to present her stern chasers to the enemy.
This gave Alexis the opportunity he wanted. The instant that her stern was visible, the Isma swooped down, and rushed at her at such a speed that she looked more like a stream of blue light flashing through the sky than a solid material body. Those on board her saw this flash dart past their stern. Their ship shivered from stem to stern with some shock that came so swiftly that not until the Isma was almost out of sight did they realise the damage that had been done.
The “Isma” swooped down. [Page 281].
The ram of the Aerian had cut through the barrels of the two stern guns and the shafts of the three propellers as cleanly as a razor would have divided so many straws. Sustained and propelled only by her wings, she dropped from two hundred miles an hour to about twenty-five, and then the Isma reappeared in the sky above her, flying the signal, “Will you surrender?”
Her commander saw that the brilliant and almost miraculous manœuvre of the Isma had placed him utterly at her mercy. If he refused, a single shell would send him and his ship and crew in fragments to the earth, while none of his guns could touch the Aerian, floating as she did a thousand feet above him, so he bowed to necessity and sent the white flag to his masthead. Alexis then signalled again, ordering him to unload all his guns and leave the breeches open, and when he had seen this done he sank down to a level with her, passed a steel-wire rope on board her, and towed her away in triumph to the fleet.
The brilliant achievement delighted the Aerians as much as it confounded the crew of the captured vessel, especially when it was discovered that she was the Haroun, a Moslem warship taking a message from the Sultan to the Tsarina at Moscow.
Khalid’s letter, which had been despatched the night before from Algiers, informed Olga of the disaster that had overtaken the Crescent in the Mediterranean, and of his determination to avenge it by storming the bridges of Gibraltar, the Dardanelles, and the Bosphorus, and pouring his remaining troops over them into Europe as soon as he could concentrate them.
Far more important than this, however, was a notification of his intention to at once lead a fleet of two hundred and fifty air-ships to the west of Europe, and there destroy city after city on his eastward course until they joined forces and proceeded, if necessary, to devastate the rest of the Continent.
The Moslem’s guns were now rendered useless, and she was left to her own devices to fall an easy prey to the first enemy that might attack her. The Aerian fleet then divided into fifty squadrons of five vessels each, and these winged their way towards the Russian frontier, ever soaring higher and higher, until their wings were beating the rarefied air at an altitude of over three miles.