The contrast between her stainless purity and the darkness of the blot that Olga’s unholy passion had placed upon his life rose up in all its horror for the hundredth time before him, and once more the impassable gulf opened between them. All that he could say was-- “Good-bye, Alma! You, too, will wish me God-speed, won’t you?” “With all my heart, yes, Alan,” she replied in low, sweet, steady tones. “God guard you in your good work and send you back in safety to us. You will come back rich in honours and followed by the blessings of the world you are going to rescue from the oppressors”-- “Or I shall never come! Good-bye, Alma, good-bye, all!” he said, breaking upon her speech, for he could bear to hear no more, and as he spoke he stooped and kissed her forehead as he had kissed Isma’s a few moments before. Then he turned and ran up the steps just as Alexis took his last kiss and did the same. As they gained the decks of their ships the great bell in the dome of the Temple boomed out the first stroke of twelve. At the sixth stroke the electric suns on the summits of the mountains blazed out simultaneously at a hundred points, a long, deep roar of thunder rolled round the bulwarks of Aeria, and with search-lights flashing out ahead and astern, the four hundred battleships of the two squadrons rose into the air and swept up towards the Ridge. [Illustration: THE FOUR HUNDRED BATTLESHIPS OF THE TWO SQUADRONS ROSE INTO THE AIR. _Page 252._] A thousand feet above it they stopped and hung for a moment motionless in mid-air. Then the roar of a thousand shells exploding far up in the quaking sky answered the salutes from the sentinel ships, and then, still signalling farewells with their search-lights, the squadrons swept out into the ocean of darkness that loomed round the light-girdled realm of Aeria. CHAPTER XXIII. THE FIRST BLOW. THE night of the 15th of May 2037 was passed in an agony of apprehension by nearly the whole of civilised humanity. The long threatened and universally feared thunder-cloud of war had at last loomed up over the serene horizon of peace in full view of the whole world. Although the events of the last six years had to some extent prepared the minds of men for the impending disaster, now that the last hour of the long peace was really about to strike there were very, very few among the millions of non-combatants who were able to rise superior to the universal panic. The ocean terrorism which had paralysed the commerce of the world five years and a half before, fearful as it had been, was, so far as the bulk of humanity was concerned, a terror of the unseen. Ships had gone out to sea and had vanished into the depths, leaving no trace behind them, but the hand that struck the blow had remained invisible.