The President, the Vice-President, and the twelve members of the Council with their families had embarked on one of the new aerial battleships, two hundred and fifty of which had been constructed during the past year. The _Avenger_, as she had been named, in view of the fact that she was henceforth to be placed under Alan’s immediate command as flagship of the combined Aerian and Federation fleets, was the largest aerial cruiser then in existence, and embodied the highest structural skill to which the engineers of Aeria had attained. From the stern to the point of her ram she was two hundred and seventy-five feet in length, with a midships beam of thirty feet. She was sustained in the air on two pairs of wings, one working under the other. Of these, the lower and larger pair measured two hundred feet from point to point and fifty feet in their greatest breadth, while the upper pair, working nearly flush with the deck, were two-thirds of their size. She carried ten guns on each broadside, and two bow and two stern chasers of a range limited only by the possibility of taking aim at the object to be destroyed, and her propellers were capable of driving her through the air at the hitherto unheard-of speed of six hundred miles an hour.[4] The _Avenger_, attended by an escort of fifty cruisers of somewhat smaller dimensions than her own, rapidly out-distanced the flotilla of pleasure-craft, and passing over the Ridge at a speed of sixty miles an hour, stopped at an elevation of a thousand feet above it. From here those on her deck could see the vast oval of the valley encircled by the sentinel ships which now constantly patrolled the mountain bulwarks of Aeria, and which were launching hundreds of time-shells up into the air from their outer broadsides and producing a continuous roar of explosions which formed such a greeting salute as had never been heard on earth or in the air before. Presently an answering roll of thunder was heard far away to the north, growing every moment louder and louder. “There they come at last!” cried Isma, who was standing with Alma in the bow of the _Avenger_, eagerly scanning the northern heavens through a pair of field-glasses. “I can see the flashes of the shells quite distinctly.” As she spoke she handed the glasses to Alma, and noticed, not without a little smile of satisfaction, that her hands trembled slightly as she raised them to her eyes. “Yes, they are coming,” said Alma, in a tone that might have been a good deal steadier than it was. “I can see the sun shining upon the hulls of the ships. They are coming up very fast, evidently.” “Of course they are!” laughed Isma. “After the poor fellows have been shut out all this time from the delights of Aeria, it is only natural that they should hasten their home-coming. Look, look! you can see them without the glasses now. What a swarm of them there seems to be!”