Olga Romanoff . nce of the fleet of transports. Fifty air-ships had rangedthemselves in a long line to seaward at an elevation of twothousand feet to protect the transports from an aerial assault,and the transports themselves were moving out to form in thebasin behind the breakwater, whence they were to commencetheir voyage. Sultan Khalid, on board his aerial flagship Al Borah—namedafter the winged steed which, according to the old legend, hadborne the Prophet from earth to the threshold of the SeventhHeaven—superintended in person the last preparations for thedeparture of his great armament.
Olga Romanoff . nce of the fleet of transports. Fifty air-ships had rangedthemselves in a long line to seaward at an elevation of twothousand feet to protect the transports from an aerial assault,and the transports themselves were moving out to form in thebasin behind the breakwater, whence they were to commencetheir voyage. Sultan Khalid, on board his aerial flagship Al Borah—namedafter the winged steed which, according to the old legend, hadborne the Prophet from earth to the threshold of the SeventhHeaven—superintended in person the last preparations for thedeparture of his great armament. Flying hither and thither,now soaring and now sinking, he inspected first the cruisersof the air and then the flotillas of the seas, and at last, whenall was ready, he took his place by one of the bow guns of theAl Borah to fire the shot that was to be the signal for theexpedition to start. But a higher intelligence and a greater tactical ability thanhis had already determined that the signal should be given. Teres of the Air-Ships seemed to break up and roll over. Farje 259. The First Blow 259 in very different fashion. Fifty miles to the south towardsthe Lybian desert, high in air, fifteen thousand feet above theearth, a solitary air-ship hung sus^Dended in the central blue. As the sun rose she had moved slowly forward towardsthe city. As she came within sight of it, Alan Arnoldstanding in her conning-tower saw through a telescope thatcommanded a range of a hundred miles the disposition of theaerial fleet above Alexandria. He marked down a group offive air-ships floating some five thousand feet above the centreof the city, and singled them out as the first victims of the war. He was, of course, far out of range of gun-fire, and to havegone within range and fired on them would have been toexpose his single ship to a concentrated hail of projectileswhich would liave scattered her in dust through the sky. Sohe determined to open the game of death and destruction by astroke a
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, bookidolgaro, booksubjectutopias
