_The_ MAN WHO ROCKED THE EARTH

 By ARTHUR TRAIN AND ROBERT WILLIAMS WOOD

 Reprint Edition 1974 by Arno Press Inc. A New York Times Company New York--1975

 SCIENCE FICTION ADVISORY EDITORS _R. Reginald_ _Douglas Menville_

 Copyright © 1915 by Doubleday, Page & Company

 _All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian_

 Reprinted by permission of Mrs. Robert W. Wood

 Reprinted from a copy in The Library of the University of California, Riverside

 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

 Train, Arthur Cheney, 1875-1945. The man who rocked the earth. 

 (Science fiction) Reprint of the ed. Published by Doubleday, Page, Garden City, N. Y. 

 I. Wood, Robert Williams, 1868-1955, joint author. II. Title. III. Series. PZ3. T682Mak6 [PS3539. R23] 813'. 5'2 74-16523 ISBN 0-405-06315-6

THE MAN WHO ROCKED THE EARTH

 _"I thought, too, of the first and most significant realization which the reading of astronomy imposes: that of the exceeding delicacy of the world's position; how, indeed, we are dependent for life, and all that now is, upon the small matter of the tilt of the poles; and that we, as men, are products, as it were, not only of earth's precarious position, but of her more precarious tilt. "_--W. L. COMFORT, Nov. , 1914

[Illustration: INSTANTLY THE EARTH BLEW UP LIKE A CANNON--UP INTO THEAIR, A THOUSAND MILES UP]

PROLOGUE

By July 1, 1916, the war had involved every civilized nation upon theglobe except the United States of North and of South America, which hadup to that time succeeded in maintaining their neutrality. Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Switzerland, Poland, Austria Hungary, Lombardy, andServia, had been devastated. Five million adult male human beings hadbeen exterminated by the machines of war, by disease, and by famine. Tenmillion had been crippled or invalided. Fifteen million women andchildren had been rendered widows or orphans. Industry there was none. No crops were harvested or sown. The ocean was devoid of sails. Throughout European Christendom women had taken the place of men asfield hands, labourers, mechanics, merchants, and manufacturers. Theamalgamated debt of the involved nations, amounting to more than$100, 000, 000, 000, had bankrupted the world. Yet the starving armiescontinued to slaughter one another. 

Siberia was a vast charnel-house of Tartars, Chinese, and Russians. Northern Africa was a holocaust. Within sixty miles of Paris lay an armyof two million Germans, while three million Russians had investedBerlin. In Belgium an English army of eight hundred and fifty thousandmen faced an equal force of Prussians and Austrians, neither daring totake the offensive. 

The inventive genius of mankind, stimulated by the exigencies of war, had produced a multitude of death-dealing mechanisms, most of which hadin turn been rendered ineffective by some counter-invention of anothernation. Three of these products of the human brain, however, remainedunneutralized and in large part accounted for the impasse at which thehostile armies found themselves. One of these had revolutionized warfarein the field, and the other two had destroyed those two most importantfactors of the preliminary campaign--the aeroplane and the submarine. The German dirigibles had all been annihilated within the first tenmonths of the war in their great cross-channel raid by Pathé contactbombs trailed at the ends of wires by high-flying French planes. This, of course, had from the beginning been confidently predicted by theFrench War Department. But by November, 1915, both the allied and theGerman aerial fleets had been wiped from the clouds by Federston'svortex guns, which by projecting a whirling ring of air to a height ofover five thousand feet crumpled the craft in mid-sky like so manybutterflies in a simoon. 

The second of these momentous inventions was Captain Barlow's device fordestroying the periscopes of submarines, thus rendering them blind andhelpless. Once they were forced to the surface such craft were easilydestroyed by gun fire or driven to a sullen refuge in protectingharbours. 

The third, and perhaps the most vital, invention was Dufay'snitrogen-iodide pellets, which when sown by pneumatic guns upon theslopes of a battlefield, the ground outside intrenchments, or round theglacis of a fortification made approach by an attacking army impossibleand the position impregnable. These pellets, only the size of No. 4 birdshot and harmless out of contact with air, became highly explosive twominutes after they had been scattered broadcast upon the soil, and anyfriction would discharge them with sufficient force to fracture ordislocate the bones of the human foot or to put out of service the legof a horse. The victim attempting to drag himself away inevitablysustained further and more serious injuries, and no aid could be givento the injured, as it was impossible to reach them. A field well plantedwith such pellets was an impassable barrier to either infantry orcavalry, and thus any attack upon a fortified position was doomed tofailure. By surprise alone could a general expect to achieve a victory. Offensive warfare had come almost to a standstill. 

Germany had seized Holland, Denmark, and Switzerland. Italy had annexedDalmatia and the Trentino; and a new Slav republic had arisen out ofwhat had been Hungary, Croatia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Servia, Roumania, Montenegro, Albania, and Bulgaria. Turkey had vanished from the map ofEurope; while the United States of South America, composed of theSpanish-speaking South American Republics, had been formed. Themortality continued at an average of two thousand a day, of which 75 percent. Was due to starvation and the plague. Maritime commerce had ceasedentirely, and in consequence of this the merchant ships of all nationsrotted at the docks. 

The Emperor of Germany, and the kings of England and of Italy, had allvoluntarily abdicated in favour of a republican form of government. Europe and Asia had run amuck, hysterical with fear and blood. As welltry to pacify a pack of mad and fighting dogs as these frenzied myriadswith their half-crazed generals. They lay, these armies, across the fairbosom of the earth like dying monsters, crimson in their own blood, yetstill able to writhe upward and deal death to any other that mightapproach. They were at a deadlock, yet each feared to make the firstovertures for peace. There was, in actuality, no longer even an Englishor a German nation. It was an orgy of homicide, in which the best ofmankind were wantonly destroyed, leaving only the puny, thefeeble-minded, the deformed, and the ineffectual to perpetuate the race. 

I

It was three minutes past three postmeridian in the operating room ofthe new Wireless Station recently installed at the United States NavalObservatory at Georgetown. Bill Hood, the afternoon operator, wassitting in his shirt sleeves with his receivers at his ears, smoking acorncob pipe and awaiting a call from the flagship _Lincoln_ of theNorth Atlantic Patrol with which, somewhere just off Hatteras, he hadbeen in communication a few moments before. The air was quiet. 

Hood was a fat man, and so of course good-natured; but he was seriousabout his work and hated all interfering amateurs. Of late thesewireless pests had become particularly obnoxious, as practicallyeverything was sent out in code and they had nothing with which tooccupy themselves. But it was a hot day and none of them seemed to be atwork. On one side of his desk a tall thermometer indicated that thetemperature of the room was 91 degrees Fahrenheit; on the other a bigclock, connected with some extraneous mechanism by a complicated systemof brass rods and wires, ticked off the minutes and seconds with apeculiar metallic self-consciousness, as if aware of its own importancein being the official timepiece, as far as there was an officialtimepiece, for the entire United States of America. 

Hood from time to time tested his converters and detector, and thenresumed his non-official study of the adventures of a great detectivewho pursued the baffling criminal by the aid of all the latestscientific discoveries. Hood thought it was good stuff, although at thesame time he knew, of course, that it was rot. He was a practical man oflittle imagination, and, though the detective did not interest himparticularly, he liked the scientific part of the stories. He wasthrifty, of Scotch-Irish descent, and at two minutes past three hadnever had an adventure in his life. At three minutes past three he beganhis career as one of the celebrities of the world. 

As the minute hand of the official clock dropped into its slot somebodycalled the Naval Observatory. The call was so faint as to be barelyaudible, in spite of the fact that Hood's instrument was tuned for athree-thousand-metre wave. Supposing quite naturally that the personcalling had a shorter wave, he gradually cut out the inductance of hisreceiver; but the sound faded out entirely, and he returned to hisoriginal inductance and shunted in his condenser, upon which the callimmediately increased in volume. Evidently the other chap was using abig wave, bigger than Georgetown. 

Hood puckered his brows and looked about him. Lying on a shelf above hisinstrument was one of the new ballast coils that Henderson had used withthe long waves from lightning flashes, and he leaned over and connectedthe heavy spiral of closely wound wire, throwing it into his circuit. Instantly the telephones spoke so loud that he could hear the shrill cryof the spark even from where the receivers lay beside him on the table. Quickly fastening them to his ears he listened. The sound was clear, sharp, and metallic, and vastly higher in pitch than a ship's call. Itcouldn't be the _Lincoln_. 

"By gum!" muttered Hood. "That fellow must have a twelve-thousand-metrewave length with fifty kilowatts behind it, sure! There ain't anotherstation in the world but this can pick him up!"

"NAA--NAA--NAA, " came the call. 

Throwing in his rheostat he sent an "O. K" in reply, and waitedexpectantly, pencil in hand. A moment more and he dropped his pencil indisgust. 

"Just another bug!" he remarked aloud to the thermometer. "Ought to bepoisoned! What a whale of a wave length, though!"

For several minutes he listened intently, for the amateur was sendinginsistently, repeating everything twice as if he meant business. 

"He's a jolly joker all right, " muttered Hood, this time to the clock. "Must be pretty hard up for something to do!"

Then he laughed out loud and took up the pencil again. This amateur, whoever he was, was almost as good as his detective story. The "bug"called the Naval Observatory once more and began repeating his entiremessage for the third time. 

"To all mankind"--he addressed himself modestly--"To all mankind--To allmankind--I am the dictator--of human destiny--Through the earth'srotation--I control--day and night--summer and winter--I commandthe--cessation of hostilities and--the abolition of war upon theglobe--I appoint the--United States--as my agent for this purpose--Asevidence of my power I shall increase the length of the day--frommidnight to midnight--of Thursday, July 22d, by the period of fiveminutes. --PAX. "

The jolly joker, having repeated thus his extraordinary message to allmankind, stopped sending. 

"Well, I'll be hanged!" gasped Bill Hood. Then he wound up his magneticdetector and sent an answering challenge into the ether. 

"Can--the--funny--stuff!" he snapped. "And tune out--or--we'llrevoke--your license!"

"What a gall!" he grunted, folding up the yellow sheet of pad paper uponwhich he had taken down the message to all mankind and thrusting it intohis book for a marker. "All the fools aren't dead yet!"

Then he picked up the _Lincoln_ and got down to real work. The "bug" andhis message passed from memory. 

II

The following Thursday afternoon a perspiring and dusty stranger fromSt. Louis, who, with the Metropolitan Art Museum as his objective, wastrudging wearily through Central Park, New York City, at two o'clock, paused to gaze with some interest at the obelisk known as Cleopatra'sNeedle. The heat rose in shimmering waves from the asphalt of theroadway, but the stranger was used to heat and he was conscientiouslyengaged in the duty of seeing New York. Opposite the Museum he seatedhimself upon a bench in the shade of a faded dogwood and wiped themoisture from his eyes. The glare from the unprotected boulevards wasterrific. Under these somewhat unfavourable conditions he was occupiedin studying the monument of Egypt's past magnificence when he felt aslight dragging sensation. It was indefinable and had no visualconcomitant. But it was as though the brakes were being gently appliedto a Pullman train. He was the only human being in the neighbourhood;not even a policeman was visible; and the experience gave him a creepyfeeling. Then to his amazement Cleopatra's Needle slowly toppled fromits pedestal and fell with a crash across the roadway. At first hethought it an optical illusion and wiped his eyes again, but it wasnothing of the kind. The monument, which had a moment before pointed tothe zenith, now lay shattered in three pieces upon the softeningconcrete of the drive. The stranger arose and examined the fragments ofthe monolith, one of which lay squarely across the road, barring allpassage. Round the pedestal were scattered small pieces of brokengranite, and from these, after looking about cautiously, he chose onewith care and placed it in his pocket. 

"Gosh!" he whispered to himself as he hurried toward Fifth Avenue. "That'll just be something to tell 'em at home! Eh, Bill?"

The dragging sensation experienced by the tourist from St. Louis wasfelt by many millions of people all over the world, but, as in mostcountries it occurred coincidently with pronounced earthquake shocks andtremblings, for the most part it passed unnoticed as a specific, individual phenomenon. 

Hood, in the wireless room at Georgetown, suddenly heard in hisreceivers a roar like that of Niagara and quickly removed them from hisears. He had never known such statics. He was familiar with electricaldisturbances in the ether, but this was beyond anything in hisexperience. Moreover, when he next tried to use his instruments hediscovered that something had put the whole apparatus out of commission. About an hour later he felt a pronounced pressure in his eardrums, whichgradually passed off. The wireless refused to work for nearly eighthours, and it was still recalcitrant when he went off duty at seveno'clock. He had not felt the quivering of the earth round Washington, and being an unimaginative man he accepted the other facts of thesituation philosophically. The statics would pass, and then Georgetownwould be in communication with the rest of the world again, that wasall. At seven o'clock the night shift came in, and Hood borrowed apipeful of tobacco from him and put on his coat. 

"Say, Bill, did you feel the shock?" asked the shift, hanging up his hatand taking a match from Hood. 

"No, " answered the latter, "but the statics have put the machine on theblink. She'll come round all right in an hour or so. The air's gummywith ions. Shock, did you say?"

"Sure. Had 'em all over the country. Say, the boys at the magneticobservatory claim their compass shifted east and west instead of northand south, and stayed that way for five minutes. Didn't you feel the airpressure? I should worry! And say, I just dropped into theMeteorological Department's office and looked at the barometer. She'djumped up half an inch in about two seconds, wiggled round some, andthen come back to normal. You can see the curve yourself if you askFraser to show you the self-registering barograph. Some doin's, I tellyou!"

He nodded his head with an air of importance. 

"Take your word for it, " answered Hood without emotion, save for aslight annoyance at the other's arrogation of superior information. "'Tain't the first time there's been an earthquake since creation. " Andhe strolled out, swinging to the doors behind him. 

The night shift settled himself before the instruments with a look ofdreary resignation. 

"Say, " he muttered aloud, "you couldn't jar that feller with athirteen-inch bomb! He wouldn't even rub himself!"

Hood, meantime, bought an evening paper and walked slowly to thedistrict where he lived. It was a fine night and there was no particularexcitement in the streets. His wife opened the door. 

"Well, " she greeted him, "I'm glad you've come home at last. I was plumbscared something had happened to you. Such a shaking and rumbling andrattling I never did hear! Did you feel it?"

"I didn't feel nothin'!" answered Bill Hood. "Some one said there was ashock, that was all I heard about it. The machine's out of kilter. "

"They won't blame you, will they?" she asked anxiously. 

"You bet they won't!" he replied. "Look here, I'm hungry. Are thewaffles ready?"

"Have 'em in a jiffy!" she smiled. "You go in and read your paper. "

He did as he was directed, and seated himself in a rocker under thegaslight. After perusing the baseball news he turned back to the frontpage. The paper was a fairly late edition, containing up-to-the-minutetelegraphic notes. In the centre column, alongside the announcement ofthe annihilation of three entire regiments of Silesians by the explosionof nitroglycerine concealed in dummy gun carriages, was the following:

 CLEOPATRA'S NEEDLE FALLS

 EARTHQUAKE DESTROYS FAMOUS MONUMENT

 SHOCKS FELT HERE AND ALL OVER U. S. 

 Washington was visited by a succession of earthquake shocks early this afternoon, which, in varying force, were felt throughout the United States and Europe. Little damage was done, but those having offices in tall buildings had an unpleasant experience which they will not soon forget. A peculiar phenomenon accompanying this seismic disturbance was the variation of the magnetic needle by over eighty degrees from north to east and an extraordinary rise and fall of the barometer. All wireless communication had to be abandoned, owing to the ionizing of the atmosphere, and up to the time this edition went to press had not been resumed. Telegrams by way of Colon report similar disturbances in South America. In New York the monument in Central Park known as Cleopatra's Needle was thrown from its pedestal and broken into three pieces. The contract for its repair and replacement has already been let. The famous monument was a present from the Khedive of Egypt to the United States, and formerly stood in Alexandria. The late William H. Vanderbilt defrayed the expense of transporting it to this country. 

Bill Hood read this with scant interest. The Giants had knocked theBraves' pitcher out of the box, and an earthquake seemed a small matter. His mind did not once revert to the mysterious message from Pax the daybefore. He was thinking of something far more important. 

"Say, Nellie, " he demanded, tossing aside the paper impatiently, "ain'tthose waffles ready yet?"

III

On that same evening, Thursday, July 22d, two astronomers attached tothe Naval Observatory sat in the half darkness of the meridian-circleroom watching the firmament sweep slowly across the aperture of thegiant lens. The chamber was as quiet as the grave, the two men rarelyspeaking as they noted their observations. Paris might be taken, Berlinbe razed, London put to the torch; a million human beings might be blowninto eternity, or the shrieks of mangled creatures lying in heaps beforepellet-strewn barbed-wire entanglements rend the summer night; greatbattleships of the line might plunge to the bottom, carrying their crewswith them; and the dead of two continents rot unburied--yet unmoved thestars would pursue their nightly march across the heavens, cruel daywould follow pitiless night, and the careless earth follow itsaccustomed orbit as though the race were not writhing in its deathagony. Gazing into the infinity of space human existence seemed but thescum upon a rainpool, human warfare but the frenzy of insectivora. Unmindful of the starving hordes of Paris and Berlin, of plague-sweptRussia, or of the drowned thousands of the North Baltic Fleet, these twomen calmly studied the procession of the stars--the onward bore of theuniverse through space, and the spectra of newborn or dying worlds. 

It was a suffocatingly hot night and their foreheads reeked with sweat. Dim shapes on the walls of the room indicated what by day was a tangleof clockwork and recording instruments, connected by electricity withvarious buttons and switches upon the table. The brother of the bigclock in the wireless operating room hung nearby, its face illuminatedby a tiny electric lamp, showing the hour to be eleven-fifty. Occasionally the younger man made a remark in a low tone, and the elderwrote something on a card. 

