“Two!” he cried, with a bomb from overhead bursting as it fell, and forthwith he was beating up again.  A glorious exhilaration possessed him now, a giant activity.  His troubles about humanity, about his inadequacy, were gone for ever.  He was a man in battle rejoicing in his power.  Aeroplanes seemed radiating from him in every direction, intent only upon avoiding him, the yelling of their packed passengers came in short gusts as they swept by.  He chose his third quarry, struck hastily and did but turn it on edge.  It escaped him, to smash against the tall cliff of London wall.  Flying from that impact he skimmed the darkling ground so nearly he could see a frightened rabbit bolting up a slope.  He jerked up steeply, and found himself driving over south London with the air about him vacant.  To the right of him a wild riot of signal rockets from the Ostrogites banged tumultuously in the sky.  To the south the wreckage of half a dozen air ships flamed, and east and west and north they fled before him.  They drove away to the east and north, and went about in the south, for they could not pause in the air.  In their present confusion any attempt at evolution would have meant disastrous collisions.

He passed two hundred feet or so above the Roehampton stage.  It was black with people and noisy with their frantic shouting.  But why was the Wimbledon Park stage black and cheering, too?  The smoke and flame of Streatham now hid the three further stages.  He curved about and rose to see them and the northern quarters.  First came the square masses of Shooter’s Hill into sight, from behind the smoke, lit and orderly with the aeroplane that had landed and its disembarking negroes.  Then came Blackheath, and then under the corner of the reek the Norwood stage.  On Blackheath no aeroplane had landed.  Norwood was covered by a swarm of little figures running to and fro in a passionate confusion.  Why?  Abruptly he understood.  The stubborn defence of the flying stages was over, the people were pouring into the under-ways of these last strongholds of Ostrog’s usurpation.  And then, from far away on the northern border of the city, full of glorious import to him, came a sound, a signal, a note of triumph, the leaden thud of a gun.  His lips fell apart, his face was disturbed with emotion.

He drew an immense breath.  “They win,” he shouted to the empty air; “the people win!” The sound of a second gun came like an answer.  And then he saw the monoplane on Blackheath was running down its guides to launch.  It lifted clean and rose.  It shot up into the air, driving straight southward and away from him.

In an instant it came to him what this meant.  It must needs be Ostrog in flight.  He shouted and dropped towards it.  He had the momentum of his elevation and fell slanting down the air and very swiftly.  It rose steeply at his approach.  He allowed for its velocity and drove straight upon it.

It suddenly became a mere flat edge, and behold! he was past it, and driving headlong down with all the force of his futile blow.