About a couple of miles out lay an ironclad, very low in the water, almost, to my brother’s perception, like a waterlogged ship. This was the ram Thunder Child . It was the only warship in sight, but far away to the right over the smooth surface of the sea⁠—for that day there was a dead calm⁠—lay a serpent of black smoke to mark the next ironclads of the Channel Fleet, which hovered in an extended line, steam up and ready for action, across the Thames estuary during the course of the Martian conquest, vigilant and yet powerless to prevent it.