"The 'seeing' is poor to-night, " said Evarts, the younger man. "Theupper air is full of striae and, though it seems like a clear night, everything looks dim--a volcanic haze probably. Perhaps the AleutianIslands are in eruption again. "

"Very likely, " answered Thornton, the elder astronomer. "The shocks thisafternoon would indicate something of the sort. "

"Curious performance of the magnetic needle. They say it held due eastfor several minutes, " continued Evarts, hoping to engage his senior inconversation--almost an impossibility, as he well knew. 

Thornton did not reply. He was carefully observing the infinitesimalapproach of a certain star to the meridian line, marked by a threadacross the circle's aperture. When that point of light should cross thethread it would be midnight, and July 22, 1916, would be gone forever. Every midnight the indicating stars crossed the thread exactly on time, each night a trifle earlier than the night before by a definite andcalculable amount, due to the march of the earth around the sun. So theyhad crossed the lines in every observatory since clocks and telescopeshad been invented. Heretofore, no matter what cataclysm of nature hadoccurred, the star had always crossed the line not a second too soon ora second too late, but exactly on time. It was the one positivelypredictable thing, foretellable for ten or for ten thousand years by asimple mathematical calculation. It was surer than death or the tax-man. It was absolute. 

Thornton was a reserved man of few words--impersonal, methodical, serious. He spent many nights there with Evarts, hardly exchanging aphrase with him, and then only on some matter immediately concerned withtheir work. Evarts could dimly see his long, grave profile bending overhis eyepiece, shrouded in the heavy shadows across the table. He felt agreat respect, even tenderness, for this taciturn, high-principled, devoted scientist. He had never seen him excited, hardly ever aroused. He was a man of figures, whose only passion seemed to be the "music ofthe spheres. "

A long silence followed, during which Thornton seemed to bend moreintently than ever over his eyepiece. The hand of the big clock slippedgradually to midnight. 

"There's something wrong with the clock, " said Thornton suddenly, andhis voice sounded curiously dry, almost unnatural. "Telephone to theequatorial room for the time. "

Puzzled by Thornton's manner Evarts did as instructed. 

"Forty seconds past midnight, " came the reply from the equatorialobserver. 

Evarts repeated the answer for Thornton's benefit, looking at their ownclock at the same time. It pointed to exactly forty seconds past thehour. He heard Thornton suppress something like an oath. 

"There's something the matter!" repeated Thornton dumbly. "Aeta isn'twithin five minutes of crossing. Both clocks can't be wrong!"

He pressed a button that connected with the wireless room. 

"What's the time?" he called sharply through the nickel-platedspeaking-tube. 

"Forty-five seconds past the hour, " came the answer. Then: "But I wantto see you, sir. There's something queer going on. May I come in?"

"Come!" almost shouted Thornton. 

A moment later the flushed face of Williams, the night operator, appeared in the doorway. 

"Excuse me, sir, " he stammered, "but something fierce must havehappened! I thought you ought to know. The Eiffel Tower has been tryingto talk to us for over two hours, but I can't get what he's saying. "

"What's the matter--atmospherics?" snapped Evarts. 

"No; the air _was_ full of them, sir--shrieking with them you might say;but they've stopped now. The trouble has been that I've been jammed bythe Brussels station talking to the Belgian Congo--same wave length--andI couldn't tune Brussels out. Every once in a while I'd get a word ofwhat Paris was saying, and it's always the same word--'_heure_. ' Butjust now Brussels stopped sending and I got the complete message of theEiffel Tower. They wanted to know our time by Greenwich. I gave it to'em. Then Paris said to tell you to take your transit with great careand send result to them immediately----"

The ordinarily calm Thornton gave a great suspiration and his face waslivid. "Aeta's just crossed--we're five minutes out! Evarts, am I crazy?Am I talking straight?"

Evarts laid his hand on the other's arm. 

"The earthquake's knocked out your transit, " he suggested. 

"And Paris--how about Paris?" asked Thornton. He wrote something down ona card mechanically and started for the door. "Get me the Eiffel Tower!"he ordered Williams. 

The three men stood motionless, as the wireless man sent the EiffelTower call hurtling across the Atlantic:

"ETA--ETA--ETA. "

"All right, " whispered Williams, "I've got 'em. "

"Tell Paris that our clocks are all out five minutes according to themeridian. "

Williams worked the key rapidly, and then listened. 

"The Eiffel Tower says that their chronometers also appear to be out bythe same time, and that Greenwich and Moscow both report the same thing. Wait a minute! He says Moscow has wired that at eight o'clock lastevening a tremendous aurora of bright yellow light was seen to thenorthwest, and that their spectroscopes showed the helium line only. Hewants to know if we have any explanation to offer----"

"Explanation!" gasped Evarts. "Tell Paris that we had earthquake shockshere together with violent seismic movements, sudden rise in barometer, followed by fall, statics, and erratic variation in the magneticneedle. "

"What does it all mean?" murmured Thornton, staring blankly at theyounger man. 

The key rattled and the rotary spark whined into a shriek. Then silence. 

"Paris says that the same manifestations have been observed in Russia, Algeria, Italy, and London, " called out Williams. "Ah! What's that?Nauen's calling. " Again he sent the blue flame crackling between thecoils. "Nauen reports an error of five minutes in their meridianobservations according to the official clocks. And hello! He says Berlinhas capitulated and that the Russians began marching through atdaylight--that is about two hours ago. He says he is about to turn thestation over to the Allied Commissioners, who will at once assumecharge. "

Evarts whistled. 

"How about it?" he asked of Thornton. 

The latter shook his head gravely. 

"It may be--explainable--or, " he added hoarsely, "it may mean the end ofthe world. "

Williams sprang from his chair and confronted Thornton. 

"What do you mean?" he almost shouted. 

"Perhaps the universe is running down!" said Evarts soothingly. "At anyrate, keep it to yourself, old chap. If the jig is up there's no usescaring people to death a month or so too soon!"

Thornton grasped an arm of each. 

"Not a word of this to anybody!" he ground out through compressed lips. "Absolute silence, or hell may break loose on earth!"

IV

Free translation of the Official Report of the Imperial Commission ofthe Berlin Academy of Science to the Imperial Commissioners of theGerman Federated States:

 The unprecedented cosmic phenomena which occurred on the 22d and 27th days of the month of July, and which were felt over the entire surface of the globe, have left a permanent effect of such magnitude on the position of the earth's axis in space and the duration of the period of the rotation, that it is impossible to predict at the present time the ultimate changes or modifications in the climatic conditions which may follow. This commission has considered most carefully the possible causes that may have been responsible for this catastrophe--(_Weltunfall_)--and by eliminating every hypothesis that was incapable of explaining all of the various disturbances, is now in a position to present two theories, either one of which appears to be capable of explaining the recent disturbances. 

 The phenomena in question may be briefly summarized as follows;

 1. THE YELLOW AURORA. In Northern Europe this appeared suddenly on the night of July 22d as a broad, faint sheaf--(_Lichtbündel_)--of clear yellow light in the western sky. Reports from America show that at Washington it appeared in the north as a narrow shaft of light, inclined at an angle of about thirty degrees with the horizon, and shooting off to the east. Near the horizon it was extremely brilliant, and the spectroscope showed that the light was due to glowing helium gas. 

 The Potsdam Observatory reported that the presence of sodium has been detected in the aurora; but this appears to have been a mistake due to the faintness of the light and the circumstance that no comparison spectrum was impressed on the plate. On the photograph made at the Washington Observatory the helium line is certain, as a second exposure was made with a sodium flame; and the two lines are shown distinctly separated. 

 2. THE NEGATIVE ACCELERATION. This phenomenon was observed to a greater or less extent all over the globe. It was especially marked near the equator; but in Northern Europe it was noted by only a few observers, though many clocks were stopped and other instruments deranged. There appears to be no doubt that a force of terrific magnitude was applied in a tangential direction to the surface of the earth, in such a direction as to oppose its axial rotation, with the effect that the surface velocity was diminished by about one part in three hundred, resulting in a lengthening of the day by five minutes, thirteen and a half seconds. 

 The application of this brake--(_Bremsekraft_), as we may term it--caused acceleration phenomena to manifest themselves precisely as on a railroad train when being brought to a stop. The change in the surface speed of the earth at the equator has amounted to about 6. 4 kilometres an hour; and various observations show that this change of velocity was brought about by the operation of the unknown force for a period of time of less than three minutes. The negative acceleration thus represented would certainly be too small to produce any marked physiological sensations, and yet the reports from various places indicate that they were certainly observed. The sensations felt are usually described as similar to those experienced in a moving automobile when the brake is very gently applied. 

 Moreover, certain destructive actions are reported from localities near the equator--chimneys fell and tall buildings swayed; while from New York comes the report that the obelisk in Central Park was thrown from its pedestal. It appears that these effects were due to the circumstance that the alteration of velocity was propagated through the earth as a wave similar to an earthquake wave, and that the effects were cumulative at certain points--a theory that is substantiated by reports that at certain localities, even near the equator, no effects were noted. 

 3. TIDAL WAVES. These were observed everywhere and were very destructive in many places. In the Panama Canal, which is near the equator and which runs nearly east and west, the sweep of the water was so great that it flowed over the Gatun Lock. On the eastern coasts of the various continents there was a recession of the sea, the fall of the tide being from three to five metres below the low-water mark. On the western coasts there was a corresponding rise, which in some cases reached a level of over twelve metres. 

 That the tidal phenomena were not more marked and more destructive is a matter of great surprise, and has been considered as evidence that the retarding force was not applied at a single spot on the earth's surface, but was a distributed force, which acted on the water as well as on the land, though to a less extent. It is difficult, however, to conceive of a force capable of acting in such a way; and Björnson's theory of the magnetic vortex in the ether has been rejected by this commission. 

 4. ATMOSPHERIC DISTURBANCES. Some time after the appearance of the yellow aurora a sudden rise in atmospheric pressure, followed by a gradual fall considerably below the normal pressure, was recorded over the entire surface of the globe. Calculations based on the time of arrival of this disturbance at widely separated points show that it proceeded with the velocity of sound from a point situated probably in Northern Labrador. The maximum rise of pressure recorded was registered at Halifax, the self-recording barographs showing that the pressure rose over six centimetres in less than five minutes. 

 5. SHIFT IN DIRECTION OF THE EARTH'S AXIS. The axis of the earth has been shifted in space by the disturbance and now points almost exactly toward the double star Delta Ursæ Minoris. This change appears to have resulted from the circumstance that the force was applied to the surface of the globe in a direction not quite parallel to the direction of rotation, the result being the development of a new axis and a shift in the positions of the poles, which it will now be necessary to rediscover. 

 It appears that these most remarkable cosmic phenomena can be explained in either of two ways: they may have resulted from an explosive or volcanic discharge from the surface of the earth, or from the oblique impact of a meteoric stream moving at a very high velocity. It seems unlikely that sufficient energy to bring about the observed changes could have been developed by a volcanic disturbance of the ordinary type; but if radioactive forces are allowed to come into play the amount of energy available is practically unlimited. 

 It is difficult, however, to conceive of any way in which a sudden liberation of atomic energy could have been brought about by any terrestrial agency; so that the first theory, though able to account for the facts, seems to be the less tenable of the two. The meteoric theory offers no especial difficulty. The energy delivered by a comparatively small mass of finely divided matter, moving at a velocity of several hundred kilometres a second--and such a velocity is by no means unknown--would be amply sufficient to alter the velocity of rotation by the small amount observed. 

 Moreover, the impact of such a meteoric stream may have developed a temperature sufficiently high to bring about radioactive changes, the effect of which would be to expel helium and other disintegration products at cathode-ray velocity--(_Kathoden-Strahlen-Fortpflanzung-Geschwindigkeit_)--from the surface of the earth; and the recoil exerted by this expulsion would add itself to the force of the meteoric impact. 

 The presence of helium makes this latter hypothesis not altogether improbable, while the atmospheric wave of pressure would result at once from the disruption of the air by the passage of the meteor stream through it. Exploration of the region in which it seems probable that the disturbance took place will undoubtedly furnish the data necessary for the complete solution of the problem. " [Pp. 17-19. ]

V

At ten o'clock one evening, shortly after the occurrences heretoforedescribed, an extraordinary conference occurred at the White House, probably the most remarkable ever held there or elsewhere. At the longtable at which the cabinet meetings took place sat six gentlemen inevening dress, each trying to appear unconcerned, if not amused. At thehead of the table was the President of the United States; next to himCount von Koenitz, the German Ambassador, representing the Imperial[1]German Commissioners, who had taken over the reins of the GermanGovernment after the abdication of the Kaiser; and, on the oppositeside, Monsieur Emil Liban, Prince Rostoloff, and Sir John Smith, therespective ambassadors of France, Russia, and Great Britain. The sixthperson was Thornton, the astronomer. 

[Footnote 1: The Germans were unwilling to surrender the use of thewords "Empire" and "Imperial, " even after they had adopted a republicanform of government. ]

The President had only succeeded in bringing this conference about afterthe greatest effort and the most skilful diplomacy--in view of theextreme importance which, he assured them all, he attached to thematters which he desired to lay before them. Only for this reason hadthe ambassadors of warring nations consented to meet--unofficially as itwere. 

"With great respect, your Excellency, " said Count von Koenitz, "thematter is preposterous--as much so as a fairy tale by Grimm! Thiswireless operator of whom you speak is lying about these messages. If hereceived them at all--a fact which hangs solely upon his word--hereceived them _after_ and not _before_ the phenomena recorded. "

The President shook his head. "That might hold true of the firstmessage--the one received July 19th, " said he, "but the second message, foretelling the lengthening of July 27th, _was delivered on that day, and was in my hands before the disturbances occurred_. "

Von Koenitz fingered his moustache and shrugged his shoulders. It wasclear that he regarded the whole affair as absurd, undignified. 

Monsieur Liban turned impatiently from him. 

"Your Excellency, " he said, addressing the President, "I cannot sharethe views of Count von Koenitz. I regard this affair as of the moststupendous importance. Messages or no messages, extraordinary naturalphenomena are occurring which may shortly end in the extinction of humanlife upon the planet. A power which can control the length of the daycan annihilate the globe. "

"You cannot change the facts, " remarked Prince Rostoloff sternly to theGerman Ambassador. "The earth has changed its orbit. ProfessorVaskofsky, of the Imperial College, has so declared. There is somecause. Be it God or devil, there is a cause. Are we to sit still and donothing while the globe's crust freezes and our armies congeal intocorpses?" He trembled with agitation. 

"Calm yourself, _mon cher Prince_!" said Monsieur Liban. "So far we havegained fifteen minutes and have lost nothing! But, as you say, whetheror not the sender of these messages is responsible, there is a cause, and we must find it. "

"But how? That is the question, " exclaimed the President almostapologetically, for he felt, as did Count von Koenitz, that somehow anexplanation would shortly be forthcoming that would make this conferenceseem the height of the ridiculous. "I have already, " he added hastily, "instructed the entire force of the National Academy of Sciences todirect its energies toward the solution of these phenomena. UndoubtedlyGreat Britain, Russia, Germany, and France are doing the same. Thescientists report that the yellow aurora seen in the north, theearthquakes, the variation of the compass, and the eccentricities of thebarometer are probably all connected more or less directly with thechange in the earth's orbit. But they offer no explanation. They do notsuggest what the aurora is nor why its appearance should have thiseffect. It, therefore, seems to me clearly my duty to lay before you allthe facts as far as they are known to me. Among these facts are themysterious messages received by wireless at the Naval Observatoryimmediately preceding these events. "

"_Post hoc, ergo propter hoc!_" half sneered Von Koenitz. 

The President smiled wearily. 

"What do you wish me to do?" he asked, glancing round the table. "Shallwe remain inactive? Shall we wait and see what may happen?"

"No! No!" shouted Rostoloff, jumping to his feet. "Another week and wemay all be plunged into eternity. It is suicidal not to regard thismatter seriously. We are sick from war. And perhaps Count von Koenitz, in view of the fall of Berlin, would welcome something of the sort as anhonourable way out of his country's difficulties. "

"Sir!" cried the count, leaping to his feet. "Have a care! It has costRussia four million men to reach Berlin. When we have taken Paris weshall recapture Berlin and commence the march of our victorious eaglestoward Moscow and the Winter Palace. "

"Gentlemen! Gentlemen! Be seated, I implore you!" exclaimed thePresident. 

The Russian and German ambassadors somewhat ungraciously resumed theirformer places, casting at each other glances of undisguised contempt. 

"As I see the matter, " continued the President, "there are two distinctpropositions before you: The first relates to how far the extraordinaryevents of the past week are of such a character as to demand jointinvestigation and action by the Powers. The second involves the cause ofthese events and their connection with and relation to the sender of themessages signed Pax. I shall ask you to signify your opinion as to eachof these questions. "

"I believe that some action should be taken, based on the assumptionthat they are manifestations of one and the same power or cause, " saidMonsieur Liban emphatically. 

"I agree with the French Ambassador, " growled Rostoloff. 

"I am of opinion that the phenomena should be the subject of properscientific investigation, " remarked Count von Koenitz more calmly. "Butas far as these messages are concerned they are, if I may be pardonedfor saying so, a foolish joke. It is undignified to take any cognizanceof them. "

"What do you think, Sir John?" asked the President, turning to theEnglish Ambassador. 

"Before making up my mind, " returned the latter quietly, "I should liketo see the operator who received them. "

"By all means!" exclaimed Von Koenitz. 

The President pressed a button and his secretary entered. 

"I had anticipated such a desire on the part of all of you, " heannounced, "and arranged to have him here. He is waiting outside. ShallI have him brought in?"

"Yes! Yes!" answered Rostoloff. And the others nodded. 

The door opened, and Bill Hood, wearing his best new blue suit andnervously twisting a faded bicycle cap between his fingers, stumbledawkwardly into the room. His face was bright red with embarrassment andone of his cheeks exhibited a marked protuberance. He blinked in theglare of the electric light. 

"Mr. Hood, " the President addressed him courteously, "I have sent foryou to explain to these gentlemen, who are the ambassadors of the greatEuropean Powers, the circumstances under which you received the wirelessmessages from the unknown person describing himself as 'Pax. '"

Hood shifted from his right to his left foot and pressed his lipstogether. Von Koenitz fingered the waxed ends of his moustache andregarded the operator whimsically. 

