"Can't you put out those lights?" yelled the trooper. He was jubilant, for he had put the destroyer out of action. Nobody knows what the destroyer thought, back there behind the trees of the moat enclosure, but the Captain of the _Mary Rose_ spoke afterwards as to the descent of the yacht. She had been at a height of five miles in the air when the electric lantern flashed the summons upwards. At the signal she simply dropped like a stone. The air roared round her like the deepening blast of a furnace; the friction of the wind was actually making her sides red hot when she slowed to a speed of ninety miles an hour. She saw the lurking destroyer, she saw the whole starboard division of the British Fleet swoop down out of the north, and knew that not a ship would care to fire for fear of a resulting explosion which would wreck the Tower of London. She saw the solitary horseman flashing the lantern signal again and again. She knew that she might be trapped to destruction, yet grudged the brakes which in the last two miles of air must be clapped on full to prevent her being dashed to pieces on Tower Hill. Down she fell like a meteor out of heaven, slowed, jarred her brake, jumped on the sharp recoil a hundred feet, then gently lowered her torpedo-shaped steel hull until with a feathery lightness she touched the pavement, and sent her drawbridge gangway clanging down. Already the destroyer, alert for action, rose from behind the trees, flashed out her vivid searchlight upon the yacht, and in that glare confirmed her worst suspicions. His golden harness glowing, his black horse rearing and fighting the air, Brand lifted his arm as though to stay the destroyer's fire from blasting him. Lancaster, obedient to the signal, spurred down the hill at full gallop. He reached the gangway, charged straight up the slope, and crouching down rode in through the open port. Even before the master could follow, the destroyer lashed out with her machine guns. For a moment the yacht was lost to sight in a cloud of fire and steel, but in the very midst of it, Lancaster ran down the slope of the gangway, wrenched Brand from under his dying horse, and dragged him back into shelter. As the yacht's gangway crashed home the destroyer passed overhead launching torpedoes. The _Mary Rose_ swung as she lifted, crashing right through the destroyer's fragile hull. The magazine exploded into the great hydrogen cylinder above; but Brand's yacht went on unscathed through a sphere of flame, on into space, with wreckage and mangled bodies streaming behind her. XIV THE STORY OF THE SHIPS It is time now to tell the story of the ships, the genealogy of the _Mary Rose_, the secret of Brand's aerial wars, and how the great outlaw gained command of the air. Down through the ages sweeps that Pageant of the Ships, with oar, sail, steam, electric, etheric power, cleaving the centuries since the world was young.