“The last war!” repeated Turnbull, even in his dazed state a little touchy about such a dogma; “how do you know it will be the last?”

The man laid himself back in his reposeful attitude, and said: 

“It is the last war, because if it does not cure the world for ever, it will destroy it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I only mean what you mean,” answered the unknown in a temperate voice.  “What was it that you always meant on those million and one nights when you walked outside your Ludgate Hill shop and shook your hand in the air?”

“Still I do not see,” said Turnbull, stubbornly.

“You will soon,” said the other, and abruptly bent downward one iron handle of his huge machine.  The engine stopped, stooped, and dived almost as deliberately as a man bathing; in their downward rush they swept within fifty yards of a big bulk of stone that Turnbull knew only too well.  The last red anger of the sunset was ended; the dome of heaven was dark; the lanes of flaring light in the streets below hardly lit up the base of the building.  But he saw that it was St. Paul’s Cathedral, and he saw that on the top of it the ball was still standing erect, but the cross was stricken and had fallen sideways.  Then only he cared to look down into the streets, and saw that they were inflamed with uproar and tossing passions.

“We arrive at a happy moment,” said the man steering the ship.  “The insurgents are bombarding the city, and a cannon-ball has just hit the cross.  Many of the insurgents are simple people, and they naturally regard it as a happy omen.”

“Quite so,” said Turnbull, in a rather colourless voice.

“Yes,” replied the other.  “I thought you would be glad to see your prayer answered.  Of course I apologize for the word prayer.”

“Don’t mention it,” said Turnbull.

The flying ship had come down upon a sort of curve, and was now rising again.  The higher and higher it rose the broader and broader became the scenes of flame and desolation underneath.

Ludgate Hill indeed had been an uncaptured and comparatively quiet height, altered only by the startling coincidence of the cross fallen awry.  All the other thoroughfares on all sides of that hill were full of the pulsation and the pain of battle, full of shaking torches and shouting faces.  When at length they had risen high enough to have a bird’s-eye view of the whole campaign, Turnbull was already intoxicated.  He had smelt gunpowder, which was the incense of his own revolutionary religion.

“Have the people really risen?” he asked, breathlessly.  “What are they fighting about?”

“The programme is rather elaborate,” said his entertainer with some indifference.  “I think Dr. Hertz drew it up.”

Turnbull wrinkled his forehead.  “Are all the poor people with the Revolution?” he asked.

The other shrugged his shoulders.  “All the instructed and class-conscious part of them without exception,” he replied.  “There were certainly a few districts; in fact, we are passing over them just now——­”