"In the first place, " went on the President, "we desire to know whetherthe messages which you have reported were received under ordinary orunder unusual conditions. In a word, could you form any opinion as tothe whereabouts of the sender?"

Hood scratched the side of his nose in a manner politely doubtful. 

"Sure thing, your Honour, " he answered at last. "Sure the conditions wasunusual. That feller has some juice and no mistake. "

"Juice?" inquired Von Koenitz. 

"Yare--current. Whines like a steel top. Fifty kilowatts sure, and maybemore! And a twelve-thousand-metre wave. "

"I do not fully understand, " interjected Rostoloff. "Please explain, sir. "

"Ain't nothin' to explain, " returned Hood. "He's just got a hell of awave length, that's all. Biggest on earth. We're only tuned for athree-thousand-metre wave. At first I could hardly take him at all. Ihad to throw in our new Henderson ballast coils before I could hearproperly. I reckon there ain't another station in Christendom can gethim. "

"Ah, " remarked Von Koenitz. "One of your millionaire amateurs, Isuppose. "

"Yare, " agreed Hood. "I thought sure he was a nut. "

"A what?" interrupted Sir John Smith. 

"A nut, " answered Hood. "A crank, so to speak. "

"Ah, 'krank'!" nodded the German. "Exactly--a lunatic! That is preciselywhat I say!"

"But I don't think it's no nut now, " countered Hood valiantly. "If he isa bug he's the biggest bug in all creation, that's all I can say. He'sgot the goods, that's what he's got. He'll do some damage before he getsthrough. "

"Are these messages addressed to anybody in particular?" inquired SirJohn, who was studying Hood intently. 

"Well, they are and they ain't. Pax--that's what he callshimself--signals NAA, our number, you understand, and then says what hehas to say to the whole world, care of the United States. The firstmessage I thought was a joke and stuck it in a book I was reading, '_Silas Snooks_'----"

"What?" ejaculated Von Koenitz impatiently. 

"Snooks--man's name--feller in the book--nothing to do with thisbusiness, " explained the operator. "I forgot all about it. But after theearthquake and all the rest of the fuss I dug it out and gave it to Mr. Thornton. Then on the 27th came the next one, saying that Pax wasgetting tired of waiting for us and was going to start something. Thatcame at one o'clock in the afternoon, and the fun began at three sharp. The whole observatory went on the blink. Say, there ain't any doubt inyour minds that it's _him_, is there?"

Von Koenitz looked cynically round the room. 

"There is not!" exclaimed Rostoloff and Liban in the same breath. 

The German laughed. 

"Speak for yourselves, Excellencies, " he sneered. His tone nettled thewireless representative of the sovereign American people. 

"Do you think I'm a liar?" he demanded, clenching his jaw and glaring atVon Koenitz. 

The German Ambassador shrugged his shoulders again. Such things wereimpossible in a civilized country--at Potsdam--but what could youexpect----

"Steady, Hood!" whispered Thornton. 

"Remember, Mr. Hood, that you are here to answer our questions, " saidthe President sternly. "You must not address his Excellency, Baron vonKoenitz, in this fashion. "

"But the man was making a monkey of me!" muttered Hood. "All I say is, look out. This Pax is on his job and means business. I just got anothercall before I came over here--at nine o'clock. "

"What was its purport?" inquired the President. 

"Why, it said Pax was getting tired of nothing being done and wantedaction of some sort. Said that men were dying like flies, and heproposed to put an end to it at any cost. And--and----"

"Yes! Yes!" ejaculated Liban breathlessly. 

"And he would give further evidence of his control over the forces ofnature to-night. "

"Ha! Ha!" Von Koenitz leaned back in amusement. "My friend, " hechuckled, "you--are--the 'nut'!"

What form Hood's resentment might have taken is problematical; but asthe German's words left his mouth the electric lights suddenly went outand the windows rattled ominously. At the same moment each occupant ofthe room felt himself sway slightly toward the east wall, on whichappeared a bright yellow glow. Instinctively they all turned to thewindow which faced the north. The whole sky was flooded with anorange-yellow aurora that rivalled the sunlight in intensity. 

"What'd I tell you?" mumbled Hood. 

The Executive Mansion quivered, and even in that yellow light the facesof the ambassadors seemed pale with fear. And then as the glow slowlyfaded in the north there floated down across the aperture of the windowsomething soft and fluffy like feathers. Thicker and faster it cameuntil the lawn of the White House was covered with it. The air in theroom turned cold. Through the window a large flake circled and lit onthe back of Rostoloff's head. 

"Snow!" he cried. "A snowstorm--in August!"

The President arose and closed the window. Almost immediately theelectric lights burned up again. 

"Now are you satisfied?" cried Liban to the German. 

"Satisfied?" growled Von Koenitz. "I have seen plenty of snowstorms inAugust. They have them daily in the Alps. You ask me if I am satisfied. Of what? That earthquakes, the aurora borealis, electrical disturbances, snowstorms exist--yes. That a mysterious bugaboo is responsible forthese things--no!"

"What, then, do you require?" gasped Liban. 

"More than a snowstorm!" retorted the German. "When I was a boy at thegymnasium we had a thunderstorm with fishes in it. They were everywhereone stepped, all over the ground. But we did not conclude that Jonah wasgiving us a demonstration of his power over the whale. "

He faced the others defiantly; in his voice was mockery. 

"You may retire, Mr. Hood, " said the President. "But you will kindlywait outside. "

"That is an honest man if ever I saw one, Mr. President, " announced SirJohn, after the operator had gone out. "I am satisfied that we are incommunication with a human being of practically supernatural powers. "

"What, then, shall be done?" inquired Rostoloff anxiously. "The worldwill be annihilated!"

"Your Excellencies"--Von Koenitz arose and took up a graceful positionat the end of the table--"I must protest against what seems to me to bean extraordinary credulity upon the part of all of you. I speak to youas a rational human being, not as an ambassador. Something has occurredto affect the earth's orbit. It may result in a calamity. None canforetell. This planet may be drawn off into space by the attraction ofsome wandering world that has not yet come within observation. But onething we know: No power on or of the earth can possibly derange itsrelation to the other celestial bodies. That would be, as you say here, 'lifting one's self by one's own boot-straps. ' I do not doubt theaccuracy of your clocks and scientific instruments. Those of my owncountry are in harmony with yours. But to say that the cause of all thisis a _man_ is preposterous. If the mysterious Pax makes the heavensfall, they will tumble on his own head. Is he going to send himself toeternity along with the rest of us? Hardly! This Hood is a monstrousliar or a dangerous lunatic. Even if he has received these messages, they are the emanations of a crank, as, he says, he himself firstsuspected. Let us master this hysteria born of the strain of constantwar. In a word, let us go to bed. "

"Count von Koenitz, " replied Sir John after a pause, "you speakforcefully, even persuasively. But your argument is based upon aproposition that is scientifically fallacious. An atom of gunpowder candisintegrate itself, 'lift itself by its own boot-straps!' Why not theearth? Have we as yet begun to solve all the mysteries of nature? Is itinconceivable that there should be an undiscovered explosive capable ofdisrupting the globe? We have earthquakes. Is it beyond imagination thatthe forces which produce them can be controlled?"

"My dear Sir John, " returned Von Koenitz courteously, "my ultimateanswer is that we have no adequate reason to connect the phenomena whichhave disturbed the earth's rotation with any human agency. "

"That, " interposed the President, "is something upon which individualsmay well differ. I suppose that under other conditions you would be opento conviction?"

"Assuredly, " answered Von Koenitz. "Should the sender of these messagesprophesy the performance of some miracle that could not be explained bynatural causes, I would be forced to admit my error. "

Monsieur Liban had also arisen and was walking nervously up and down theroom. Suddenly he turned to Von Koenitz and in a voice shaking withemotion cried: "Let us then invite Pax to give us a sign that willsatisfy you. "

"Monsieur Liban, " replied Von Koenitz stiffly, "I refuse to place myselfin the position of communicating with a lunatic. "

"Very well, " shouted the Frenchman, "I will take the responsibility ofmaking myself ridiculous. I will request the President of the UnitedStates to act as the agent of France for this purpose. "

He drew a notebook and a fountain pen from his pocket and carefullywrote out a message which he handed to the President. The latter read italoud:

 "_Pax_: The Ambassador of the French Republic requests me to communicate to you the fact that he desires some further evidence of your power to control the movements of the earth and the destinies of mankind, such phenomena to be preferably of a harmless character, but inexplicable by any theory of natural causation. I await your reply. 

 "THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. "

"Send for Hood, " ordered the President to the secretary who answered thebell. "Gentlemen, I suggest that we ourselves go to Georgetown andsuperintend the sending of this message. "

Half an hour later Bill Hood sat in his customary chair in the wirelessoperating room surrounded by the President of the United States, theambassadors of France, Germany, Great Britain, and Russia, and ProfessorThornton. The faces of all wore expressions of the utmost seriousness, except that of Von Koenitz, who looked as if he were participating in anelaborate hoax. Several of these distinguished gentlemen had never seena wireless apparatus before, and showed some excitement as Hood madeready to send the most famous message ever transmitted through theether. At last he threw over his rheostat and the hum of the rotaryspark rose into its staccato song. Hood sent out a few V's and thenbegan calling:

"PAX--PAX--PAX. "

Breathlessly the group waited while he listened for a reply. Again hecalled:

"PAX--PAX--PAX. "

He had already thrown in his Henderson ballast coils and was ready forthe now familiar wave. He closed his eyes, waiting for that sharpmetallic cry that came no one knew whence. The others in the group alsolistened intently, as if by so doing they, too, might hear the answer ifany there should be. Suddenly Hood stiffened. 

"There he is!" he whispered. The President handed him the message, andHood's fingers played over the key while the spark sent its singing notethrough the ether. 

"Such phenomena to be preferably of a harmless character, butinexplicable by any theory of natural causation, " he concluded. 

An uncanny dread seized on Thornton, who had withdrawn himself into thebackground. What was this strange communion? Who was this mysteriousPax? Were these real men or creatures of a grotesque dream? Was he notdrowsing over his eyepiece in the meridian-circle room? Then asimultaneous movement upon the part of those gathered round the operatorconvinced him of the reality of what was taking place. Hood waslaboriously writing upon a sheet of yellow pad paper, and theambassadors were unceremoniously crowding each other in their eagernessto read. 

"To the President of the United States, " wrote Hood: "In reply to yourmessage requesting further evidence of my power to compel the cessationof hostilities within twenty-four hours, I"--there was a pause fornearly a minute, during which the ticking of the big clock sounded toThornton like revolver shots--"I will excavate a channel through theAtlas Mountains and divert the Mediterranean into the Sahara Desert. PAX. "

Silence followed the final transcription of the message from theunknown--a silence broken only by Bill Hood's tremulous, half-whispered:"He'll do it all right!"

Then the German Ambassador laughed. 

"And thus save your ingenious nation a vast amount of trouble, MonsieurLiban, " said he. 

VI

A Tripolitan fisherman, Mohammed Ben Ali el Bad, a holy man nearlyseventy years of age, who had twice made the journey to Mecca and whonow in his declining years occupied himself with reading the Koran andinstructing his grandsons in the profession of fishing for mullet alongthe reefs of the Gulf of Cabes, had anchored for the night off theTunisian coast, about midway between Sfax and Lesser Syrtis. The mullethad been running thick and he was well satisfied, for by the nextevening he would surely complete his load and be able to return home tothe house of his daughter, Fatima, the wife of Abbas, the confectioner. Her youngest son, Abdullah, a lithe lad of seventeen, was at that momentengaged in folding their prayer rugs, which had been spread in the bowof the falukah in order that they might have a clearer view as theyknelt toward the Holy City. Chud, their slave, was cleaning mullet inthe waist and chanting some weird song of his native land. 

Mohammed Ben Ali el Bad was sitting cross-legged in the stern, smoking ahookah and watching the full moon sail slowly up above the Atlas Rangeto the southwest. The wind had died down and the sea was calm, heavingslowly with great orange-purple swells resembling watered silk. In thewest still lingered the fast-fading afterglow, above which the starsglimmered faintly. Along the coast lights twinkled in scattered coves. Half a mile astern the Italian cruiser _Fiala_ lay slowly swinging atanchor. From the forecastle came the smell of fried mullet. Mohammed BenAli was at peace with himself and with the world, including even theirritating Chud. The west darkened and the stars burned morebrilliantly. With the hookah gurgling softly at his feet, Mohammedleaned back his head and gazed in silent appreciation at the wonders ofthe heavens. There was Turka Kabar, the crocodile; and Menish el Tabir, the sleeping beauty; and Rook Hamana, the leopard, and there--up thereto the far north--was a shooting star. How gracefully it shot across thesky, leaving its wake of yellow light behind it! It was the season forshooting stars, he recollected. In an instant it would be gone--like aman's life! Saddened, he looked down at his hookah. When he should lookup again--if in only an instant--the star would be gone. Presently hedid look up again. But the star was still there, coming his way!

He rubbed his old eyes, keen as they were from habituation to theblinding light of the desert. Yes, the star was coming--coming fast. 

"Abdullah!" he called in his high-pitched voice. "Chud! Come, see thestar!"

Together they watched it sweep onward. 

"By Allah! That is no star!" suddenly cried Abdullah. "It is anair-flying fire chariot! I can see it with my eyes--black, and spoutingflames from behind. "

"Black, " echoed Chud gutturally. "Black and round! Oh, Allah!" He fellon his knees and knocked his head against the deck. 

The star, or whatever it was, swung in a wide circle toward the coast, and Mohammed and Abdullah now saw that what they had taken to be a trailof fire behind was in fact a broad beam of yellow light that pointeddiagonally earthward. It swept nearer and nearer, illuminating the wholesky and casting a shimmering reflection upon the waves. 

A shrill whistle trilled across the water, accompanied by the sound offootsteps running along the decks of the cruiser. Lights flashed. Muffled orders were shouted. 

"By the beard of the Prophet!" cried Mohammed Ali. "Something is goingto happen!"

The small black object from which the incandescent beam descended passedat that moment athwart the face of the moon, and Abdullah saw that itwas round and flat like a ring. The ray of light came from a pointdirectly above it, passing through its aperture downward to the sea. 

"Boom!" The fishing-boat shook to the thunder of the _Fiala's_eight-inch gun, and a blinding spurt of flame leaped from the cruiser'sbows. With a whining shriek a shell rose toward the moon. There was aquick flash followed by a dull concussion. The shell had not reached atenth of the distance to the flying machine. 

And then everything happened at once. Mohammed described afterward to agaping multitude of dirty villagers, while he sat enthroned upon hisdaughter's threshold, how the star-ship had sailed across the face ofthe moon and come to a standstill above the mountains, with its beam ofyellow light pointing directly downward so that the coast could be seenbright as day from Sfax to Cabes. He saw, he said, genii climbing up anddown on the beam. Be that as it may, he swears upon the Beard of theProphet that a second ray of light--of a lavender colour, like the eyeof a long-dead mullet--flashed down alongside the yellow beam. Instantlythe earth blew up like a cannon--up into the air, a thousand miles up. It was as light as noonday. Deafened by titanic concussions he fell halfdead. The sea boiled and gave off thick clouds of steam through whichflashed dazzling discharges of lightning accompanied by a thundering, grinding sound like a million mills. The ocean heaved spasmodically andthe air shook with a rending, ripping noise, as if Nature were bent upondestroying her own handiwork. The glare was so dazzling that sight wasimpossible. The falukah was tossed this way and that, as if caught in asimoon, and he was rolled hither and yon in the company of Chud, Abdullah, and the headless mullet. 

This earsplitting racket continued, he says, without interruption fortwo days. Abdullah says it was several hours; the official report of the_Fiala_ gives it as six minutes. And then it began to rain in torrentsuntil he was almost drowned. A great wind arose and lashed the ocean, and a whirlpool seized the falukah and whirled it round and round. Darkness descended upon the earth, and in the general mess Mohammed hithis head a terrific blow against the mast. He was sure it was but amatter of seconds before they would be dashed to pieces by the waves. The falukah spun like a marine top with a swift sideways motion. Something was dragging them along, sucking them in. The _Fiala_ wentcareening by, her fighting masts hanging in shreds. The air was full offalling rocks, trees, splinters, and thick clouds of dust that turnedthe water yellow in the lightning flashes. The mast went crashing overand a lemon tree descended to take its place. Great streams of lavapoured down out of the air, and masses of opaque matter plunged into thesea all about the falukah. Scalding mud, stones, hail, fell upon thedeck. 

And still the fishing-boat, gyrating like a leaf, remained afloat withits crew of half-crazed Arabs. Suffocated, stunned, scalded, petrifiedwith fear, they lay among the mullet while the falukah raced along inits wild dance with death. Mohammed recalls seeing what he thought to bea great cliff rush by close beside them. The falukah plunged over awaterfall and was almost submerged, was caught again in a maelstrom, andwent twirling on in the blackness. They all were deathly sick, but weretoo terrified to move. 

And then the nearer roaring ceased. The air was less congested. Theywere still showered with sand, clods of earth, twigs, and pebbles, it istrue, but the genii had stopped hurling mountains at each other. Thedarkness became less opaque, the water smoother. Soon they could see themoon through the clouds of settling dust, and gradually they coulddiscern the stars. The falukah was rocking gently upon a broad expanseof muddy ocean, surrounded by a yellow scum broken here and there by afloating tree. The _Fiala_ had vanished. No light shone upon the face ofthe waters. But death had not overtaken them. Overcome by exhaustion andterror Mohammed lay among the mullet, his legs entangled in the lemontree. Did he dream it? He cannot tell. But as he lost consciousness hethinks he saw a star shooting toward the north. 

When he awoke the falukah lay motionless upon a boundless ochre sea. They were beyond sight of land. Out of a sky slightly dim the sun burnedpitilessly down, sending warmth into their bodies and courage to theirhearts. All about them upon the water floated the evidences of thecataclysm of the preceding night--trees, shrubs, dead birds, and thedistorted corpse of a camel. Kneeling without their prayer rugs amongthe mullet they raised their voices in praise of Allah and his Prophet. 

