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OLGA ROMANOFF.
OLGA ROMANOFF.
BY GEORGE GRIFFITH. AUTHOR OF “THE ANGEL OF THE REVOLUTION,” “THE OUTLAWS OF THE AIR,” “VALDAR THE OFT-BORN,” “BRITON OR BOER?” “THE ROMANCE OF GOLDEN STAR,” ETC., ETC. “ And so they waited—waited while the ages-old snow and ice melted from the bare, black rocks under the fierce breath of the fire-storm; while the ocean of flame seethed and roared and eddied about them, licking up the seas and melted snows, and fighting with them as fire and water have fought since the world began; while the fou
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PROLOGUE. THE PROPHECY OF NATAS.
PROLOGUE. THE PROPHECY OF NATAS.
These are the last words of Israel di Murska, known in the days of strife as Natas, the Master of the Terror, given to the Children of Deliverance dwelling in the land of Aeria, in the twenty-fifth year of the Peace, which, in the reckoning of the West, is the year nineteen hundred and thirty. MY life is lived, and the wings of the Angel of Death overshadow me as I write; but before the last summons comes, I must obey the spirit within me that bids me tell of the things that I have seen, in orde
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CHAPTER I. THE SURRENDER OF THE WORLD-THRONE.
CHAPTER I. THE SURRENDER OF THE WORLD-THRONE.
A HUNDRED years had passed since Natas, the Master of the Terror, had given into the hands of Richard Arnold his charge to the future generations of the Aerians—as the descendants of the Terrorists who had colonised the mountain-walled valley of Aeria, in Central Africa, were now called; since the man, who had planned and accomplished the greatest revolution in the history of the world, had given his last blessing to his companions-in-arms and their children, and had “turned his face to the wall
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CHAPTER II. A CROWNLESS KING.
CHAPTER II. A CROWNLESS KING.
LATE in the evening of the same day two of the President’s audience—the only two who had heard his words with anger and hatred instead of gratitude and joy—were together in a small but luxuriously-furnished room, in an octagonal turret which rose from one of the angles of a large house on the southern slope of the heights of Hampstead. One was a very old man, whose once giant frame was wasted and shrunken by the slow siege of many years, and on whose withered, care-lined features death had alrea
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CHAPTER III. TSARINA OLGA.
CHAPTER III. TSARINA OLGA.
THREE days after his death, the body of Paul Romanoff was reduced to ashes in the Highgate Crematorium, a magnificent building, in the sombre yet splendid architecture of ancient Egypt, which stood in the midst of what had once been Highgate Cemetery, and what was now a beautiful garden, shaded by noble trees, and in summer ablaze with myriads of flowers. Not a grave or a headstone was to be seen, for burial in the earth had been abolished throughout the civilised world for nearly a century. In
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CHAPTER IV. A SON OF THE GODS.
CHAPTER IV. A SON OF THE GODS.
ON the day but one following the reading of Paul Romanoff’s secret will, Olga and Serge set out for St. Petersburg, to convey his ashes to their last resting-place in the Cathedral of SS. Peter and Paul in the Fortress of Petropaulovski, where reposed the dust of the Tyrants of Russia, from Peter the Great to Alexander II. of Russia, now only remembered as the chief characters in the dark tragedy of the days before the Revolution. The intense love of the Russians for their country had survived t
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CHAPTER V. A VISION FROM THE CLOUDS.
CHAPTER V. A VISION FROM THE CLOUDS.
AT Königsberg, which was reached in nine hours after leaving London, that is to say, soon after seven o’clock in the evening, the Eastern express divided: five of the cars went northward to St. Petersburg, carrying those passengers who were going to participate in the Winter Festival, while the other five which made up the train went on to Moscow and the East. During the twenty minutes’ stop at Berlin, Olga had found an opportunity of having a few words in private with Serge, and had succeeded i
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CHAPTER VI. DEED AND DREAM.
CHAPTER VI. DEED AND DREAM.
WHEN Olga went to her room that night in St. Petersburg, instead of going to bed, she unpacked from her valise a series of articles which seemed strange possessions for a young girl of not quite seventeen to travel with on her wedding journey. First came a tiny spirit furnace from which, by the aid of an arrangement something like the modern blow-pipe, an intense heat could be obtained. Then a delicate pair of scales, a glass pestle and mortar, and a couple of glass liquid-measures, and lastly,
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CHAPTER VII. THE SPELL OF CIRCE
CHAPTER VII. THE SPELL OF CIRCE
BREAKFAST passed off very pleasantly, and by the time it was over Serge was upon much better terms with the two Aerians than he had been on the previous day. He had taken Olga’s warning and appeal to heart, and he had done so all the more easily for the reason that he felt somewhat ashamed of himself for the ill-temper and bad manners of which he had been guilty, and which their two new acquaintances had repaid with such dignified courtesy and good humour. His frankly-expressed apology was accep
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CHAPTER VIII. THE NEW TERROR.
