The result of this interview was a meeting of a Cabinet Council, and
the immediate despatch of secret orders to mobilise the fleet and the
army, to put every available ship into commission, and to double the
strength of the Mediterranean Squadron at once. That evening three
Queen's messengers left Charing Cross by the night mail, one for
Berlin, one for Vienna, and one for Rome, each of them bearing a copy
of the secret treaty.

On Monday morning a Council of Ministers was held at the Peterhof
Palace in St. Petersburg, presided over by the Tsar, and convened to
discuss the destruction of Kronstadt.

At this Council it was announced that the fleet of war-balloons would
be ready to take the air in a week's time from then, and that the
concentration of troops on the Afghan frontier was as complete as it
could be without provoking immediate hostilities with Britain. In
fact, so close were the Cossacks and the Indian troops to each other,
both on the Pamirs and on the western slopes of the Hindu Kush, that
a collision might be expected at any moment.

The Council of the Tsar decided to let matters take their course in
the East, and to make all arrangements with France to simultaneously
attack the Triple Alliance as soon as the war-balloons had been
satisfactorily tested.

Soon after daybreak on Wednesday, the 10th, an affair of outposts
took place near the northern end of the Sir Ulang Pass of the Hindu
Kush, between two considerable bodies of Cossacks and Ghoorkhas, in
which, after a stubborn fight, the Russians gave way before the
magazine fire of the Indian troops, and fled, leaving nearly a fourth
of their number on the field.

The news of this encounter reached London on Wednesday night, and was
published in the papers on Thursday morning, together with the
intelligence that the fight had been watched from a height of nearly
three thousand feet by a small party of men and women in an air-ship,
evidently a vessel of war, from the fact that she carried four long
guns. She took no part in the fight, and as soon as it was over went
off to the south-west at a speed which carried her out of sight in a
few minutes.

CHAPTER XV.

A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY.

While all Europe was thrilling with the apprehension of approaching
war, and the excitement caused by the appearance of the strange
air-ship and the news of its terrible exploits at Kronstadt and
Tiumen, the _Ariel_ herself was quietly pursuing her way in mi