VII

Within twenty-four hours of the destruction of the Mountains of Atlas bythe Flying Ring and the consequent flooding of the Sahara, the officialgazettes and such newspapers as were still published announced that thePowers had agreed upon an armistice and accepted a proposition ofmediation on the part of the United States looking toward permanentpeace. The news of the devastation and flood caused by this strange andterrible dreadnought of the air created the profoundest apprehension andcaused the wildest rumours, for what had happened in Tunis was assumedas likely to occur in London, Paris, or New York. Wireless messagesflashed the story from Algiers to Cartagena, and it was thencedisseminated throughout the civilized world by the wireless stations atParis, Nauen, Moscow, and Georgetown. 

The fact that the rotation of the earth had been retarded was still asecret, and the appearance of the Ring had not as yet been connectedwith any of the extraordinary phenomena surrounding it; but thenewspaper editorials universally agreed that whatever nation owned andcontrolled this new instrument of war could dictate its own terms. Itwas generally supposed that the blasting of the mountain chain ofNorthern Africa had been an experiment to test and demonstrate thepowers of this new demoniacal invention, and in view of its success itdid not seem surprising that the nations had hastened to agree to anarmistice, for the Power that controlled a force capable of producingsuch an extraordinary physical cataclysm could annihilate every capital, every army, every people upon the globe or even the globe itself. 

The flight of the Ring machine had been observed at several differentpoints, beginning at Cape Race, where at about four A. M. Thewireless operator reported what he supposed to be a large cometdischarging earthward a diagonal shaft of orange-yellow light and movingat incredible velocity in a southeasterly direction. During thefollowing day the lookout on the _Vira_, a fishguard and scout cruiserof the North Atlantic Patrol, saw a black speck soaring among the cloudswhich he took to be a lost monoplane fighting to regain the coast ofIreland. At sundown an amateur wireless operator at St. Michael's in theAzores noted a small comet sweeping across the sky far to the north. This comet an hour or so later passed directly over the cities ofLisbon, Linares, Lorca, Cartagena, and Algiers, and was clearlyobservable from Badajoz, Almadén, Seville, Cordova, Grenada, Oran, Biskra, and Tunis, and at the latter places it was easily possible fortelescopic observers to determine its size, shape, and generalconstruction. 

Daniel W. Quinn, Jr. , the acting United States Consul stationed atBiskra, who happened to be dining with the abbot of the Franciscanmonastery at Linares, sent the following account of the flight of theRing to the State Department at Washington, where it is now on file. [See Vol. 27, pp. 491-498, with footnote, of Official Records of theConsular Correspondence for 1915-1916. ] After describing generalconditions in Algeria he continues:

 We had gone upon the roof in the early evening to look at the sky through the large telescope presented to the Franciscans by Count Philippe d'Ormay, when Father Antoine called my attention to a comet that was apparently coming straight toward us. Instead, however, of leaving a horizontal trail of fire behind it, this comet or meteorite seemed to shoot an almost vertical beam of orange light toward the earth. It produced a very strange effect on all of us, since a normal comet or other celestial body that left a wake of light of that sort behind it would naturally be expected to be moving upward toward the zenith, instead of in a direction parallel to the earth. It looked somehow as if the tail of the comet had been bent over. As soon as it came near enough so that we could focus the telescope upon it we discovered that it was a new sort of flying machine. It passed over our heads at a height no greater than ten thousand feet, if as great as that, and we could see that it was a cylindrical ring like a doughnut or an anchor ring, constructed, I believe, of highly polished metal, the inner aperture being about twenty-five yards in diameter. The tube of the cylinder looked to be about twenty feet thick, and had circular windows or portholes that were brilliantly lighted. 

 The strangest thing about it was that it carried a superstructure consisting of a number of arms meeting at a point above the centre of the opening and supporting some sort of apparatus from which the beam of light emanated. This appliance, which we supposed to be a gigantic searchlight, was focused down through the Ring and could apparently be moved at will over a limited radius of about fifteen degrees. We could not understand this, nor why the light was thrown from outside and above instead of from inside the flying machine, but the explanation may be found in the immense heat that must have been required to generate the light, since it illuminated the entire country for fifty miles or so, and we were able to read without trouble the fine print of the abbot's rubric. This Flying Ring moved on an even keel at the tremendous velocity of about two hundred miles an hour. We wondered what would happen if it turned turtle, for in that case the weight of the superstructure would have rendered it impossible for the machine to right itself. In fact, none of us had ever imagined any such air monster before. Beside it a Zeppelin seemed like a wooden toy. 

 The Ring passed over the mountains toward Cabes and within a short time a volcanic eruption occurred that destroyed a section of the Atlas Range. [Mr. Quinn here describes with considerable detail the destruction of the mountains. ] The next morning I found Biskra crowded with Arabs, who reported that the ocean had poured through the passage made by the eruption and was flooding the entire desert as far south as the oasis of Wargla, and that it had come within twelve miles of the walls of our own city. I at once hired a donkey and made a personal investigation, with the result that I can report as a fact that the entire desert east and south of Biskra is inundated to a depth of from seven to ten feet and that the water gives no sign of going down. The loss of life seems to have been negligible, owing to the fact that the height of the water is not great and that many unexpected islands have provided safety for the caravans that were _in transitu_. These are now marooned and waiting for assistance, which I am informed will be sent from Cabes in the form of flat-bottomed boats fitted with motor auxiliaries. 

 Respectfully submitted, D. W. QUINN, Jr. , Acting U. S. Consul. 

The Italian cruiser _Fiala_, which had been carried one hundred andeighty miles into the desert on the night of the eruption, groundedsafely on the plateau of Tasili, but the volcanic tidal wave on whichshe had been swept along, having done its work, receded, leaving toolittle water for the _Fiala's_ draft of thirty-seven feet. Four launchessent out in different directions to the south and east reported no signof land, but immense quantities of floating vegetable matter, yellowdust, and the bodies of jackals, camels, zebras, and lions. The fifthlaunch after great hardships reached the seacoast through the newchannel and arrived at Sfax after eight days. 

The mean tide level of the Mediterranean sank fifteen inches, and thewater showed marked discoloration for several months, while a volcanichaze hung over Northern Africa, Sicily, Malta, and Sardinia for an evenlonger period. 

Though many persons must have lost their lives the records areincomplete in this respect; but there is a curious document in themosque at Sfax touching the effect of the Lavender Ray. It appears thatan Arab mussel-gatherer was in a small boat with his two brothers at thetime the Ring appeared above the mountains. As they looked up toward thesky the Ray flashed over and illuminated their faces. They thoughtnothing of it at the time, for almost immediately the mountains wererent asunder and in the titanic upheaval that followed they were allcast upon the shore, as they thought, dead men. Reaching Sfax theyreported their adventures and offered prayers in gratitude for theirextraordinary escape; but five days later all three began to sufferexcruciating torment from internal burns, the skin upon their heads andbodies began to peel off, and they died in agony within the week. 

VIII

It was but a few days thereafter that the President of the United Statesreceived the official note from Count von Koenitz, on behalf of theImperial German Commissioners, to the effect that Germany would joinwith the other Powers in an armistice looking toward peace andultimately a universal disarmament. Similar notes had already beenreceived by the President from France, Great Britain, Russia, Italy, Austria, Spain, and Slavia, and a multitude of the other smaller Powerswho were engaged in the war, and there was no longer any reason fordelaying the calling of an international council or diet for the purposeof bringing about what Pax demanded as a ransom for the safety of theglobe. 

In the files of the State Department at Washington there is secreted theonly record of the diplomatic correspondence touching these momentousevents, and a transcript of the messages exchanged between the Presidentof the United States and the Arbiter of Human Destiny. They arecomparatively few in number, for Pax seemed to be satisfied to leave alldetails to the Powers themselves. In the interest of saving time, however, he made the simple suggestion that the present ambassadorsshould be given plenary powers to determine the terms and conditionsupon which universal peace should be declared. All these proceedings andthe reasons therefore were kept profoundly secret. It began to look asthough the matter would be put through with characteristic Yankeepromptness. Pax's suggestion was acceded to, and the ambassadors andministers were given unrestricted latitude in drawing the treaty thatshould abolish war forever. 

Now that he had been won over no one was more indefatigable than VonKoenitz, none more fertile in suggestions. It was he who drafted withhis own hand the forty pages devoted to the creation of the commissioncharged with the duty of destroying all arms, munitions, and implementsof war; and he not only acted as chairman of the preliminary draftingcommittee, but was an active member of at least half a dozen otherimportant subcommittees. The President daily communicated the progressof this conference of the Powers to Pax through Bill Hood, and receiveddaily in return a hearty if laconic approval. 

 "I am satisfied of the sincerity of the Powers and with the progress made. PAX. "

was the ordinary type of message received. Meantime word had been sentto all the governments that an indefinite armistice had been declared, to commence at the end of ten days, for it had been found necessary toallow for the time required to transmit the orders to the various fieldsof military operations throughout Europe. In the interim the warcontinued. 

It was at this time that Count von Koenitz, who now was looked upon asthe leading figure of the conference, arose and said: "YourExcellencies, this distinguished diet will, I doubt not, presentlyconclude its labours and receive not only the approval of the Powersrepresented but the gratitude of the nations of the world. I voice thesentiments of the Imperial Commissioners when I say that no Power looksforward with greater eagerness than Germany to the accomplishment of ourpurpose. But we should not forget that there is one menace to mankindgreater than that of war--namely, the lurking danger from the power ofthis unknown possessor of superhuman knowledge of explosives. So far hisinfluence has been a benign one, but who can say when it may becomemalignant? Will our labours please him? Perhaps not. Shall we agree? Ihope so, but who can tell? Will our armies lay down their arms evenafter we have agreed? I believe all will go well; but is it wise for usto refrain from jointly taking steps to ascertain the identity of thisunknown juggler with Nature, and the source of his power? It is my ownopinion, since we cannot exert any influence or control upon thisindividual, that we should take whatever steps are within our grasp tosafeguard ourselves in the event that he refuses to keep faith with us. To this end I suggest an international conference of scientific men fromall the nations to be held here in Washington coincidently with our ownmeetings, with a view to determining these questions. "

His remarks were greeted with approval by almost all the representativespresent except Sir John Smith, who mildly hinted that such a coursemight be regarded as savouring a trifle of double dealing. Should Paxreceive knowledge of the suggested conference he might question theirsincerity and view all their doings with suspicion. In a word, Sir Johnbelieved in following a consistent course and treating Pax as a friendand ally and not as a possible enemy. 

Sir John's speech, however, left the delegates unconvinced and with thefeeling that his argument was over-refined. They felt that there couldbe no objection to endeavouring to ascertain the source of Pax'spower--the law of self-preservation seemed to indicate such a course asnecessary. And it had, in fact, already been discussed vaguely byseveral less conspicuous delegates. Accordingly it was voted, with buttwo dissenting voices, [2] to summon what was known as Conference No. 2, to be held as soon as possible, its proceedings to be conducted insecret under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences, with thepresident of the Academy acting as permanent chairman. To thisconference the President appointed Thornton as one of the threedelegates from the United States. 

[Footnote 2: The President of the United States also voted in thenegative. ]

The council of the Powers having so voted, Count von Koenitz at oncetransmitted, by way of Sayville, a message which in code appeared to beaddressed to a Herr Karl Heinweg, Notary, at 12^{BIS} Bunden Strasse, Strassburg, and related to a mortgage about to fall due upon some of VonKoenitz's properties in Thüringen. When decoded it read:

 "_To the Imperial Commissioners of the German Federated States:_

 "I have the honour to report that acting according to your distinguished instructions I have this day proposed an international conference to consider the scientific problems presented by certain recent phenomena and that my proposition was adopted. I believe that in this way the proceedings here may be delayed indefinitely and time thus secured to enable an expedition to be organized and dispatched for the purpose of destroying this unknown person or ascertaining the secret of his power, in accordance with my previous suggestion. It would be well to send as delegates to this Conference No. 2 several professors of physics who can by plausible arguments and ingenious theories so confuse the matter that no determination can be reached. I suggest Professors Gasgabelaus, of München, and Leybach, of the Hague. 

 "VON KOENITZ. "

And having thus fulfilled his duty the count took a cab to theMetropolitan Club and there played a discreet game of billiards withSeñor Tomasso Varilla, the ex-minister from Argentina. 

Von Koenitz from the first had played his hand with a skill which from adiplomatic view left nothing to be desired. The extraordinary naturalphenomena which had occurred coincidentally with the first message ofPax to the President of the United States and the fall of Cleopatra'sNeedle had been immediately observed by the scientists attached to theImperial and other universities throughout the German Federated States, and had no sooner been observed than their significance had beenrealized. These most industrious and thorough of all human investigatorshad instantly reported the facts and their preliminary conclusions tothe Imperial Commissioners, with the recommendation that no stone beleft unturned in attempting to locate and ascertain the causes of thisdisruption of the forces of nature. The Commissioners at once demandedan exhaustive report from the faculty of the Imperial German University, and notified Von Koenitz by cable that until further notice he must seekin every way to delay investigation by other nations and to belittle theimportance of what had occurred, for these astute German scientists hadat once jumped to the conclusion that the acceleration of the earth'smotion had been due to some human agency possessed of a hithertounsuspected power. 

It was for this reason that at the first meeting at the White House theAmbassador had pooh-poohed the whole matter and talked of snowstorms inthe Alps and showers of fish at Heidelburg, but with the rending of thenorthern coast of Africa and the well-attested appearances of "The Ring"he soon reached the conclusion that his wisest course was to cause sucha delay on the part of the other Powers that the inevitable race for thesecret would be won by the nation which he so astutely represented. Hereasoned, quite accurately, that the scientists of England, Russia, andAmerica would not remain idle in attempting to deduce the cause andplace the origin of the phenomena and the habitat of the master of theRing, and that the only effectual means to enable Germany to capturethis, the greatest of all prizes of war, was to befuddle therepresentatives of the other nations while leaving his own unhampered intheir efforts to accomplish that which would make his countrymen, almostwithout further effort, the masters of the world. Now the easiest way tobefuddle the scientists of the world was to get them into one place andbefuddle them all together, and this, after communicating with hissuperiors, he had proceeded to do. He was a clever man, trained in thedevious ways of the Wilhelmstrasse, and when he set out to accomplishsomething he was almost inevitably successful. Yet in spite of thesupposed alliance between Kaiser and Deity man proposes and Goddisposes, and sometimes the latter uses the humblest of humaninstruments in that disposition. 

IX

The Imperial German Commissioner for War, General Hans von Helmuth, wasa man of extraordinary decision and farsightedness. Sixty years of age, he had been a member of the general staff since he was forty. He had satat the feet of Bismarck and Von Moltke, and during his activeparticipation in the management of German military affairs he had seenbut slight changes in their policy: Mass--overwhelming mass; suddenmomentous onslaught, and, above all, an attack so quick that youradversary could not regain his feet. It worked nine times out of ten, and when it didn't it was usually better than taking the defensive. General von Helmuth having an approved system was to that extentrelieved of anxiety, for all he had to do was to work out details. Inthis his highly efficient organization was almost automatic. He himselfwas a human compendium of knowledge, and he had but to press a buttonand emit a few gutturals and any information that he wanted laytypewritten before him. Now he sat in his office smoking a Bremen cigarand studying a huge Mercatorial projection of the Atlantic and adjacentcountries, while with the fingers of his left hand he combed his heavybeard. 

From the window he looked down upon the inner fortifications ofMainz--to which city the capital had been removed three monthsbefore--and upon the landing stage for the scouting planes which wereconstantly arriving or whirring off toward Holland or Strassburg. Acrossthe river, under the concealed guns of a sunken battery, stood the hugehangars of the now useless dirigibles Z^{51~57}. The landing stagecommunicated directly by telephone with the adjutant's office, anenormous hall filled with maps, with which Von Helmuth's private roomwas connected. The adjutant himself, a worried-looking man with a bullethead and an iron-gray moustache, stood at a table in the centre of thehall addressing rapid-fire sentences to various persons who appeared inthe doorway, saluted, and hurried off again. Several groups weregathered about the table and the adjutant carried on an interruptedconversation with all of them, pausing to read the telegrams andmessages that shot out of the pneumatic tubes upon the table from thetelegraph and telephone office on the floor below. 

An elderly man in rather shabby clothes entered, looking abouthelplessly through the thick lenses of his double spectacles, and theadjutant turned at once from the officers about him with an "Excuse me, gentlemen. "

"Good afternoon, Professor von Schwenitz; the general is waiting foryou, " said he. "This way, please. "

He stalked across to the door of the inner office. 

"Professor von Schwenitz is here, " he announced, and immediatelyreturned to take up the thread of his conversation in the centre of thehall. 

The general turned gruffly to greet his visitor. "I have sent for you, Professor, " said he, without removing his cigar, "in order that I mayfully understand the method by which you say you have ascertained theplace of origin of the wireless messages and electrical disturbancesreferred to in our communications of last week. This may be a seriousmatter. The accuracy of your information is of vital importance. "

The professor hesitated in embarrassment, and the general scowled. 

"Well?" he demanded, biting off the chewed end of his cigar. "Well? Thisis not a lecture room. Time is short. Out with it. "

"Your Excellency!" stammered the poor professor, "I--I----Theobservations are so--inadequate--one cannot determine----"

"What?" roared Von Helmuth. "But you said you _had_!"

"Only approximately, your Excellency. One cannot be positive, but withina reasonable distance----" He paused. 

"What do you call a reasonable distance? I supposed your physics was anexact science!" retorted the general. 

"But the data----"

"What do you call a reasonable distance?" bellowed the ImperialCommissioner. 

"A hundred kilometres!" suddenly shouted the overwrought professor, losing control of himself. "I won't be talked to this way, do you hear?I won't! How can a man think? I'm a member of the faculty of theImperial University. I've been decorated twice--twice!"

"Fiddlesticks!" returned the general, amused in spite of himself. "Don'tbe absurd. I merely wish you to hurry. Have a cigar?"