CHAPTER VIII. THE NEW TERROR.
FIVE years had passed since the Ithuriel had vanished like a cloud from the sky, leaving, so far as the air-ship itself was concerned, no more trace than if she had soared into space beyond the sphere of the earth’s attraction and departed to another planet. All the rest of the winter of 2030-1, tidings had been sought most anxiously, but in vain, by the kindred and friends of those who had formed her crew during the ill-fated voyage on which she had disappeared into the unknown. The earth had b
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CHAPTER IX. THE FLIGHT OF THE “REVENGE.”
CHAPTER IX. THE FLIGHT OF THE “REVENGE.”
ASTOUNDING, almost stupefying, as were the tidings conveyed by this letter, which had dropped like a veritable bolt from the blue, the challenge contained in the last sentence and the ominous name with which it was signed were matters of infinitely greater and more instant importance. Alan Arnold was the responsible President of Aeria first and a father afterwards. He lost not a moment in speculating upon the strange fate of his son and first-born. The safety not only of Aeria, but of the world,
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CHAPTER X. STRANGE TIDINGS TO AERIA.
CHAPTER X. STRANGE TIDINGS TO AERIA.
THE sitting of the Council lasted until nightfall, and just as the western mountains were throwing their huge shadows over the lovely valley, two more air-ships passed between two of the southward peaks and alighted in the great square in the centre of the city. They were the two vessels which had been sent to the island indicated in Olga’s letter to bring back the long-lost Alan and Alexis. It would be vain to attempt to describe the feelings with which the President and the father of Alexis we
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CHAPTER XI. THE SNAKE IN EDEN.
CHAPTER XI. THE SNAKE IN EDEN.
NO more perfect place could have been imagined for an exchange of confidences and sympathy between two girls situated as Alma and Isma were than the oval, daintily-cushioned interior of the Cygna , as Isma had called her swan-prowed craft. Skirting the mountains, at a distance of about five hundred yards from them, and at a height of about as many feet from the summits of the undulating foothills below, the Cygna sped quietly along at a speed of some twenty-five miles an hour. The temperature of
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CHAPTER XII. THE BATTLE OF KERGUELEN.
CHAPTER XII. THE BATTLE OF KERGUELEN.
THE Council of Aeria possessed, as has already been said, four-and-twenty stations, scattered over the oceans of the world, which it used as depôts for the submarine fleets, by means of which, acting in co-operation with its aerial squadrons, it had made any attempt at naval warfare hopeless until the disasters described at the beginning of this book proved that an enemy, in this respect at least, more powerful than itself, had successfully challenged its empire of the sea. Of these stations the
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CHAPTER XIII. THE SYREN’S STRONGHOLD.
CHAPTER XIII. THE SYREN’S STRONGHOLD.
AS soon as the first pitched battle in the world-war was over, a lengthy and detailed report of the attack on Kerguelen and its repulse was drawn up by Alan, Captain Ernstein, and Admiral Forrest for presentation to the Council. To this report Alan added a supplement, which is here reproduced in his own words. “From what I know of the designs of Olga Romanoff and her advisers I am convinced that the defeats which have been inflicted upon them will merely have the effect of checking, and not putt
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CHAPTER XIV. FROM THE SEA TO THE AIR.
CHAPTER XIV. FROM THE SEA TO THE AIR.
TWENTY-FOUR hours after she had reached Mount Terror the Narwhal came into the inner basin of Christmas Harbour, running easily along the surface, with the red flag flying at her flagstaff. The news spread rapidly through the little settlement, the dwellers in which had been wondering greatly at her sudden disappearance, and there was quite a crowd on the jetty as she ran alongside. Max Ernstein was among it, and as the battleship came to a standstill he saw to his amazement Alan spring ashore a
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CHAPTER XV. OLGA IN COUNCIL.
CHAPTER XV. OLGA IN COUNCIL.
THE remains of the Russian submarine squadron, numbering now only seventeen vessels, headed out northward into the open sea, after leaving their disabled consorts to their fate. In the brief space occupied by her first rush they had recognised the Narwhal both by her size and speed, and one of the captains avowed that he had recognised Alan Arnold, Olga’s late captive, standing under the glass dome of the conning-tower, steering the great vessel upon her devastating course. Twenty miles out from
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CHAPTER XVI. KHALID THE MAGNIFICENT.
