ndred
airships all together in the world; the score of Asiatic fleets flying
east and west and south must have numbered several thousand. Moreover
the Asiatics had a real fighting flying-machine, the Niais as they were
called, a light but quite efficient weapon, infinitely superior to the
German drachenflieger. Like that, it was a one-man machine, but it
was built very lightly of steel and cane and chemical silk, with a
transverse engine, and a flapping sidewing. The aeronaut carried a gun
firing explosive bullets loaded with oxygen, and in addition, and true
to the best tradition of Japan, a sword. Mostly they were Japanese, and
it is characteristic that from the first it was contemplated that the
aeronaut should be a swordsman. The wings of these flyers had bat-like
hooks forward, by which they were to cling to their antagonist's
gas-chambers while boarding him. These light flying-machines were
carried with the fleets, and also sent overland or by sea to the front
with the men. They were capable of flights of from two to five hundred
miles according to the wind.

So, hard upon the uprush of the first German air-fleet, these Asiatic
swarms took to the atmosphere. Instantly every organised Government in
the world was frantically and vehemently building airships and whatever
approach to a flying machine its inventors' had discovered. There was no
time for diplomacy. Warnings and ultimatums were telegraphed to and fro,
and in a few hours all the panic-fierce world was openly at war, and at
war in the most complicated way. For Britain and France and Italy had
declared war upon Germany and outraged Swiss neutrality; India, at the
sight of Asiatic airships, had broken into a Hindoo insurrection
in Bengal and a Mohametan revolt hostile to this in the North-west
Provinces--the latter spreading like wildfire from Gobi to the Gold
Coast--and the Confederation of Eastern Asia had seized the oil wells of
Burmha and was impartially attacking America and Germany. In a week they
were building airships in Damascus and Cairo and Johannesburg; Australia
and New Zealand were frantically equipping themselves. One unique and
terrifying aspect of this development was the swiftness with which these
monsters could be produced. To build an ironclad took from two to four
years; an airship could be put together in as many weeks. Moreover,
compared with even a torpedo boat, the airship was remarkably simple to
construct, given the air-chamber mat