But the flames were still licking and curling round many a house and public building. All night the wind was rising to a gale; the cloud wrack flew across the reddened sky. As the tardy hour of dawn drew near, strange pallid people with fantastic gestures--hatless, oddly-clad--came wandering through the streets. Raggett had freed his friends. The Leaguers had let loose hundreds of the lunatics of London! Seventy miles away a yet more deadly wound was being inflicted on the British nation. About five o’clock on the morning of Christmas Day two terrific explosions in quick succession roused the inhabitants of the little Hampshire town of Havant and the surrounding villages. Great numbers of Portsmouth people also heard it, but, of course, more faintly. When, later on, it became known that a fire had broken out in the Royal dockyard it was assumed by many that the sounds of explosion must have come from the same quarter. Every thought was concentrated on this appalling catastrophe, the full extent of which was only to be gradually realised. But, all the time, the great naval yard, Britain’s pride and strong tower against the enemy, was fast becoming one gigantic furnace. The grip of all-devouring fire grew deadlier every hour. This many-acred hive of naval industry, the factory of the wooden walls of England, dating from King John, and now the birthplace and the nursery of the armoured giants of the deep, was crumbling into dust and ashes. The docked ships, ships’ stores, and armament, that stood for millions of the nation’s money, needed for national defence, roared into flame and blackened into cinders.