"Oh, your Excellency!" protested the professor, now both ashamed andfrightened. "You must excuse me. The war has shattered my nerves. May Ismoke? Thank you. "

"Sit down. Take your time, " said Von Helmuth, looking out and up at amonoplane descending toward the landing in slowly lessening spirals. 

"You see, your Excellency, " explained Von Schwenitz, "the data arefragmentary, but I used three methods, each checking the others. "

"The first?" shot back the general. The monoplane had landed safely. 

"I compared the records of all the seismographs that had registered theearthquake wave attendant on the electrical discharges accompanying thegreat yellow auroras of July. These shocks had been felt all over theglobe, and I secured reports from Java, New Guinea, Lima, Tucson, Greenwich, Algeria, and Moscow. These showed the wave had originatedsomewhere in Eastern Labrador. "

"Yes, yes. Go on!" ordered the general. 

"In the second place, the violent magnetic storms produced by the heliumaurora appear to have left their mark each time upon the earth in apermanent, if slight, deflection of the compass needle. The earth'snormal magnetic field seems to have had superimposed upon it a new fieldcomprised of lines of force nearly parallel to the equator. Mycomputations show that these great circles of magnetism centre atapproximately the same point in Labrador as that indicated by theseismographs--about fifty-five degrees north and seventy-five degreeswest. "

The general seemed struck with this. 

"Permanent deflection, you say!" he ejaculated. 

"Yes, apparently permanent. Finally the barometer records told the samestory, although in less precise form. A compressional wave of air hadbeen started in the far north and had spread out over the earth with thevelocity of sound. Though the barographs themselves gave no indicationwhence this wave had come, the variation in its intensity at differentmeteorological observatories could be accounted for by the law ofinverse squares on the supposition that the explosion which started thewave had occurred at fifty-five degrees north, seventy-five degreeswest. "

The professor paused and wiped his glasses. With a roar a Taube slid offthe landing stage, shot over toward the hangars, and soared upward. 

"Is that all?" inquired the general, turning again to the chart. 

"That is all, your Excellency, " answered Von Schwenitz. 

"Then you may go!" muttered the Imperial Commissioner. "If we find thesource of these disturbances where you predict you will receive theBlack Eagle. "

"Oh, your Excellency!" protested the professor, his face shining withsatisfaction. 

"And if we do _not_ find it--there will be a vacancy on the faculty ofthe Imperial University!" he added grimly. "Good afternoon. "

He pressed a button and the departing scholar was met by an orderly andescorted from the War Bureau, while the adjutant joined Von Helmuth. 

"He's got him! I'm satisfied!" remarked the Commissioner. "Now outlineyour plan. "

The bullet-headed man took up the calipers and indicated a spot on thecoast of Labrador:

"Our expedition will land, subject to your approval, at Hamilton Inlet, using the town of Rigolet as a base. By availing ourselves of theNascopee River and the lakes through which it flows, we can easilypenetrate to the highland where the inventor of the Ring machine haslocated himself. The auxiliary brigantine _Sea Fox_ is lying now underAmerican colours at Amsterdam, and as she can steam fifteen knots anhour she should reach the Inlet in about ten days, passing to the northof the Orkneys. "

"What force have you in mind?" inquired Von Helmuth, his cold gray eyesnarrowing. 

"Three full companies of sappers and miners, ten mountain howitzers, afield battery, fifty rapid-fire standing rifles, and a complete outfitfor throwing lyddite. Of course we shall rely principally on highexplosives if it becomes necessary to use force, but what we want is ahostage who may later become an ally. "

"Yes, of course, " said the general with a laugh. "This is a scientific, not a military, expedition. "

"I have asked Lieutenant Münster to report upon the necessaryequipment. "

Von Helmuth nodded, and the adjutant stepped to the door and called out:"Lieutenant Münster!"

A trim young man in naval uniform appeared upon the threshold andsaluted. 

"State what you regard as necessary as equipment for the proposedexpedition, " said the general. 

"Twenty motor boats, each capable of towing several flat-bottomed bargesor native canoes, forty mules, a field telegraph, and also ahigh-powered wireless apparatus, axes, spades, wire cables and drums, windlasses, dynamite for blasting, and provisions for sixty days. Weshall live off the country and secure artisans and bearers from amongthe natives. "

"When will it be possible to start?" inquired the general. 

"In twelve days if you give the order now, " answered the young man. 

"Very well, you may go. And good luck to you!" he added. 

The young lieutenant saluted and turned abruptly on his heel. 

Over the parade ground a biplane was hovering, darting this way andthat, rising and falling with startling velocity. 

"Who's that?" inquired the general approvingly. 

"Schöningen, " answered the adjutant. 

The Imperial Commissioner felt in his breast-pocket for another cigar. 

"Do you know, Ludwig, " he remarked amiably as he struck a meditativematch, "sometimes I more than half believe this 'Flying Ring' businessis all rot!"

The adjutant looked pained. 

"And yet, " continued Von Helmuth, "if Bismarck could see one of thosethings, " he waved his cigar toward the gyrating aeroplane, "he wouldn'tbelieve it. "

X

All day the International Assembly of Scientists, officially known asConference No. 2, had been sitting, but not progressing, in the largelecture hall of the Smithsonian Institution, which probably had neverbefore seen so motley a gathering. Each nation had sent threerepresentatives, two professional scientists, and a lay delegate, thelatter some writer or thinker renowned in his own country for his wideknowledge and powers of ratiocination. They had come together upon theappointed day, although the delegates from the remoter countries had notyet arrived, and the Committee on Credentials had already reported. Germany had sent Gasgabelaus, Leybach, and Wilhelm Lamszus;France--Sortell, Amand, and Buona Varilla; Great Britain--Sir WilliamCrookes, Sir Francis Soddy, and Mr. H. G. Wells, celebrated for his "TheWar of the Worlds" and The "World Set Free, " and hence supposedly justthe man to unravel a scientific mystery such as that which confrontedthis galaxy of immortals. 

The Committee on Data, of which Thornton was a member, having beenactively at work for nearly two weeks through wireless communicationwith all the observatories--seismic, meteorological, astronomical, andotherwise--throughout the world, had reduced its findings to print, andthis matter, translated into French, German, and Italian, had alreadybeen distributed among those present. Included in its pages was Quinn'sletter to the State Department. 

The roll having been called, the president of the National Academy ofSciences made a short speech in which he outlined briefly the purposefor which the committee had been summoned and commented to some extentupon the character of the phenomena it was required to analyze. 

And then began an unending series of discussions and explanations inFrench, German, Dutch, Russian, and Italian, by goggle-eyed, bushy-whiskered, long-haired men who looked like anarchists orsociologists and apparently had never before had an unrestrictedopportunity to air their views on anything. 

Thornton, listening to this hodgepodge of technicalities, was dismayedand distrustful. These men spoke a language evidently familiar to them, which he, although a professional scientist, found a meaningless jargon. The whole thing seemed unreal, had a purely theoretic or literaryquality about it that made him question even their premises. In thetainted air of the council room, listening to these little pot-bellied_Professoren_ from Amsterdam and Münich, doubt assailed him, doubt eventhat the earth had changed its orbit, doubt even of his own establishedformulæ and tables. Weren't they all just talking through their hats?Wasn't it merely a game in which an elaborate system of equivalents gavea semblance of actuality to what in fact was nothing but mind-play? EvenWells, whose literary style he admired as one of the beauties as well asone of the wonders of the world, had been a disappointment. He hadseemed singularly halting and unconvincing. 

"I wish I knew a practical man--I wish Bennie Hooker were here!"muttered Thornton to himself. He had not seen his classmate Hooker fortwenty-six years; but that was one thing about Hooker: you knew he'd beexactly the same--only more so--as he was when you last saw him. Inthose years Bennie had become the Lawson Professor of Applied Physics atHarvard. Thornton had read his papers on induced radiation, thermicequilibrium, and had one of Bennie's famous Gem Home Cookers in his ownlittle bachelor apartment. Hooker would know. And if he didn't he'd tellyou so, without befogging the atmosphere with a lot of things he _did_know, but that wouldn't help you in the least. Thornton clutched at thethought of him like a falling aeronaut at a dangling rope. He'd be wortha thousand of these dreaming lecturers, these beer-drinking visionaries!But where could he be found? It was August, vacation time. Still, hemight be in Cambridge giving a summer course or something. 

At that moment Professor Gasgabelaus, the temporary chairman, a hugeman, the periphery of whose abdomen rivalled the circumference of the"working terrestrial globe" at the other end of the platform, poundedperspiringly with his gavel and announced that the conference wouldadjourn until the following Monday morning. It was Friday afternoon, sohe had sixty hours in which to connect with Bennie, if Bennie could bediscovered. A telegram of inquiry brought no response, and he took themidnight train to Boston, reaching Cambridge about two o'clock thefollowing afternoon. 

The air trembled with heat. Only by dodging from the shadow of one bigelm to another did he manage to reach the Appian Way--the street givenin the university catalogue as Bennie's habitat--alive. As he swung openthe little wicket gate he realized with an odd feeling that it was thesame house where Hooker had lived when a student, twenty-five yearsbefore. 

"Board" was printed on a yellow, fly-blown card in the corner of thewindow beside the door. 

Up there over the porch was the room Bennie had inhabited from '85 to'89. He recalled vividly the night he, Thornton, had put his footthrough the lower pane. They had filled up the hole with an old golfstocking. His eyes searched curiously for the pane. There it was, stillbroken and still stuffed--it couldn't be!--with some colourless materialstrangely resembling disintegrating worsted. The sun smote him in theback of his neck and drove him to seek the relief of the porch. Had heever left Cambridge? Wasn't it a dream about his becoming an astronomerand working at the Naval Observatory? And all this stuff about the earthgoing on the loose? If he opened the door wouldn't he find Bennie with atowel round his head cramming for the "exams"? For a moment he reallyimagined that he was an undergraduate. Then as he fanned himself withhis straw hat he caught, on the silk band across the interior, thewords: "Smith's Famous Headwear, Washington, D. C. " No, he was really anastronomer. 

He shuddered in spite of the heat as he pulled the bell knob. Whatghosts would its jangle summon? The bell, however, gave no sound; infact the knob came off in his hand, followed by a foot or so of copperwire. He laughed, gazing at it blankly. No one had ever used the bell inthe old days. They had simply kicked open the door and halloed: "O-o-h, Bennie Hooker!"

Thornton laid the knob on the piazza and inspected the front of thehouse. The windows were thick with dust, the "yard" scraggly with weeds. A piece of string held the latch of the gate together. Thenautomatically, and without intending to do so at all, Thornton turnedthe handle of the front door, assisting it coincidentally with a gentlekick from his right toe, and found himself in the narrow cabbage-scentedhallway. The old, familiar, battered black-walnut hatrack of his studentdays leaned drunkenly against the wall--Thornton knew one of its backlegs was missing--and on the imitation marble slab was a telegramaddressed to "Professor Benjamin Hooker. " And also, instinctively, Thornton lifted up his adult voice and yelled:

"O-o-h, ye-ay! Bennie Hooker!"

The volume of his own sound startled him. Instantly he saw theridiculousness of it--he, the senior astronomer at the NavalObservatory, yelling like that----

"O-o-h, ye-ay!" came in smothered tones from above. 

Thornton bounded up the stairs, two, three steps at a time, and poundedon the old door over the porch. 

"Go away!" came back the voice of Bennie Hooker. "Don't want any lunch!"

Thornton continued to bang on the door while Professor Hooker wrathfullybesought the intruder to depart before he took active measures. Therewas the cracking of glass. 

"Oh, damn!" came from inside. 

Thornton rattled the knob and kicked. Somebody haltingly crossed theroom, the key turned, and Prof. Bennie Hooker opened the door. 

"Well?" he demanded, scowling over his thick spectacles. 

"Hello, Bennie!" said Thornton, holding out his hand. 

"Hello, Buck!" returned Hooker. "Come in. I thought it was thatconfounded Ethiopian. "

As far as Thornton could see, it was the same old room, only now crammedwith books and pamphlets and crowded with tables of instruments. Hooker, clad in sneakers, white ducks, and an undershirt, was smoking a small"T. D. " pipe. 

"Where on earth did you come from?" he inquired good-naturedly. 

"Washington, " answered Thornton, and something told him that this wasthe real thing--the "goods"--that his journey would be repaid. 

Hooker waved the "T. D. " in a general sort of way toward somebroken-down horsehair armchairs and an empty crate. 

"Sit down, won't you?" he said, as if he had seen his guest only the daybefore. He looked vaguely about for something that Thornton might smoke, then seated himself on a cluttered bench holding a number of retorts, beside which flamed an oxyacetylene blowpipe. He was a wizened littlechap, with scrawny neck and protruding Adam's apple. His long hair gaveno evidence of the use of the comb, and his hands were the hands ofEsau. He had an alertness that suggested a robin, but at the same timegave the impression that he looked through things rather than at them. On the mantel was a saucer containing the fast oxidizing cores ofseveral apples and a half-eaten box of oatmeal biscuits. 

"My Lord! This is an untidy hole! No more order than when you were anundergrad!" exclaimed Thornton, looking about him in amused horror. 

"Order?" returned Bennie indignantly. "Everything's in perfect order!This chair is filled with the letters I _have_ already answered; thischair with the letters I've _not_ answered; and this chair with theletters I shall _never_ answer!"

Thornton took a seat on the crate, laughing. It was the same old Bennie!

"You're an incorrigible!" he sighed despairingly. 

"Well, you're a star gazer, aren't you?" inquired Hooker, relighting hispipe. "Some one told me so--I forget who. You must have a lot ofinteresting problems. They tell me that new planet of yours is full ofuranium. "

Thornton laughed. "You mustn't believe all that you read in the papers. What are you working at particularly?"

"Oh, radium and thermic induction mostly, " answered Hooker. "And when Iwant a rest I take a crack at the fourth dimension--spacial curvature'smy hobby. But I'm always working at radio stuff. That's where the bigthings are going to be pulled off, you know. "

"Yes, of course, " answered Thornton. He wondered if Hooker ever saw apaper, how long since he had been out of the house. "By the way, did youknow Berlin had been taken?" he asked. 

"Berlin--in Germany, you mean?"

"Yes, by the Russians. "

"No! Has it?" inquired Hooker with politeness. "Oh, I think some one didmention it. "

Thornton fumbled for a cigarette and Bennie handed him a match. Theyseemed to have extraordinarily little to say for men who hadn't seeneach other for twenty-six years. 

"I suppose, " went on the astronomer, "you think it's deuced funny mydropping in casually this way after all this time, but the fact is Icame on purpose. I want to get some information from you straight. "

"Go ahead!" said Bennie. "What's it about?"

"Well, in a word, " answered Thornton, "the earth's nearly a quarter ofan hour behind time. "

Hooker received this announcement with a polite interest but noastonishment. 

"That's a how-de-do!" he remarked. "What's done it?"

"That's what I want you to tell _me_, " said Thornton sternly. "What_could_ do it?"

Hooker unlaced his legs and strolled over to the mantel. 

"Have a cracker?" he asked, helping himself. Then he picked up a pieceof wood and began whittling. "I suppose there's the devil to pay?" hesuggested. "Things upset and so on? Atmospheric changes? When did ithappen?"

"About three weeks ago. Then there's this Sahara business. "

"What Sahara business?"

"Haven't you heard?"

"No, " answered Hooker rather impatiently. "I haven't heard anything. Ihaven't any time to read the papers; I'm too busy. My thermic inductortransformers melted last week and I'm all in the air. What was it?"

"Oh, never mind now, " said Thornton hurriedly, perceiving that Hooker'signorance was an added asset. He'd get his science pure, uncontaminatedby disturbing questions of fact. "How about the earth's losing thatquarter of an hour?"

"Of course she's off her orbit, " remarked Hooker in a detached way. "Andyou want to know what's done it? Don't blame you. I suppose you've goneinto the possibilities of stellar attraction. "

"Discount that!" ordered Thornton. "What I want to know is whether itcould happen from the inside?"

"Why not?" inquired Hooker. "A general shift in the mass would do it. Sowould the mere application of force at the proper point. "

"It never happened before. "

"Of course not. Neither had seedless oranges until Burbank came along, "said Hooker. 

"Do you regard it as possible by any human agency?" inquired Thornton. 

"Why not?" repeated Hooker. "All you need is the energy. And it's lyingall round if you could only get at it. That's just what I'm working atnow. Radium, uranium, thorium, actinium--all the radioactiveelements--are, as everybody knows, continually disintegrating, discharging the enormous energy that is imprisoned in their molecules. It may take generations, epochs, centuries, for them to get rid of itand transform themselves into other substances, but they will inevitablydo so eventually. They're doing with more or less of a rush what all theelements are doing at their leisure. A single ounce of uranium containsabout the same amount of energy that could be produced by the combustionof ten tons of coal--but it won't let the energy go. Instead it holds onto it, and the energy leaks slowly, almost imperceptibly, away, likewater from a big reservoir tapped only by a tiny pipe. 'Atomic energy'Rutherford calls it. Every element, every substance, has its ready to betouched off and put to use. The chap who can find out how to releasethat energy all at once will revolutionize the civilized world. It willbe like the discovery that water could be turned into steam and made towork for us--multiplied a million times. If, instead of that energy justoozing away and the uranium disintegrating infinitesimally each year, itcould be exploded at a given moment you could drive an ocean liner witha handful of it. You could make the old globe stagger round and turnupside down! Mankind could just lay off and take a holiday. But _how_?"

Bennie enthusiastically waved his pipe at Thornton. 

"How! That's the question. Everybody's known about the possibilities, for Soddy wrote a book about it; but nobody's ever suggested where thekey could be found to unlock that treasure-house of energy. Some chapmade up a novel once and pretended it was done, but he didn't say _how_. But"--and he lowered his voice passionately--"I'm working at it, and--and--I've nearly--nearly got it. "

Thornton, infected by his friend's excitement, leaned forward in hischair. 

