explosion
made Bert tuck in his head with the celerity of a startled tortoise. The
whole air-fleet immediately went up steeply to a height of about twelve
thousand feet and at that level passed unscathed over the ineffectual
guns. The airships lined out as they moved forward into the form of a
flattened V, with its apex towards the city, and with the flagship going
highest at the apex. The two ends of the V passed over Plumfield and
Jamaica Bay, respectively, and the Prince directed his course a little
to the east of the Narrows, soared over Upper Bay, and came to rest
over Jersey City in a position that dominated lower New York. There
the monsters hung, large and wonderful in the evening light, serenely
regardless of the occasional rocket explosions and flashing shell-bursts
in the lower air.

It was a pause of mutual inspection. For a time naive humanity swamped
the conventions of warfare altogether; the interest of the millions
below and of the thousands above alike was spectacular. The evening was
unexpectedly fine--only a few thin level bands of clouds at seven or
eight thousand feet broke its luminous clarity. The wind had dropped; it
was an evening infinitely peaceful and still. The heavy concussions of
the distant guns and those incidental harmless pyrotechnics at the level
of the clouds seemed to have as little to do with killing and force,
terror and submission, as a salute at a naval review. Below, every
point of vantage bristled with spectators, the roofs of the towering
buildings, the public squares, the active ferry boats, and every
favourable street intersection had its crowds: all the river piers
were dense with people, the Battery Park was solid black with east-side
population, and every position of advantage in Central Park and along
Riverside Drive had its peculiar and characteristic assembly from the
adjacent streets. The footways of the great bridges over the East River
were also closely packed and blocked. Everywhere shopkeepers had left
their shops, men their work, and women and children their homes, to come
out and see the marvel.

"It beat," they declared, "the newspapers."

And from above, many of the occupants of the airships stared with an
equal curiosity. No city in the world was ever so finely placed as New
York, so magnificently cut up by sea and bluff and river, so admirably
disposed to display the tall effects of buildings, the complex
immensities of bridges and mono-railways and feat