Olga Romanoff

by George Chetwynd Griffith

Then with a mighty upward sweep she leapt two thousand feet higher still, came to equilibrium, and discharged a shell downwards on to the ice. The explosion was answered by the rising of a flotilla of air-ships, which seemed to have sprung out of the bowels of the earth.

Thirty vessels as large as herself rose simultaneously through the clouds and spread themselves out in a wide circle round the two Aerian vessels, which thus found themselves surrounded by an overwhelming force and dominated by the Revenge floating far above them with her ten guns pointed down upon them.

To an observer so placed as to be able to command a view of the situation it would have seemed that nothing short of the surrender or annihilation of the Ithuriel and the Ariel could have been the outcome of it.

So evidently thought Olga and those in command of the Russian aerial fleet, for, although for one brief instant the two Aerian vessels lay at their mercy, they failed to take advantage of it, and in losing this one precious moment they reckoned without the superior skill and perfect control of their air-ships possessed by those of whom they thought to make an easy prey.

What really happened took place with such stupefying suddenness that they were taken completely off their guard. The Ithuriel and the Ariel lay end on to each other in the midst of the circle of their enemies. Each mounted ten guns, and of these every one was available. The crews of both vessels, trained by constant practice to the highest point of efficiency, knew exactly what to do without so much as an order being given.

Automatically the twenty guns were trained in the twinkling of an eye, each on a Russian vessel, and discharged simultaneously. A moment later the two vessels sank like stones through the thick clouds below them; and while the heavens above were shaken with the combined explosions of the twenty projectiles, each of which had found its mark with unerring accuracy, they had regained their equilibrium a thousand feet from the surface of the ice, and darted away full speed northward.

To such a fearful pitch of efficiency had their guns and projectiles been brought that, while the aim was unerring if once a fair sight was obtained, nothing shaped by human hands could withstand the impact of their shells without destruction. Twenty out of the thirty vessels of the Russian fleet collapsed, and, as it were, shrivelled up under the frightful energy of the Aerian projectiles. Twenty masses of flame blazed out over the grey surface of the cloud-sea, and in another moment the fragments of the vessels it had taken so many months of labour and such wondrous skill to construct were lying scattered far and wide over the snow and ice of the Antarctic desert.

The awful suddenness with which this destruction had been accomplished deprived Olga and her subordinates of all power of thought for the moment. They heard the roar of the explosions, and saw a mist of flame burst out round them as though all the fires of Mount Erebus had broken loose at once, and then came the silence of speechless horror and stupefaction. It was more like the work of omnipotent fiends than of men. The bolts of heaven themselves could have done nothing like it.

Then the moment of the shock passed, and those who survived remembered what they ought never to have forgotten—that, armed as they were with weapons which under favourable circumstances were absolutely irresistible, the first shot meant victory for those who fired it, and destruction for their enemies. Odds of mere numbers went for nothing, for each air-ship was equal to ten others provided she could send her ten projectiles home first, and this is just what had happened.

All this had passed in a twentieth of the time that it has taken to describe it, and by the time Olga and her subordinates grasped the extent of the calamity that had overtaken them the two Aerian vessels, darting through the air at five hundred miles an hour, had swept far out of range of their guns, and were moreover so hidden by the cloud-sea, that they had no idea which course they had taken.