"Yes--nearly. If only my transformers hadn't melted! You see I got theidea from Savaroff, who noticed that the activity of radium and otherelements wasn't constant, but varied with the degree of solar activity, reaching its maximum at the periods when the sun spots were mostnumerous. In other words, he's shown that the breakdown of the atoms ofradium and the other radioactive elements isn't spontaneous, as Soddyand others had thought, but is due to the action of certain extremelypenetrating rays given out by the sun. These particular rays are theresult of the enormous temperature of the solar atmosphere, and theireffect upon radioactive substances is analogous to that of thedetonating cap upon dynamite. No one has been able to produce these raysin the laboratory, although Hempel has suspected sometimes that tracesof them appeared in the radiations from powerful electric sparks. Everything came to a halt until Hiroshito discovered thermic induction, and we were able to elevate temperature almost indefinitely through aprocess similar to the induction of high electric potentials by means oftransformers and the Ruhmkorff coil. 

"Hiroshito wasn't looking for a detonating ray and didn't have time tobother with it, but I started a series of experiments with that end inview. I got close--I am close, but the trouble has been to control theforces set in motion, for the rapid rise in temperature has alwaysdestroyed the apparatus. "

Thornton whistled. "And when you succeed?" he asked in a whisper. 

Hooker's face was transfigured. 

"When I succeed I shall control the world, " he cried, and his voicetrembled. "But the damn thing either melts or explodes, " he added with atinge of indignation. 

"You know about Hiroshito's experiments, of course; he used a quartzbulb containing a mixture of neon gas and the vapour of mercury, placedat the centre of a coil of silver wire carrying a big oscillatorycurrent. This induced a ring discharge in the bulb, and the temperatureof the vapour mixture rose until the bulb melted. He calculated that thetemperature of that part of the vapour which carried the current wasover 6, 000°. You see, the ring discharge is not in contact with the wallof the bulb, and can consequently be much hotter. It's like this. " HereBennie drew with a burnt match on the back of an envelope a diagram ofsomething which resembled a doughnut in a chianti flask. 

Thornton scratched his head. "Yes, " he said, "but that's an oldprinciple, isn't it? Why does Hiro--what's his name--call it--thermicinduction?"

"Oriental imagination, probably, " replied Bennie. "Hiroshito observedthat a sudden increase in the temperature of the discharge occurred atthe moment when the silver coil of his transformer became white hot, which he explained by some mysterious inductive action of the heatvibrations. I don't follow him at all. His theory's probably all wrong, but he delivered the goods. He gave me the right tip, even if I have gothim lashed to the mast now. I use a tungsten spiral in a nitrogenatmosphere in my transformer and replace the quartz bulb with a capsuleof zircorundum. "

"A capsule of what?" asked Thornton, whose chemistry was mid-Victorian. 

"Zircorundum, " said Bennie, groping around in a drawer of his worktable. "It's an absolute nonconductor of heat. Look here, just stickyour finger in that. " He held out to Thornton what appeared to be asmall test tube of black glass. Thornton, with a slight moralhesitation, did as he was told, and Bennie, whistling, picked up theoxyacetylene blowpipe, regarding it somewhat as a dog fancier might gazeat an exceptionally fine pup. "Hold up your finger, " said he to theastronomer. "That's right--like that!"

Thrusting the blowpipe forward, he allowed the hissing blue-white flameto wrap itself round the outer wall of the tube--a flame which Thorntonknew could melt its way through a block of steel--but the astronomerfelt no sensation of heat, although he not unnaturally expected themember to be incinerated. 

"Queer, eh?" said Bennie. "Absolute insulation! Beats the thermosbottle, and requires no vacuum. It isn't quite what I want though, because the disintegrating rays which the ring discharge gives out breakdown the zirconium, which isn't an end-product of radioactivity. Thepressure in the capsule rises, due to the liberation of helium, and itblows up, and the landlady or the police come up and bother me. "

Thornton was scrutinizing Bennie's rough diagram. "This ring discharge, "he meditated; "I wonder if it isn't something like a sunspot. You knowthe spots are electron vortices with strong magnetic fields. I'll betyou the Savaroff disintegrating rays come from the spots and not fromthe whole surface of the sun!"

"My word, " said Bennie, with a grin of delight, "you occasionally havean illuminating idea, even if you are a musty astronomer. I alwaysthought you were a sort of calculating machine, who slept on a logarithmtable. I owe you two drinks for that suggestion, and to scare a thirstinto you I'll show you an experiment that no living human being has everseen before. I can't make very powerful disintegrating rays yet, but Ican break down uranium, which is the easiest of all. Later on I'll beable to disintegrate anything, if I have luck--that is, anything exceptend-products. Then you'll see things fly. But, for the present, justthis. " He picked up a thin plate of white metal. "This is the metalwe're going to attack, uranium--the parent of radium--and the wholeradioactive series, ending with the end-product lead. "

He hung the plate by two fine wires fastened to its corners, andadjusted a coil of wire opposite its centre, while within the coil heslipped a small black capsule. 

"This is the best we can do now, " he said. "The capsule is made ofzircorundum, and we shall get only a trace of the disintegrating raysbefore it blows up. But you'll see 'em, or, rather, you'll see thelavender phosphorescence of the air through which they pass. "

He arranged a thick slab of plate glass between Thornton and the thermictransformer, and stepping to the wall closed a switch. An oscillatoryspark discharge started off with a roar in a closed box, and the coil ofwire became white hot. 

"Watch the plate!" shouted Bennie. 

And Thornton watched. 

For ten or fifteen seconds nothing happened, and then a faint beam ofpale lavender light shot out from the capsule, and the metal plate swungaway from the incandescent coil as if blown by a gentle breeze. 

Almost instantly there was a loud report and a blinding flash of yellowlight so brilliant that for the next instant or two to Thornton's eyesthe room seemed dark. Slowly the afternoon light regained its normalquality. Bennie relit his pipe unconcernedly. 

"That's the germ of the idea, " he said between puffs. "That capsulecontains a mixture of vapours that give out disintegrating rays when thetemperature is raised by thermic induction above six thousand. Most of'em are stopped by the zirconium atoms in the capsule, which break downand liberate helium; and the temperature rises in the capsule until itexplodes, as you saw just now, with a flash of yellow helium light. Therays that get out strike the uranium plate and cause the surface layerof molecules to disintegrate, their products being driven off by theatomic explosions with a velocity about equal to that of light, and it'sthe recoil that deflects and swings the plate. The amount of uraniumdecomposed in this experiment couldn't be detected by the most delicatebalance--small mass, but enormous velocity. See?"

"Yes, I understand, " answered Thornton. "It's the old, 'momentum equalsmass times velocity, ' business we had in mechanics. "

"Of course this is only a toy experiment, " Bennie continued. "It is whatthe dancing pithballs of Franklin's time were to the multipolar, high-frequency dynamo. But if we could control this force and handle iton a large scale we could do anything with it--destroy the world, drivea car against gravity off into space, shift the axis of the earthperhaps!"

It came to Thornton as he sat there, cigarette in hand, that poor BennieHooker was going to receive the disappointment of his life. Within thenext five minutes his dreams would be dashed to earth, for he wouldlearn that another had stepped down to the pool of discovery before him. For how many years, he wondered, had Bennie toiled to produce hismysterious ray that should break down the atom and release the store ofenergy that the genii of Nature had concealed there. And now Thorntonmust tell him that all his efforts had gone for nothing!

"And you believe that any one who could generate a ray such as youdescribe could control the motion of the earth?" he asked. 

"Of course, certainly, " answered Hooker. "He could either disintegratesuch huge quantities of matter that the mass of the earth would beshifted and its polar axis be changed, or if radioactivesubstances--pitchblende, for example--lay exposed upon the earth'ssurface he could cause them to discharge their helium and other productsat such an enormous velocity that the recoil or reaction wouldaccelerate or retard the motion of the globe. It would be quitefeasible, quite simple--all one would need would be the disintegratingray. "

And then Thornton told Hooker of the flight of the giant Ring machinefrom the north and the destruction of the Mountains of Atlas through theapparent instrumentality of a ray of lavender light. Hooker's faceturned slightly pale and his unshaven mouth tightened. Then a smile ofexaltation illuminated his features. 

"He's done it!" he cried joyously. "He's done it on an engineeringscale. We pure-science dreamers turn up our noses at the engineers, butI tell you the improvements in the apparatus part of the game come whenthere is a big commercial demand for a thing and the engineering chapstake hold of it. But _who_ is he and _where_ is he? I must get to him. Idon't suppose I can teach him much, but I've got a magnificentexperiment that we can try together. "

He turned to a littered writing-table and poked among the papers thatlay there. 

"You see, " he explained excitedly, "if there is anything in the quantumtheory----Oh! but you don't care about that. The point is where _is_ thechap?"

And so Thornton had to begin at the beginning and tell Hooker all aboutthe mysterious messages and the phenomena that accompanied them. Heenlarged upon Pax's benignant intentions and the great problemspresented by the proposed interference of the United States Governmentin Continental affairs, but Bennie swept them aside. The great thing, tohis mind, was to find and get into communication with Pax. 

"Ah! How he must feel! The greatest achievement of all time!" criedHooker radiantly. "How ecstatically happy! Earth blossoming like therose! Well-watered valleys where deserts were before. War abolished, poverty, disease! Who can it be? Curie? No; she's bottled in Paris. Posky, Langham, Varanelli--it can't be any one of those fellows. Itbeats me! Some Hindoo or Jap maybe, but never Hiroshito! Now we must getto him right away. So much to talk over. " He walked round the room, blundering into things, dizzy with the thought that his great dream hadcome true. Suddenly he swept everything off the table on to the floorand kicked his heels in the air. 

"Hooray!" he shouted, dancing round the room like a freshman. "Hooray!Now I can take a holiday. And come to think of it, I'm as hungry as abrontosaurus!"

That night Thornton returned to Washington and was at the White House bynine o'clock the following day. 

"It's all straight, " he told the President. "The honestest man in theUnited States has said so. "

XI

The moon rose over sleeping Paris, silvering the silent reaches of theSeine, flooding the deserted streets with mellow light, yet gentlyretouching all the disfigurements of the siege. No lights illuminatedthe cafés, no taxis dashed along the boulevards, no crowds loitered inthe Place de l'Opéra or the Place Vendôme. Yet save for these facts itmight have been the Paris of old time, unvisited by hunger, misery, ordeath. The curfew had sounded. Every citizen had long since gone within, extinguished his lights, and locked his door. Safe in the knowledge thatthe Germans' second advance had been finally met and effectually blockedsixty miles outside the walls, and that an armistice had been declaredto go into effect at midnight, Paris slumbered peacefully. 

Beyond the pellet-strewn fields and glacis of the second line of defencethe invader, after a series of terrific onslaughts, had paused, retreated a few miles and intrenched himself, there to wait until thestarving city should capitulate. For four months he had waited, yetParis gave no sign of surrendering. On the contrary, it seemed to havesome mysterious means of self-support, and the war office, in dailycommunication with London, reported that it could withstand theinvestment for an indefinite period. Meantime the Germans reintrenchedthemselves, built forts of their own upon which they mounted the siegeguns intended for the walls, and constructed an impregnable line ofentanglements, redoubts, and defences, which rendered it impossible forany army outside the city to come to its relief. 

So rose the moon, turning white the millions of slate roofs, gilding thetraceries of the towers of Notre Dame, dimming the searchlights which, like the antennæ of gigantic fireflies, constantly played round the cityfrom the summit of the Eiffel Tower. So slept Paris, confident that nocrash of descending bombs would shatter the blue vault of the starlitsky or rend the habitations in which lay two millions of human beings, assured that the sun would rise through the gray mists of the Seine uponthe ancient beauties of the Tuilleries and the Louvre unmarred by theenemy's projectiles, and that its citizens could pass freely along itsboulevards without menace of death from flying missiles. For no shellcould be hurled a distance of sixty miles, and an armistice had beendeclared. 

 * * * * *

Behind a small hill within the German fortifications a group of officersstood in the moonlight, examining what looked superficially like thehangar of a small dirigible. Nestling behind the hill it cast a blackrectangular shadow upon the trampled sand of the redoubt. A score ofartisans were busy filling a deep trench through which a huge pipe ledoff somewhere--a sort of deadly plumbing, for the house sheltered amonster cannon reënforced by jackets of lead and steel, the wholeencased in a cooling apparatus of intricate manufacture. From the openend of the house the cylindrical barrel of the gigantic engine of warraised itself into the air at an angle of forty degrees, and from themuzzle to the ground below it was a drop of over eighty feet. On a trackrunning off to the north rested the projectiles side by side, resemblingin the dim light a row of steam boilers in the yard of a locomotivefactory. 

"Well, " remarked one of the officers, turning to the only one of hiscompanions not in uniform. "'Thanatos' is ready. "

The man addressed was Von Heckmann, the most famous inventor of militaryordnance in the world, already four times decorated for his services tothe Emperor. 

"The labour of nine years!" he answered with emotion. "Nine long yearsof self-denial and unremitting study! But to-night I shall be repaid, repaid a thousand times. "

The officers shook hands with him one after the other, and the groupbroke up; the men who were filling the trench completed their laboursand departed; and Von Heckmann and the major-general of artillery aloneremained, except for the sentries beside the gun. The night was balmyand the moon rode in a cloudless sky high above the hill. They crossedthe enclosure, followed by the two sentinels, and entering a passagereached the outer wall of the redoubt, which was in turn closed andlocked. Here the sentries remained, but Von Heckmann and the generalcontinued on behind the fortifications for some distance. 

"Well, shall we start the ball?" asked the general, laying his hand onVon Heckmann's shoulder. But the inventor found it so hard to master hisemotion that he could only nod his head. Yet the ball to which thegeneral alluded was the discharging of a fiendish war machine toward anunsuspecting and harmless city alive with sleeping people, and theemotion of the inventor was due to the fact that he had devised andcompleted the most atrocious engine of death ever conceived by the mindof man--the Relay Gun. Horrible as is the thought, this otherwise normalman had devoted nine whole years to the problem of how to destroy humanlife at a distance of a hundred kilometres, and at last he had beensuccessful, and an emperor had placed with his own divinely appointedhands a ribbon over the spot beneath which his heart should have been. 

The projectile of this diabolical invention was ninety-five centimetresin diameter, and was itself a rifled mortar, which in full flight, twenty miles from the gun and at the top of its trajectory, exploded inmid-air, hurling forward its contained projectile with an additionalvelocity of three thousand feet per second. This process repeateditself, the final or core bomb, weighing over three hundred pounds andfilled with lyddite, reaching its mark one minute and thirty-fiveseconds after the firing of the gun. This crowning example of the humanmind's destructive ingenuity had cost the German Government five millionmarks and had required three years for its construction, and by no meansthe least of its devilish capacities was that of automatically reloadingand firing itself at the interval of every ten seconds, its muzzlerising, falling, or veering slightly from side to side with eachdischarge, thus causing the shells to fall at wide distances. Thepoisonous nature of the immense volumes of gas poured out by themastodon when in action necessitated the withdrawal of its crew to asafe distance. But once set in motion it needed no attendant. It hadbeen tested by a preliminary shot the day before, which had beendirected to a point several miles outside the walls of Paris, the effectof which had been observed and reported by high-flying German aeroplanesequipped with wireless. Everything was ready for the holocaust. 

Von Heckmann and the general of artillery continued to make their waythrough the intrenchments and other fortifications, until at a distanceof about a quarter of a mile from the redoubt where they had left theRelay Gun they arrived at a small whitewashed cottage. 

"I have invited a few of my staff to join us, " said the general to theinventor, "in order that they may in years to come describe to theirchildren and their grandchildren this, the most momentous occasion inthe history of warfare. "

They turned the corner of the cottage and came upon a group of officersstanding by the wooden gate of the cottage, all of whom saluted at theirapproach. 

"Good evening, gentlemen, " said the general. "I beg to present themembers of my staff, " turning to Von Heckmann. 

The officers stood back while the general led the way into the cottage, the lower floor of which consisted of but a single room, used by therecent tenants as a kitchen, dining-room, and living-room. At one end ofa long table, constructed by the regimental carpenter, supper had beenlaid, and a tub filled with ice contained a dozen or more quarts ofchampagne. Two orderlies stood behind the table, at the other end ofwhich was affixed a small brass switch connected with the redoubt andcontrolled by a spring and button. The windows of the cottage were open, and through them poured the light of the full moon, dimming theflickering light of the candles upon the table. 

In spite of the champagne, the supper, and the boxes of cigars andcigarettes, an atmosphere of solemnity was distinctly perceptible. Itwas as if each one of these officers, hardened to human suffering by alifetime of discipline and active service, to say nothing of the yearsof horror through which they had just passed, could not but feel that inthe last analysis the hurling upon an unsuspecting city of a rain ofprojectiles containing the highest explosive known to warfare, at adistance three times greater than that heretofore supposed to bepossible to science, and the ensuing annihilation of its inhabitants, was something less for congratulation and applause than for sorrow andregret. The officers, who had joked each other outside the gate, becamesingularly quiet as they entered the cottage and gathered round thetable where Von Heckmann and the general had taken their stand by theinstrument. Utter silence fell upon the group. The mercury of theirspirits dropped from summer heat to below freezing. What was this thingwhich they were about to do?

Through the windows, at a distance of four hundred yards, the poundingof the machinery which flooded the water jacket of the Relay Gun wasdistinctly audible in the stillness of the night. The pressure of afinger--a little finger--upon that electric button was all that wasnecessary to start the torrent of iron and high explosives toward Paris. By the time the first shell would reach its mark nine more would be ontheir way, stretched across the midnight sky at intervals of less thaneight miles. And once started the stream would continue uninterruptedfor two hours. The fascinated eyes of all the officers fastenedthemselves upon the key. None spoke. 

"Well, well, gentlemen!" exclaimed the general brusquely, "what is thematter with you? You act as if you were at a funeral! Hans, " turning tothe orderly, "open the champagne there. Fill the glasses. Bumpers all, gentlemen, for the greatest inventor of all times, Herr von Heckmann, the inventor of the Relay Gun!"

The orderly sprang forward and hastily commenced uncorking bottles, while Von Heckmann turned away to the window. 

