hirts and trousers hotly pursued by three
Japanese swordsman. The foremost of the two fugitives was a shapely man,
and ran lightly and well; the second was a sturdy little man, and rather
fat. He ran comically in leaps and bounds, with his plump arms bent up
by his side and his head thrown back. The pursuers ran with uniforms and
dark thin metal and leather head-dresses. The little man stumbled, and
Bert gasped, realising a new horror in war.

The foremost swordsman won three strides on him and was near enough to
slash at him and miss as he spurted.

A dozen yards they ran, and then the swordsman slashed again, and Bert
could hear across the waters a little sound like the moo of an elfin cow
as the fat little man fell forward. Slash went the swordsman and slash
at something on the ground that tried to save itself with ineffectual
hands. "Oh, I carn't!" cried Bert, near blubbering, and staring with
starting eyes.

The swordsman slashed a fourth time and went on as his fellows came up
after the better runner. The hindmost swordsman stopped and turned back.
He had perceived some movement perhaps; but at any rate he stood, and
ever and again slashed at the fallen body.

"Oo-oo!" groaned Bert at every slash, and shrank closer into the bushes
and became very still. Presently came a sound of shots from the town,
and then everything was quiet, everything, even the hospital.

He saw presently little figures sheathing swords come out from the
houses and walk to the debris of the flying-machines the bomb had
destroyed. Others appeared wheeling undamaged aeroplanes upon their
wheels as men might wheel bicycles, and sprang into the saddles and
flapped into the air. A string of three airships appeared far away
in the east and flew towards the zenith. The one that hung low above
Niagara city came still lower and dropped a rope ladder to pick up men
from the power-house.

For a long time he watched the further happenings in Niagara city as a
rabbit might watch a meet. He saw men going from building to building,
to set fire to them, as he presently realised, and he heard a series
of dull detonations from the wheel pit of the power-house. Some similar
business went on among the works on the Canadian side. Meanwhile more
and more airships appeared, and many more flying-machines, until at last
it seemed to him nearly a third of the Asiatic fleet had re-assembled.
He watched them from his bush, cramped but immovable, watched them
gat