Before Bert could decide to say anything more he was whisked up
by the two soldiers. They joined hands to seat him, and his arms
were put about their necks. "Vorwarts!" Some one ran before him
with the portfolio, and he was borne rapidly along the broad
avenue between the gas generators and the airships, rapidly and
on the whole smoothly except that once or twice his bearers
stumbled over hose-pipes and nearly let him down.

He was wearing Mr. Butteridge's Alpine cap, and his little
shoulders were in Mr. Butteridge's fur-lined overcoat, and he had
responded to Mr. Butteridge's name. The sandals dangled
helplessly. Gaw! Everybody seemed in a devil of a hurry. Why?
He was carried joggling and gaping through the twilight,
marvelling beyond measure.

The systematic arrangement of wide convenient spaces, the
quantities of business-like soldiers everywhere, the occasional
neat piles of material, the ubiquitous mono-rail lines, and the
towering ship-like hulls about him, reminded him a little of
impressions he had got as a boy on a visit to Woolwich Dockyard.
The whole camp reflected the colossal power of modern science
that had created it. A peculiar strangeness was produced by the
lowness of the electric light, which lay upon the ground, casting
all shadows upwards and making a grotesque shadow figure of
himself and his bearers on the airship sides, fusing all three of
them into a monstrous animal with attenuated legs and an immense
fan-like humped body. The lights were on the ground because as
far as possible all poles and standards had been dispensed with
to prevent complications when the airships rose.