"Here, this won't do, Schelling! You must liven things up a bit!"continued the general to one of the officers. "This is a great occasionfor all of us! Give me that bottle. " He seized a magnum of champagnefrom the orderly and commenced pouring out the foaming liquid into theglasses beside the plates. Schelling made a feeble attempt at a joke atwhich the officers laughed loudly, for the general was a martinet andhad to be humoured. 

"Now, then, " called out the general as he glanced toward the window, "Herr von Heckmann, we are going to drink your health! Officers of theFirst Artillery, I give you a toast--a toast which you will all rememberto your dying day! Bumpers, gentlemen! No heel taps! I give you thehealth of 'Thanatos'--the leviathan of artillery, the winged bearer ofdeath and destruction--and of its inventor, Herr von Heckmann. Bumpers, gentlemen!" The general slapped Von Heckmann upon the shoulder anddrained his glass. 

"'Thanatos!' Von Heckmann!" shouted the officers. And with one accordthey dashed their goblets to the stone flagging upon which they stood. 

"And now, my dear inventor, " said the general, "to you belongs thehonour of arousing 'Thanatos' into activity. Are you ready, gentlemen? Iwarn you that when 'Thanatos' snores the rafters will ring. "

Von Heckmann had stood with bowed head while the officers had drunk hishealth, and he now hesitatingly turned toward the little brass switchwith its button of black rubber that glistened so innocently in thecandlelight. His right hand trembled. He dashed the back of his leftacross his eyes. The general took out a large silver watch from hispocket. "Fifty-nine minutes past eleven, " he announced. "At one minutepast twelve Paris will be disembowelled. Put your finger on the button, my friend. Let us start the ball rolling. "

Von Heckmann cast a glance almost of disquietude upon the faces of theofficers who were leaning over the table in the intensity of theirexcitement. His elation, his exaltation, had passed from him. He seemedoverwhelmed at the momentousness of the act which he was about toperform. Slowly his index finger crept toward the button and hoveredhalf suspended over it. He pressed his lips together and was about toexert the pressure required to transmit the current of electricity tothe discharging apparatus when unexpectedly there echoed through thenight the sharp click of a horse's hoofs coming at a gallop down thevillage street. The group turned expectantly to the doorway. 

An officer dressed in the uniform of an aide-de-camp of artilleryentered abruptly, saluted, and produced from the inside pocket of hisjacket a sealed envelope which he handed to the general. The interest ofthe officers suddenly centred upon the contents of the envelope. Thegeneral grumbled an oath at the interruption, tore open the missive, andheld the single sheet which it contained to the candlelight. 

"An armistice!" he cried disgustedly. His eye glanced rapidly over thepage. 

 "_To the Major-General commanding the First Division of Artillery, Army of the Meuse:_

 "An armistice has been declared, to commence at midnight, pending negotiations for peace. You will see that no acts of hostility occur until you receive notice that war is to be resumed. 

 "VON HELMUTH, "Imperial Commissioner for War. "

The officers broke into exclamations of impatience as the generalcrumpled the missive in his hand and cast it upon the floor. 

"_Donnerwetter!_" he shouted. "Why were we so slow? Curse thearmistice!" He glanced at his watch. It already pointed to aftermidnight. His face turned red and the veins in his forehead swelled. 

"To hell with peace!" he bellowed, turning back his watch until theminute hand pointed to five minutes to twelve. "To hell with peace, Isay! Press the button, Von Heckmann!"

But in spite of the agony of disappointment which he now acutelyexperienced, Von Heckmann did not fire. Sixty years of German respectfor orders held him in a viselike grip and paralyzed his arm. 

"I can't, " he muttered. "I can't. "

The general seemed to have gone mad. Thrusting Von Heckmann out of theway, he threw himself into a chair at the end of the table and with asnarl pressed the black handle of the key. 

The officers gasped. Hardened as they were to the necessities of war, noact of insubordination like the present had ever occurred within theirexperience. Yet they must all uphold the general; they must all swearthat the gun was fired before midnight. The key clicked and a blue beadsnapped at the switch. They held their breaths, looking through thewindow to the west. 

At first the night remained still. Only the chirp of the crickets andthe fretting of the aide-de-camp's horse outside the cottage could beheard. Then, like the grating of a coffee mill in a distant kitchen whenone is just waking out of a sound sleep, they heard the faint, smotheredwhir of machinery, a sharper metallic ring of steel against steelfollowed by a gigantic detonation which shook the ground upon which thecottage stood and overthrew every glass upon the table. With a roar likethe fall of a skyscraper the first shell hurled itself into the night. Half terrified the officers gripped their chairs, waiting for the seconddischarge. The reverberation was still echoing among the hills when thesecond detonation occurred, shortly followed by the third and fourth. Then, in intervals between the crashing explosions, a distant rumblinggrowl, followed by a shuddering of the air, as if the night werefrightened, came up out of the west toward Paris, showing that theprojectiles were at the top of their flight and going into action. Alake of yellow smoke formed in the pocket behind the hill where lay theredoubt in which "Thanatos" was snoring. 

On the great race track of Longchamps, in the Bois de Boulogne, the vastherd of cows, sheep, horses, and goats, collected together by the citygovernment of Paris and attended by fifty or sixty shepherds especiallyimported from _les Landes_, had long since ceased to browse and hadsettled themselves down into the profound slumber of the animal world, broken only by an occasional bleating or the restless whinnying of astallion. On the race course proper, in front of the grandstand andbetween it and the judge's box, four of these shepherds had built asmall fire and by its light were throwing dice for coppers. They werehaving an easy time of it, these shepherds, for their flocks did notwander, and all that they had to do was to see that the animals wereproperly driven to such parts of the Bois as would afford propernourishment. 

"Well, _mes enfants_, " exclaimed old Adrian Bannalec, pulling aturnip-shaped watch from beneath his blouse and holding it up to thefirelight, "it's twelve o'clock and time to turn in. But what do you sayto a cup of chocolate first?"

The others greeted the suggestion with approval, and going somewhereunderneath the grandstand, Bannalec produced a pot filled with water, which he suspended with much dexterity over the fire upon the end of apointed stick. The water began to boil almost immediately, and they wereon the point of breaking their chocolate into it when, from whatappeared to be an immense distance, through the air there came a curiousrumble. 

"What was that?" muttered Bannalec. The sound was followed within a fewseconds by another, and after a similar interval by a third and fourth. 

"There was going to be an armistice, " suggested one of the youngerherdsmen. He had hardly spoken before a much louder and apparentlynearer detonation occurred. 

"That must be one of our guns, " said old Adrian proudly. "Do you hearhow much louder it speaks than those of the Germans?"

Other discharges now followed in rapid succession, some fainter, somemuch louder. And then somewhere in the sky they saw a flash of flame, followed by a thunderous concussion which rattled the grandstand, and agreat fiery serpent came soaring through the heavens toward Paris. Eachmoment it grew larger, until it seemed to be dropping straight towardthem out of the sky, leaving a trail of sparks behind it. 

"It's coming our way, " chattered Adrian. 

"God have mercy upon us!" murmured the others. 

Rigid with fear, they stood staring with open mouths at the shell thatseemed to have selected them for the object of its flight. 

"God have mercy on our souls!" repeated Adrian after the others. 

Then there came a light like that of a million suns. .. . 

Alas for the wives and children of the herdsmen! And alas for the herds!But better that the eight core bombs projected by "Thanatos" through themidnight sky toward Paris should have torn the foliage of the Bois, destroyed the grandstands of Auteuil and Longchamps, with sixteenhundred innocent sheep and cattle, than that they should have soughttheir victims among the crowded streets of the inner city. Lucky forParis that the Relay Gun had been sighted so as to sweep the metropolisfrom the west to the east, and that though each shell approached nearerto the walls than its preceding brother, none reached the ramparts. Forwith the discharge of the eighth shell and the explosion of the firstcore bomb filled with lyddite among the sleeping animals huddled on theturf in front of the grandstands, something happened which the poorshepherds did not see. 

The watchers in the Eiffel Tower, seeing the heavens with theirsearchlights for German planes and German dirigibles, saw the first corebomb bore through the sky from the direction of Verdun, followed by itsseven comrades, and saw each bomb explode in the Bois below. But as thefirst shell shattered the stillness of the night and spread itssulphureous and death-dealing fumes among the helpless cattle, thewatchers on the Tower saw a vast light burst skyward in the far-distanteast. 

 * * * * *

Two miles up the road from the village of Champaubert, Karl Biedenkopf, a native of Hesse-Nassau and a private of artillery, was doing picketduty. The moonlight turned the broad highroad toward Épernay into agleaming white boulevard down which he could see, it seemed to him, formiles. The air was soft and balmy, and filled with the odour of haywhich the troopers had harvested "on behalf of the Kaiser. " Across theroad "Gretchen, " Karl's mare, grazed ruminatively, while the pickethimself sat on the stone wall by the roadside, smoking the Bremen cigarwhich his corporal had given him after dinner. 

The night was thick with stars. They were all so bright that at first hedid not notice the comet which sailed slowly toward him from thenorthwest, seemingly following the line of the German intrenchments fromAmiens, St. -Quentin, and Laon toward Rheims and Épernay. But the cometwas there, dropping a long yellow beam of light upon the sleeping hoststhat were beleaguering the outer ring of the French fortifications. Suddenly the repose of Biedenkopf's retrospections was abruptlydisconcerted by the distant pounding of hoofs far down the road fromVerdun. He sprang off the wall, took up his rifle, crossed the road, hastily adjusted "Gretchen's" bridle, leaped into the saddle, andawaited the night rider, whoever he might be. At a distance of threehundred feet he cried: "Halt!" The rider drew rein, hastily gave thecountersign, and Biedenkopf, recognizing the aide-de-camp, saluted anddrew aside. 

"There goes a lucky fellow, " he said aloud. "Nothing to do but ride upand down the roads, stopping wherever he sees a pleasant inn or a prettyface, spending money like water, and never risking a hair of his head. "

It never occurred to him that maybe his was the luck. And while theaide-de-camp galloped on and the sound of his horse's hoofs grew fainterand fainter down the road toward the village, the comet came sailingswiftly on overhead, deluging the fortifications with a blindingorange-yellow light. It could not have been more than a mile away whenBiedenkopf saw it. Instantly his trained eye recognized the fact thatthis strange round object shooting through the air was no wanderingcelestial body. 

"_Ein Flieger!_" he cried hoarsely, staring at it in astonishment, knowing full well that no dirigible or aeroplane of German manufacturebore any resemblance to this extraordinary voyager of the air. 

A hundred yards down the road his field telephone was attached to apoplar, and casting one furtive look at the Flying Ring he galloped tothe tree and rang up the corporal of the guard. But at the very instantthat his call was answered a series of terrific detonations shook theearth and set the wires roaring in the receiver, so that he could hearnothing. One--two--three--four of them, followed by a distant answeringboom in the west. 

And then the whole sky seemed full of fire. He was hurled backward uponthe road and lay half-stunned, while the earth discharged itself intothe air with a roar like that of ten thousand shells exploding alltogether. The ground shook, groaned, grumbled, grated, and showers ofboards, earth, branches, rocks, vegetables, tiles, and all sorts ofunrecognizable and grotesque objects fell from the sky all about him. Itwas like a gigantic and never-ending mine, or series of mines, incontinuous explosion, a volcano pouring itself upward out of the bowelsof an incandescent earth. Above the earsplitting thunder of the eruptionhe heard shrill cries and raucous shoutings. Mounted men dashed past himdown the road, singly and in squadrons. A molten globe dropped throughthe branches of the poplar, and striking the hard surface of the road ata distance of fifty yards scattered itself like a huge ingot droppedfrom a blast furnace. Great clouds of dust descended and choked him. Awithering heat enveloped him. .. . 

It was noon next day when Karl Biedenkopf raised his head and lookedabout him. He thought first there had been a battle. But the sight thatmet his eyes bore no resemblance to a field of carnage. Over his head henoticed that the uppermost branches of the poplar had been seared as byfire. The road looked as if the countryside had been traversed by ahurricane. All sorts of débris filled the fields and everywhere thereseemed to be a thick deposit of blackened earth. Vaguely realizing thathe must report for duty, he crawled, in spite of his bursting head andaching limbs, on all fours down the road toward the village. 

But he could not find the village. There was no village there; and soonhe came to what seemed to be the edge of a gigantic crater, where theearth had been uprooted and tossed aside as if by some huge convulsionof nature. Here and there masses of inflammable material smoked andflickered with red flames. His eyes sought the familiar outlines of theredoubts and fortifications, but found them not. And where the villagehad been there was a great cavern in the earth, and the deepest part ofthe cavern, or so it seemed to his half-blinded sight, was at about thepoint where the cottage had stood which his general had used as hisheadquarters, the spot where the night before that general had raisedhis glass of bubbling wine and toasted "Thanatos, " the personificationof death, and called his officers to witness that this was the greatestmoment in the history of warfare, a moment that they would all rememberto their dying day. 

XII

The shabby-genteel little houses of the Appian Way, in Cambridge, whosewindow-eyes with their blue-green lids had watched Bennie Hooker comeand go, trudging back and forth to lectures and recitations, first asboy and then as man, for thirty years, must have blinked with amazementat the sight of the little professor as he started on the afterwardfamous Hooker Expedition to Labrador in search of the Flying Ring. 

For the five days following Thornton's unexpected visit Bennie, existingwithout sleep and almost without food save for his staple ofready-to-serve chocolate, was the centre of a whirl of books, logarithms, and calculations in the University Library, and constitutedhimself an unmitigated, if respected, pest at the Cambridge Observatory. Moreover--and this was the most iconoclastic spectacle of all to hisconservative pedagogical neighbours in the Appian Way--telegraph boys onbicycles kept rushing to and fro in a stream between the Hookerboarding-house and Harvard Square at all hours of the day and night. 

For Bennie had lost no time and had instantly started in upon the sameseries of experiments to locate the origin of the phenomena which hadshaken the globe as had been made use of by Professor von Schwenitz atthe direction of General von Helmuth, the Imperial German Commissionerfor War, at Mainz. The result had been approximately identical, andHooker had satisfied himself that somewhere in the centre of Labradorhis fellow-scientist--the discoverer of the Lavender Ray--was conductingthe operations that had resulted in the dislocation of the earth's axisand retardation of its motion. Filled with a pure and unselfishscientific joy, it became his sole and immediate ambition to find theman who had done these things, to shake him by the hand, and to comparenotes with him upon the now solved problems of thermic induction and ofatomic disintegration. 

But how to get there? How to reach him? For Prof. Bennie Hooker hadnever been a hundred miles from Cambridge in his life, and a journey toLabrador seemed almost as difficult as an attempt to reach the pole. Offagain then to the University Library, with pale but polite young ladieshastening to fetch him atlases, charts, guidebooks, and works dealingwith sport and travel, until at last the great scheme unfolded itself tohis mind--the scheme that was to result in the perpetuation of atomicdisintegration for the uses of mankind and the subsequent alteration ofcivilization, both political and economic. Innocently, ingeniously, ingenuously, he mapped it all out. No one must know what he was about. Oh, no! He must steal away, in disguise if need be, and reach Pax alone. Three would be a crowd in that communion of scientific thought! He musttake with him the notes of his own experiments, the diagrams of hisapparatus, and his precious zirconium; and he must return with the greatsecret of atomic disintegration in his breast, ready, with thediscoverer's permission, to give it to the dry and thirsty world. Andthen, indeed, the earth would blossom like the rose!

A strange sight, the start of the Hooker Expedition!

Doctor Jelly's coloured housemaid had just thrown a pail of blue-graysuds over his front steps--it was 6:30 A. M. --and was on the point ofresignedly kneeling and swabbing up the doctor's porch, when she saw thedoor of the professor's residence open cautiously and a curious humanexhibit, the like of which had ne'er before been seen on sea or land, surreptitiously emerge. It was Prof. Bennie Hooker--disguised as asalmon fisherman!

Over a brand-new sportsman's knickerbocker suit of screaming yellowcheck he had donned an English mackintosh. On his legs were gaiters, andon his head a helmetlike affair of cloth with a visor in front andanother behind, with eartabs fastened at the crown with a piece of blackribbon--in other words a "Glengarry. " The suit had been manufactured inHarvard Square, and was a triumph of sartorial art on the part of onewho had never been nearer to a real fisherman than a coloured fashionplate. However, it did suggest a sportsman of the variety usuallyportrayed in the comic supplements, and, to complete the picture, inProfessor Hooker's hands and under his arms were yellow pigskin bags androd cases, so that he looked like the show window of a harness store. 

"Fo' de land sakes!" exclaimed the Jellys' coloured maid, oblivious ofher suds. "Fo' de Lawd! Am dat Perfesser Hookey?"

It was! But a new and glorified professor, with a soul thrilling to thejoy of discovery and romance, with a flash in his eyes, and the savingsof ten years in a large roll in his left-hand knickerbocker pocket. 

Thus started the Hooker Expedition, which discovered the Flying Ring andmade the famous report to the Smithsonian Institution after thedisarmament of the nations. But could the nations have seen theexpedition as it emerged from its boarding-house that September morningthey would have rubbed their eyes. 

With the utmost difficulty Prof. Bennie Hooker negotiated his bags androd cases as far as Harvard Square, where, through the assistance of afriendly conductor with a sense of humour, he was enabled to board anelectric surface car to the North Station. 

Beyond the start up the River Moisie his imagination refused to carryhim. But he had a faith that approximated certainty that over the Heightof Land--just over the edge--he would find Pax and the Flying Ring. During all the period required for his experiments and preparations hehad never once glanced at a newspaper or inquired as to the progress ofthe war that was rapidly exterminating the inhabitants of the globe. Thermic induction, atomic disintegration, the Lavender Ray, these werethe Alpha, the Sigma, the Omega of his existence. 

