Page:Robert William Cole - The Struggle for Empire; A Story of the Year 2236 (1900).djvu/172

160 at the moon's orbit, and another just outside the earth's atmosphere. Only miles lay between London and destruction. The prospect for England became more gloomy every day. The two lines of defence that remained were nothing like as strong as the two which had already been broken down and annihilated. They were composed chiefly of inferior and out-of-date ships, commanded by inexperienced men. The best officers had already been slaughtered at the two outer lines of defence.

The Sirian Admiral-in-Chief soon showed by his vigorous movements that he was not going to allow the grass to grow under his feet. The fires around Jupiter had hardly died down, when the Sirian fleets were already at the moon. Numbers of the Anglo-Saxon ships were let down on to the surface of that luminary and stationed behind the ridges of rock which formed the extinct volcanoes, so that they might be to some extent defended