Olga heard him with flushed cheeks and shining eyes, and, when he had done speaking, she rose to her feet again and faced him, looking every inch a queen, in the ripe beauty of her perfect womanhood, and said, in tones from which every trace of her former anger and sorrow had vanished-- “Well spoken, Orloff Lossenski! That is worthy counsel for you to give and for me to hear. I will follow it, for it is wise as well as bold, and the day that I crown myself in the Kremlin you shall be the first noble in Russia. But, stop--what of the Sultan? Surely he and his armies will have to be reckoned with?” “True,” said Lossenski. “But if he will not listen to reason, cannot your air-ships destroy his armies like swarms of locusts, lay his cities in ruins, and sweep him and his dynasty from the face of the earth?” “Yes, that is true again,” replied Olga. “Provided that the Aerians did not come to his aid.” “They would not do that, I think,” he replied. “But to make that impossible why should you not make an alliance with him and offer to help him with your air-ships and submarine navy to the conquest of the world, on the condition of the restoration of the Russian Empire and the division of the world between you? Remember that as long as you kept the command of your navies of the air and the sea you could always keep him to the terms when once made.” As the old man ceased speaking Olga laid her hand upon his shoulder, and said in a low, clear, steady voice that spoke of a great resolution finally taken-- “My friend, you are the wisest of counsellors, and when I regain my throne you shall be the first Minister of the Empire. I will pardon your son for his failure to-day for the sake of his father’s wisdom, and we will say no more about disaster and defeat. We will look forward only to victory and the empire that it will bring us!” But when the defeated squadrons arrived at Mount Terror Olga was rudely awakened from her dreams of empire by the tidings of the disaster that had occurred during her absence. The damage inflicted by the _Narwhal_ was speedily proved to be irreparable. For a distance of nearly a mile the roof of the tunnel had sunk bodily down, blocking it for ever. Millions of tons of rock and earth had fallen into the submarine channel, and all hope of clearing it again was out of the question. The explosion of the twelve torpedoes had not only brought down all the rocks in their vicinity, but it had so shaken the earth in both directions that a general subsidence had taken place, forming a barrier which was so vast and massive that its removal, even if possible, would have taken many months of labour; and so there was no avoiding the dismal conclusion that their submarine dockyard was useless, and, for the present at least, their sea-power crippled.