"I am sorry for poor old Wayne, I really am," he thought. "He spoke up splendidly for me at that Council. And he blacked old Barker's eye with considerable spirit. But I don't see what a man can expect when he fights against arithmetic, to say nothing of civilisation. And what a wonderful hoax all this military genius is! I suspect I've just discovered what Cromwell discovered, that a sensible tradesman is the best general, and that a man who can buy men and sell men can lead and kill them. The thing's simply like adding up a column in a ledger. If Wayne has two hundred men, he can't put two hundred men in nine places at once. If they're ousted from Pump Street they're flying somewhere. If they're not flying past the church they're flying past the Works. And so we have them. We business men should have no chance at all except that cleverer people than we get bees in their bonnets that prevent them from reasoning properly--so we reason alone. And so I, who am comparatively stupid, see things as God sees them, as a vast machine. My God, what's this?" and he clapped his hands to his eyes and staggered back. Then through the darkness he cried in a dreadful voice-- "Did I blaspheme God? I am struck blind." "What?" wailed another voice behind him, the voice of a certain Wilfred Jarvis of North Kensington. "Blind!" cried Buck; "blind!" "I'm blind too!" cried Jarvis, in an agony. "Fools, all of you," said a gross voice behind them; "we're all blind. The lamps have gone out." "The lamps! But why? where?" cried Buck, turning furiously in the darkness. "How are we to get on? How are we to chase the enemy? Where have they gone?" "The enemy went--" said the rough voice behind, and then stopped doubtfully. "Where?" shouted Buck, stamping like a madman. "They went," said the gruff voice, "past the Gas Works, and they've used their chance." "Great God!" thundered Buck, and snatched at his revolver; "do you mean they've turned out--" But almost before he had spoken the words, he was hurled like a stone from catapult into the midst of his own men. "Notting Hill! Notting Hill!" cried frightful voices out of the darkness, and they seemed to come from all sides, for the men of North Kensington, unacquainted with the road, had lost all their bearings in the black world of blindness. "Notting Hill! Notting Hill!" cried the invisible people, and the invaders were hewn down horribly with black steel, with steel that gave no glint against any light. * * * * *