The ram of the Aerian had cut through the barrels of the two stern guns and the shafts of the three propellers as cleanly as a razor would have divided so many straws. Sustained and propelled only by her wings, she dropped from two hundred miles an hour to about twenty-five, and then the _Isma_ reappeared in the sky above her, flying the signal, “Will you surrender?” Her commander saw that the brilliant and almost miraculous manœuvre of the _Isma_ had placed him utterly at her mercy. If he refused, a single shell would send him and his ship and crew in fragments to the earth, while none of his guns could touch the Aerian, floating as she did a thousand feet above him, so he bowed to necessity and sent the white flag to his masthead. Alexis then signalled again, ordering him to unload all his guns and leave the breeches open, and when he had seen this done he sank down to a level with her, passed a steel-wire rope on board her, and towed her away in triumph to the fleet. The brilliant achievement delighted the Aerians as much as it confounded the crew of the captured vessel, especially when it was discovered that she was the _Haroun_, a Moslem warship taking a message from the Sultan to the Tsarina at Moscow. Khalid’s letter, which had been despatched the night before from Algiers, informed Olga of the disaster that had overtaken the Crescent in the Mediterranean, and of his determination to avenge it by storming the bridges of Gibraltar, the Dardanelles, and the Bosphorus, and pouring his remaining troops over them into Europe as soon as he could concentrate them. Far more important than this, however, was a notification of his intention to at once lead a fleet of two hundred and fifty air-ships to the west of Europe, and there destroy city after city on his eastward course until they joined forces and proceeded, if necessary, to devastate the rest of the Continent. The Moslem’s guns were now rendered useless, and she was left to her own devices to fall an easy prey to the first enemy that might attack her. The Aerian fleet then divided into fifty squadrons of five vessels each, and these winged their way towards the Russian frontier, ever soaring higher and higher, until their wings were beating the rarefied air at an altitude of over three miles. Odessa, Kieff, Gomel, Vitebsk, Dünaburg, and Riga were all covered by the time the sun rose. Scores of Russian air-ships were seen by the various squadrons darting about hither and thither along the frontier at varying elevations, evidently on the look-out for an enemy. It was not many minutes before the Aerian squadrons were discovered by these, and they instantly got away out of range, and then swerving round sought to rise to a similar altitude so as to place themselves on equal terms with the Aerians.