CHAPTER XVI. KHALID THE MAGNIFICENT.
A FEW minutes before midnight on the fifteenth of May, in the year 2036, Khalid the Magnificent, lord and master of the greatest and most splendid realm that had ever been ruled over by a single man since the world began, stood alone on the spacious terrace of his palace in Alexandria, gazing up at the myriads of stars that shone in the cloudless firmament above him, and dreaming one of those dreams of world-wide empire which had haunted the soul of such men as he from the days of Rameses the Gr
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CHAPTER XVII. AN UNHOLY ALLIANCE.
CHAPTER XVII. AN UNHOLY ALLIANCE.
WITHIN a couple of hours after the destruction of the islet Sultan Khalid was back in his palace, and the Ithuriel and the Vindaya had departed with their prisoners of war for Kerguelen. Alan, quite content with the advantage he had gained by obtaining the Sultan’s pledge of peace for a year, in comparison with which even the capture of one of the Russian air-ships was of trifling importance, had determined not to run the needless risk of an encounter with Olga’s fleet, for he had learnt the str
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CHAPTER XVIII. A MOMENTOUS COMMISSION.
CHAPTER XVIII. A MOMENTOUS COMMISSION.
TWELVE hours after they had left the Sultan on the terrace of his palace, the Ithuriel and the Vindaya dropped through the clouds on to the snow-covered surface of Kerguelen Island, and within an hour the despatch-vessel Vega was speeding away north-westward to Aeria with a full account of the results achieved by the first cruise of the Ithuriel . The twenty-four hours which would have to elapse before the reply of the Council could be received were employed in repairing the damage done to the V
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CHAPTER XIX. FACE TO FACE AGAIN.
CHAPTER XIX. FACE TO FACE AGAIN.
SMILING and self-possessed as Olga appeared when she gained the roof of the palace, she had passed through a perfect purgatory of conflicting and agonising emotions since the news of the arrival of the Ithuriel had reached her in her room. Her tremendous and, but for the fact of her strange, hopeless love, incomprehensible blunder in setting Alan and Alexis free, instead of either killing them or keeping them in life-long captivity, had already borne terrible fruit; but this visit, made at the v
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CHAPTER XX. THE CALL TO ARMS.
CHAPTER XX. THE CALL TO ARMS.
WITHIN an hour the wondering inhabitants of Alexandria saw the Russian fleet rise a thousand feet into the air and form in two columns of line ahead. Then the Aerian fleet ranged itself in two long lines five hundred feet outside them and a thousand feet above them. A time-shell from the Ithuriel gave the signal to start, and the two fleets leapt forward to the south-east at a speed of a hundred miles an hour, and in a few minutes had vanished over the desert. The speed was quickly increased to
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CHAPTER XXI. THE HOME-COMING.
CHAPTER XXI. THE HOME-COMING.
THE eastern mountains were still casting their long shadows over the lawns and fields, the vineyards and the gardens of Aeria on the morning of the eleventh of May in the year 2037 of the Christian Era and the hundred and thirty-third year of the Peace, but the whole population of the lovely valley were already afoot and abroad, for this was the most momentous day that had been in the history of the colony since Richard Arnold had first crossed the Northern Ridge with Natasha beside him in the c
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CHAPTER XXII. THE EVE OF BATTLE.
CHAPTER XXII. THE EVE OF BATTLE.
AN irregular procession was now formed, at the head of which walked the two returned exiles, each with his father by his side, and followed by the rest of the company. They passed out of the reception-room, down the wide entrance-hall, and out of the great arched portal which opened on to the square. As they appeared at the top of the spacious flight of marble steps which led from it down to the pavement, a mighty cheer of welcome went up from a hundred thousand throats, the peals of bells in th
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CHAPTER XXIII. THE FIRST BLOW.
CHAPTER XXIII. THE FIRST BLOW.
THE night of the 15th of May 2037 was passed in an agony of apprehension by nearly the whole of civilised humanity. The long threatened and universally feared thunder-cloud of war had at last loomed up over the serene horizon of peace in full view of the whole world. Although the events of the last six years had to some extent prepared the minds of men for the impending disaster, now that the last hour of the long peace was really about to strike there were very, very few among the millions of n
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CHAPTER XXIV. WAR AT ITS WORST.
CHAPTER XXIV. WAR AT ITS WORST.
