r fists impotently at their murderers.

In vain Dick and his squadron strove to dash themselves into the
invisible airships. The pilots eluded them with ease, sometimes
sending a contemptuous round of machine-gun bullets in their
direction, but not troubling to shoot them down.

Two small boys, carrying a huge banner with "No Surrender" across it,
were walking off the ghastly field. Twelve or fourteen years old at
most, they disdained to run. They were singing, singing the National
Anthem, though their voices were inaudible through the turmoil.

Rat-tat! Rat-tat-a-tat! The fiends above loosed a storm of lead upon
them. Both fell. One rose, still clutching the banner in his hand and
waved it aloft. In a sudden silence his childish treble could be
heard:

My country, 'tis of thee
Sweet land of lib-er-ty--

The guns rattled again. Clutching the blood-stained banner, he dropped
across the body of his companion.

Suddenly a broad band of black soared upward from the earth. Those in
charge of the cylinders placed about the Capitol had released the gas.

A band of darkness, rising into the blue, cutting off the earth,
making the summit of the ruined Capitol a floating dome. But, fast as
it rose, the invisible airships rose faster above it.

A last vicious volley! Two of Dick's flight crashing down upon the
piles of dead men underneath! And nothing was visible, though the
darkness rose till it obliterated the blue above.

* * * * *

At dawn the Council sat, after an all-night meeting. Vice-president
Tomlinson, one arm shattered by a machine-gun bullet, still occupied
the chair at the head of the table.

Outside, immediately about the White House, there was not a sound.
Washington might have been a city of the dead. The railroad terminals,
however, were occupied by a mob of people, busily looting. There was
great disorder. Organized government had simply disappeared.

Each man was occupied only with obtaining as much food as he could
carry, and taking his family into rural districts where the Terror
would not be likely to pursue. All the roads leading out of
Washington--into Virginia, into Maryland, were congested with columns
of fugitives that stretched for miles.

Some, who were fortunate enough to possess automobiles, and--what was
rarer--a few gallons of gas, were trying to force their way through
the masses ahead of them; here and there a family trudged beside a
pac