Olga Romanoff

by George Chetwynd Griffith

The terrible experience taught by the disaster of Antarctica warned her and her lieutenants that any approach, now that they were seen, must be made with the utmost caution, for they had no precise knowledge as to the range of the Aerian guns. All they knew was that it was very great, and that where one of their projectiles found its mark destruction followed instantly.

Added to this, there was another difficulty. The dense masses of cloud completely hid both sea and land from their view, and made accurate shooting at the land defences impossible. Consequently there was nothing for it but to fight the battle out in the upper regions of the air, against a force of whose actual strength they were ignorant. They dare not attempt to surround the ten air-ships, which hung stationary over the island, for this meant bringing all their guns into play, while they could only use half of their own.

While they were debating on a plan of operations, two new factors in the coming struggle were swiftly and unexpectedly brought into play. As soon as the news of their arrival had been telegraphed to headquarters, the Ariel took the air and passed under the clouds to the rear of the Russian squadron. Ten miles behind them, she swept round sharply, and with her wings inclined to the utmost, and her engines working at the fullest capacity, she took a mighty upward swoop, passed through the clouds like a flash of light, and before the Russians knew what had happened, she was floating three thousand feet above them, out of reach of their guns, and hurling projectile after projectile into their midst. Three of their ships, struck almost simultaneously, were torn into a thousand fragments, and vanished through the clouds.

It was the glare and shock of this explosion that Alexis had seen from the conning-tower of the Narwhal. The remaining Russian ships instantly scattered and sank through the clouds to seek a refuge from the foe whose deadly blows they were completely unable to return.

But the moment they appeared on the under-side of the cloud-sea, all the guns of the land batteries opened fire in all directions with time-shells, and so rapid were the discharges, and so terrible the energy of the explosives, that the whole firmament above the island seemed ablaze with them, while the concussions of the nether atmosphere were so tremendous and continuous, that it would have been madness for the Russian air-ships to have approached within the zone of fire with which the Aerians had covered and encircled their positions.

The clouds were torn and broken up into vast whirling masses, which completely obscured the view of the Russians, and rendered anything like accurate shooting in the direction of the island impossible. Worse than this, the range of the great land guns, fired at an elevation of forty-five degrees, was so enormous that they were forced by the incessantly exploding projectiles, which were hurled up into the air in all directions, to retire to a distance which, beyond the most random shooting, the results of which were spent upon the rocks of the island and the sea, rendered their own guns useless.

Rise up through the clouds they dare not, for they knew the Ariel was still there, and that the first ship that showed herself would be an almost helpless mark for one of the ten guns which, for the time being, commanded the heavens. There seemed nothing for it but an ignominious retreat, for, as Boris Lossenski said to Olga when, furious with rage and mortification, she reproached him with a lack both of skill and courage, an attack upon a volcano in full eruption would have been child’s play to an assault at close quarters on Kerguelen Island.

Their one hope of success had lain in a surprise, and that, by some unaccountable means, had been made impossible. They had reckoned only on the air-ships and the submarine defences, and even these they had expected to take unawares. The terrible power of the battery guns, which were able to spread their seas of fire through the air and to shake the very firmament itself with their projectiles, had been a revelation to them.

They could not train their own guns without seeing their mark, and neither flame nor smoke betrayed the position of the batteries, while on the other hand the artillerists on the island had simply to surround the station with a zone of fire and a continuous series of atmospheric convulsions through which no air-ship could have passed without the risk of overturning or completely collapsing.