WITHOUT even pausing to see the effects of his charge upon the three air-ships above Alexandria, Alan kept the Avenger going at full speed, soaring up into the higher regions of the atmosphere with her prow pointed to the north-east. About three hours later she was floating at an elevation of nearly five miles above Moscow, not stationary, but sweeping round and round in vast circles on her quadruple wings after the manner of the condors of the Andes, which thus sustain themselves on almost moti
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CHAPTER XXV. A MESSAGE FROM MARS.
CHAPTER XXV. A MESSAGE FROM MARS.
IN order to adequately explain the origin of the peremptory recall which, although of course he obeyed it without question, seemed so incomprehensible to Alan, it will be necessary to go back to the night of the 12th of May. While all Aeria was rejoicing over the return of the exiles and their restoration to the rights of citizenship, there was one of the inhabitants of the Valley who took little or no part in the festivities. This was Vassilis Cosmo, a man of between forty-six and forty-seven,
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CHAPTER XXVI. SENTENCE OF DEATH.
CHAPTER XXVI. SENTENCE OF DEATH.
AT ten o’clock on the following morning the great temple of Aeria was filled by a congregation of men and matrons who had been summoned together to hear what may, without exaggeration, be described as the death-sentence of the world and the funeral oration of the human race. As had been previously decided by the President and Council, only the heads of families were present. Of these, some had but just welcomed their first-born into the world, while others, standing almost on the brink of the gr
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CHAPTER XXVII. ALMA SPEAKS.
CHAPTER XXVII. ALMA SPEAKS.
THAT night Alan, with his heart too full even for the society of his own home, went out of the city a little before midnight and walked down towards the western shore of the lake, where there still stood the same grove of palms in which, more than a hundred and thirty years before, Natasha and Richard Arnold had plighted their despairing troth and under the shadow of what threatened to be an eternal separation spoken the first words of love that had ever passed their lips. It was not altogether
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CHAPTER XXVIII. THE SIGN IN THE SKY.
CHAPTER XXVIII. THE SIGN IN THE SKY.
WHEN the news of what had happened at midnight in the palm grove was published the next morning far and wide through the valley of Aeria it would have been impossible to imagine that an irrevocable sentence of death was overhanging the land and all its inhabitants, save those who were to be selected to take the one chance that remained of surviving the chaos that was to come. There was no one in the valley to whom Alan’s story was not familiar in all its details, there was not a single heart tha
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CHAPTER XXIX. THE TRUCE OF GOD.
CHAPTER XXIX. THE TRUCE OF GOD.
BY the 30th of July the work in the caverns was so far advanced that the Council was able to authorise the departure of Alan and his companions for the outside world. The great vertical sluice-door, a huge sheet of steel forty feet long, twenty wide, and eighteen inches thick, and footed with a great indiarubber pad, was in its place, suspended at the top of the steel-lined grooves, which had been sunk three feet into each of the rock walls of the chasm into which the water-tunnel from the lake
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CHAPTER XXX. THE SHADOW OF DEATH.
CHAPTER XXX. THE SHADOW OF DEATH.
“AH, I see,” said Olga. “You have come to tell us this wonderful story about the comet, and the message you say you have received from Mars, over again. You are not the first who have prophesied the end of the world by such means, nor will you be the last to be discredited by the event. “Once for all, then, let me save misunderstanding by telling you that I don’t believe a word of it, and therefore nothing that you can say will have any effect on the course of action that I have determined upon.
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CHAPTER XXXI. THE LAST BATTLE.
CHAPTER XXXI. THE LAST BATTLE.
AT sunset on the 15th the sluice-door had been finally lowered into its place and the pent-up waters of the lake of Aeria had risen nearly forty feet by the next morning. Only the upper parts of the villas on its banks were visible and its area was so enormously increased that the whole appearance of the valley was altered. Rising at first at the rate of three feet an hour, a rate which of course decreased as the area became greater, the waters would reach the entrance to the caverns soon after
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CHAPTER XXXII. THE SHE-WOLF TO HER LAIR.
CHAPTER XXXII. THE SHE-WOLF TO HER LAIR.
IN the mysterious revolution of human things it came about that the only spectator of the closing scene of the tragedy of humanity who endured and survived its final terrors was the woman to whom it had been due that the fire from heaven had fallen upon a world mad with the frenzy and agony of war instead of sane and calm with the sanity and calmness of peace and reason. On the issue of the Battle of Aeria, Olga and, under her unnaturally acquired influence, the Sultan, had staked the empire of
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