But meantime[3] the war had gone on with all its concomitant horror, suffering, and loss of life, and the representatives of the nationsassembled at Washington had been feverishly attempting to unite upon theterms of a universal treaty that should end militarism and war forever. And thereafter, also, although Professor Hooker was sublimelyunconscious of the fact, the celebrated conclave, known as ConferenceNo. 2, composed of the best-known scientific men from every laud, wassitting, perspiring, in the great lecture hall of the SmithsonianInstitution, its members shouting at one another in a dozen differentlanguages, telling each other what they did and didn't know, andbecoming more and more confused and entangled in an underbrush ofcontradictory facts and observations and irreconcilable theories untilthey were making no progress whatever--which was precisely what theastute and plausible Count von Koenitz, the German Ambassador, hadplanned and intended. 

[Footnote 3: Up to the date of the armistice. ]

The Flying Ring did not again appear, and in spite of the uncontrovertedtestimony of Acting-Consul Quinn, Mohammed Ben Ali el Bad, and athousand others who had actually seen the Lavender Ray, people begangradually, almost unconsciously, to assume that the destruction of theAtlas Mountains had been the work of an unsuspected volcano and that thepresence of the Flying Ring had been a coincidence and not the cause ofthe disruption. So the incident passed by and public attentionrefocussed itself upon the conflict on the plains of Châlons-sur-Marne. Only Bill Hood, Thornton, and a few others in the secret, together withthe President, the Cabinet, and the members of Conference No. 1 and ofConference No. 2, truly apprehended the significance of what hadoccurred, and realized that either war or the human race must pass awayforever. And no one at all, save only the German Ambassador and theImperial German Commissioners, suspected that one of the nations hadconceived and was putting into execution a plan designed to result inthe acquirement of the secret of how the earth could be rocked and inthe capture of the discoverer. For the _Sea Fox_, bearing the Germanexpeditionary force, had sailed from Amsterdam twelve days after theconference held at Mainz between Professor von Schwenitz and General vonHelmuth, and having safely rounded the Orkneys was now already well onits course toward Labrador. Bennie Hooker, however, was ignorant of allthese things. Like an immigrant with a tag on his arm, he sat on thetrain which bore him toward Quebec, his ticket stuck into the band onhis hat, dreaming of a transformer that wouldn't--couldn't--melt at onlysix thousand degrees. 

When Professor Hooker awoke in his room at the hotel in Quebec themorning after his arrival there, he ate a leisurely breakfast, andhaving smoked a pipe on the terrace, strolled down to the wharves alongthe river front. Here to his disgust he learned that the Labradorsteamer, the _Druro_, would not sail until the following Thursday--athree days' wait. Apparently Labrador was a less-frequented localitythan he had supposed. He mastered his impatience, however, anddiscovering a library presided over by a highly intelligent graduate ofEdinburgh, he became so interested in various profound treatises onphysics which he discovered that he almost missed his boat. 

Assisted by the head porter, and staggering under the weight of his newrod cases and other impedimenta, Bennie boarded the _Druro_ on Thursdaymorning, engaged a stateroom, and purchased a ticket for Seven Islands, which is the nearest harbour to the mouth of the River Moisie. She was alarge and comfortable river steamer of about eight hundred and fiftytons, and from her appearance belied the fact that she was theconnecting link between civilization and the desolate and ice-cladwastes of the Far North, as in fact she was. The captain regarded Benniewith indifference, if not disrespect, grunted, and ascending to thepilot house blew the whistle. Quebec, with its teeming wharves andcrowded shipping, overlooked by the cliffs that made Wolfe famous, slowly fell behind. Off their leeward bow the Isle of Orléans swungnearer and swept past, its neat homesteads inviting the weary travellerto pastoral repose. The river cleared. Low, farm-clad shores began toslip by. The few tourists and returning habitans settled themselves inthe bow and made ready for their voyage. 

There would have been much to interest the ordinary American travellerin this comparatively unfrequented corner of his native continent; butour salmon fisherman, having conveniently disposed of his baggage, immediately retired to his stateroom and, intent on saving time, proceeded, wholly oblivious of the _Druro_, to read passionately severalexceedingly uninviting looking books which he produced from his valise. The _Druro_, quite as oblivious to Professor Hooker, proceeded on heraccustomed way, passed by Tadousac, and made her first stop at theGodbout. Bennie, finding the boat no longer in motion, reappeared ondeck under the mistaken impression that they had reached the end of thevoyage, for he was unfamiliar with the topography of the St. Lawrence, and in fact had very vague ideas as to distances and the time requiredto traverse them by rail or boat. 

At the Godbout the _Druro_ dropped a habitan or two, a few boatloads ofsteel rods, crates of crockery and tobacco, and then thrust her bow outinto the stream and steered down river, rounding at length the Pointedes Monts and winding in behind the Isles des Oeufs to the RiverPentecoute, where she deposited some more habitans, including a priestin a black soutane, who somewhat incongruously was smoking a largecigar. Then, nosing through a fog bank and breaking out at last intosunlight again, she steamed across and put in past the Carousel, thatpicturesque and rocky headland, into Seven Islands Bay. Here sheanchored, and, having discharged cargo, steamed out by the Grand Boule, where eighteen miles beyond the islands Bennie saw the pilot house ofthe old _St. Olaf_, of unhappy memory, just lifting above the water. 

He had emerged from the retirement of his stateroom only on being askedby the steward for his ticket and learning that the _Druro_ was nearingthe end of her journey. For nearly two days he had been submerged inSoddy on The Interpretation of Radium. The _Druro_ was running along asandy, low-lying beach about half a mile offshore. They were nearing themouth of a wide river. The volume of black fresh water from the Moisierushed out into the St. Lawrence until it met the green sea water, causing a sharp demarcation of colour and a no less pronounced conflictof natural forces. For, owing to the pressure of the tide against thesolid mass of the fresh stream, acres of water unexpectedly boiled onall sides, throwing geysers of foam twenty feet or more into the air, and then subsided. Off the point the engine bell rang twice, and the_Druro_ came to a pause. 

Bennie, standing in the bow, in his sportsman's cap and waterproof, hugging his rod cases to his breast, watched while a heterogeneous fleetof canoes, skiffs, and sailboats came racing out from shore, for thesteamer does not land here, but hangs in the offing and lighters itscargo ashore. Leading the lot was a sort of whaleboat propelled by twooars on one side and one on the other, and in the sternsheets sat arosy-cheeked, good-natured looking man with a smooth-shaven face whoBennie knew must be Malcolm Holliday. 

"Hello, Cap!" shouted Holliday. "Any passengers?"

The captain from the pilot house waved contemptuously in Bennie'sgeneral direction. 

"Howdy!" said Holliday. "What do you want? What can I do for you?"

"I thought I'd try a little salmon fishing, " shrieked Bennie back athim. 

Holliday shook his head. "Sorry, " he bellowed, "river's leased. Besides, the officers[4] are here. "

[Footnote 4: Along the St. Lawrence and the Labrador coast a salmonfisherman is always spoken of by natives and local residents as an"officer, " the reason being that most of the sportsmen who visit thesewaters are English army officers. Hence salmon fishermen are universallytermed "officers, " and a habitan will describe the sportsmen who haverented a certain river as "_les officiers de la Moisie_" or "_lesofficiers de la Romaine_. "]

"Oh!" answered Bennie ruefully. "I didn't know. I supposed I could fishanywhere. "

"Well, you can't!" snapped Holliday, puzzled by the little man's curiousappearance. 

"I suppose I can go ashore, can't I?" insisted Bennie somewhatindignantly. "I'll just take a camping trip then. I'd like to see thebig salmon cache up at the forks if I can't do anything else. "

Instantly Holliday scented something. "Another fellow after gold, " hemuttered to himself. 

Just at that moment, the tide being at the ebb, a hundred acres of greenwater off the _Druro's_ bow broke into whirling waves and jets of foamagain. All about them, and a mile to seaward, these merry men danced bythe score. Bennie thrilled at the beauty of it. The whaleboat containingHolliday was now right under the ship's bows. 

"I want to look round anyhow, " expostulated Bennie. "I've come all theway from Boston. " He felt himself treated like a criminal, felt thesuspicion in Holliday's eye. 

The factor laughed. "In that case you certainly deserve sympathy. " Thenhe hesitated. "Oh, well, come along, " he said finally. "We'll see whatwe can do for you. "

A rope ladder had been thrown over the side and one of the sailors nowlowered Bennie's luggage into the boat. The professor followed, avoidingwith difficulty stepping on his mackintosh as he climbed down theslippery rounds. Holliday grasped his hand and yanked him to a seat inthe stern. 

"Yes, " he repeated, "if you've come all the way from Boston I guesswe'll have to put you up for a few days anyway. "

A crate of canned goods, a parcel of mail, and a huge bundle ofnewspapers were deposited in the bow. Holliday waved his hand. The_Druro_ churned the water and swung out into midstream again. Bennielooked curiously after her. To the north lay a sandy shore dotted by ascraggy forest of dwarf spruce and birch. A few fishing huts and a massof wooden shanties fringed the forest. To the east, seaward, many milesdown that great stretch of treacherous, sullen river waited a gray bankof fog. But overhead the air was crystalline with that sparkling, scratchy brilliance that is found only in northern climes. Nature seemedhard, relentless. With his feet entangled in rod cases Professor Hookerwondered for a moment what on earth he was there for, landing on thisinhospitable coast. Then his eyes sought the genial face of MalcolmHolliday and hope sprang up anew. For there is that about this genialfrontiersman that draws all men to him alike, be they Scotch or English, Canadian habitans or Montagnais, and he is the king of the coast, as hisfather was before him, or as was old Peter McKenzie, the head factor, who incidentally cast the best salmon fly ever thrown east of Montrealor south of Ungava. Bennie found comfort in Holliday's smile, and felttoward him as a child does toward its mother. 

They neared shore and ran alongside a ramshackle pier, up the slipperypoles of which Bennie was instructed to clamber. Then, dodging rottenboards and treacherous places, he gained the sand of the beach and stoodat last on Labrador. A group of Montagnais picked up the professor'sluggage and, headed by Holliday, they started for the latter's house. Itwas a strange and amusing landing of an expedition the results of whichhave revolutionized the life of the inhabitants of the entire globe. Nosuch inconspicuous event has ever had so momentous a conclusion. And nowwhen Malcolm Holliday makes his yearly trip home to Quebec, to report tothe firm of Holliday Brothers, who own all the nets far east ofAnticosti, he spends hours at the Club des Voyageurs, recounting indetail all the circumstances surrounding the arrival of Professor Hookerand how he took him for a gold hunter. 

"Anyhow, " he finishes, "I knew he wasn't a salmon fisherman in spite ofhis rods and cases, for he didn't know a Black Dose from a Thunder andLightning or a Jock Scott, and he thought you could catch salmon with aworm!"

It was true wholly. Bennie did suppose one killed the king of game fishas he had caught minnows in his childhood, and his geologic researchesin the Harvard Library had not taught him otherwise. Neither had histailor. 

"My dear fellow, " said Holliday as they smoked their pipes on the narrowboard piazza at the Post, "of course I'll help you all I can, but you'vecome at a bad season of the year all round. In the first place, you'llbe eaten alive by black flies, gnats, and mosquitoes. " He slappedvigorously as he spoke. "And you'll have the devil of a job gettingcanoe men. You see all the Montagnais are down here at the settlement'making their mass. ' Once a year they leave the hunting grounds up bythe Divide and beyond and come down river to '_faire la messe_'--it's asacred duty with 'em. They're very religious, as you probably know--afine lot, too, take 'em altogether, gentle, obedient, industrious, polite, cheerful, and fair to middling honest. They have a good deal ofFrench blood--a bit diluted, but it's there. "

"Can't I get a few to go along with me?" asked Bennie anxiously. 

"That's a question, " answered the factor meditatively. "You know how thebirds--how caribou--migrate every year. Well, these Montagnais are justlike them. They have a regular routine. Each man has a line of traps ofhis own, all the way up to the Height of Land. They all go up river inthe autumn with their winter's supply of pork, flour, tea, powder, lead, axes, files, rosin to mend their canoes, and castoreum--made out ofbeaver glands, you know--to take away the smell of their hands from thebaited traps. They go up in families, six or seven canoes together, andas each man reaches his own territory his canoe drops out of theprocession and he makes a camp for his wife and babies. Then he spendsthe winter--six or seven months--in the woods following his line oftraps. By and by the ice goes out and he begins to want some society. Hehasn't seen a priest for ten months or so, and he's afraid of the_loup-garou_, for all I know. So he comes down river, takes his Newportseason here at Moisie, and goes to mass and staves off the _loup-garou_. They're all here now. Maybe you can get a couple to go up river andmaybe you can't. "

Then observing Bennie's crestfallen expression, he added:

"But we'll see. Perhaps you can get Marc St. Ange and Edouard Moreau, both good fellows. They've made their mass and they know the countryfrom here to Ungava. There's Marc now--_Venez ici_, Marc St. Ange. " Aswarthy, lithe Montagnais was coming down the road, and Hollidayaddressed him rapidly in habitan French: "This gentleman wishes to go upriver to the forks to see the big cache. Will you go with him?"

The Montagnais bowed to Professor Hooker and pondered the suggestion. Then he gesticulated toward the north and seemed to Bennie to be tellinga long story. 

Holliday laughed again. "Marc says he will go, " he commented shortly. "But he says also that if the Great Father of the Marionettes is angryhe will come back. "

"What does he mean by that?" asked Bennie. 

"Why, when the aurora borealis--Northern Lights--plays in the sky theIndians always say that the 'marionettes are dancing. ' About four weeksago we had some electrical disturbances up here and a kind of anearthquake. It scared these Indians silly. There was a tremendousdisplay, almost like a volcano. It beat anything I ever saw, and I'vebeen here fifteen years. The Indians said the Father of the Marionetteswas angry because they didn't dance enough to suit him, and that he wasmaking them dance. Then some of them caught a glimpse of a shootingstar, or a comet, or something, and called it the Father of theMarionettes. They had quite a time--held masses, and so on--and werereally cut up. But the thing is over now, except for the regular, ordinary display. "

"When can they be ready?" inquired Bennie eagerly. 

"To-morrow morning, " replied Holliday. "Marc will engage his uncle. They're all right. Now how about an outfit? But don't talk any moreabout salmon. I know what you're after--it's _gold_!"

 * * * * *

The moon was still hanging low over the firs at four o'clock the nextmorning when three black and silent shadows emerged from the factor'shouse and made their way, cautiously and with difficulty, across thesand to where a canoe had been run into the riffles of the beach. Marccame first, carrying a sheet-iron stove with a collapsible funnel; thenhis Uncle Edouard, shouldering a bundle consisting of a tent and acouple of sacks of flour and pork; and lastly Professor Hooker with hismackintosh and rifle, entirely unaware of the fact that his carefulguides had removed all the cartridges from his luggage lest he shouldshoot too many caribou and so spoil the winter's food supply. It wascold, almost frosty. In the black flood of the river the stars burnedwith a chill, wavering light. Bennie put on his mackintosh with ashiver. The two guides quietly piled the luggage in the centre of thecanoe, arranged a seat for their passenger, picked up their paddles, shoved off, and took their places in bow and stern. 

No lights gleamed in the windows of Moisie. The lap of the ripplesagainst the birch side of the canoe, the gurgle of the water round thepaddle blades, and the rush of the bow as, after it had paused on thewithdraw, it leaped forward on the stroke, were the only sounds thatbroke the deathlike silence of the semi-arctic night. Bennie struck amatch, and it flared red against the black water as he lit his pipe, buthe felt a great stirring within his little breast, a great courage todare, to do, for he was off, really off, on his great hunt, his searchfor the secret that would remake the world. With the current whisperingagainst its sides the canoe swept in a wide circle to midstream. Themoon was now partially obscured behind the treetops. To the east a faintglow made the horizon seem blacker than ever. Ahead the wide waste ofthe dark river seemed like an engulfing chasm. Drowsiness enwrappedProfessor Hooker, a drowsiness intensified by the rythmic swinging ofthe paddles and the pile of bedding against which he reclined. He closedhis eyes, content to be driven onward toward the region of his hopes, content almost to fall asleep. 

"Hi!" suddenly whispered Marc St. Ange. "_Voilà! Le père desmarionettes!_"

Bennie awoke with a start that almost upset the canoe. The blood rushedto his face and sang in his ears. 

"Where?" he cried. "Where?"

"_Au nord_, " answered Marc. "_Mais il descend!_"

Professor Hooker stared in the direction of Marc's uplifted paddle. Washe deceived? Was the wish father to the thought? Or did he really see atan immeasurable distance upon the horizon a quickly dying trail oforange-yellow light? He rubbed his eyes--his heart beating wildly underhis sportsman's suiting. But the north was black beyond the coming dawn. 

Old Edouard grunted. 

"_Vous êtes fou!_" he muttered to his nephew, and drove his paddle deepinto the water. 

Day broke with staccato emphasis. The sun swung up out of Europe andburned down upon the canoe with a heat so equatorial in quality thatBennie discarded both his mackintosh and his sporting jacket. All signsof human life had disappeared from the distant banks of the river andthe bow of the canoe faced a gray-blue flood emerging from a wildernessof scrubby trees. A few gulls flopped their way coast-ward, and at rareintervals a salmon leaped and slashed the slow-moving surface into aboiling circle; but for the rest their surroundings were as set, asimmobile, as the painted scenery of a stage, save where the currentswept the scattered promontories of the shore. But they moved steadilynorth. So wearied was Bennie with the unaccustomed light and fresh airthat by ten o'clock he felt the day must be over, although the sun hadnot yet reached the zenith. Unexpectedly Marc and Edouard turned thecanoe quietly into a shallow, and beached her on a spit of white sand. In three minutes Edouard had a small fire snapping, and handed Bennie acup of tea. How wonderful it seemed--a genuine elixir! And then he feltthe stab of a mosquito, and putting up his hand found it blotched withblood. And the black flies came also. Soon the professor was tramping upand down, waving his handkerchief and clutching wildly at the air. Thenthey pushed off again. 

The sun dropped westward as they turned bend after bend, disclosing everthe same view beyond. Shadows of rocks and trees began to jut across theeddies. A great heron, as big as an ostrich, or so he seemed, aroseawkwardly and flapped off, trailing yards of legs behind him. ThenBennie put on first his jacket and then his mackintosh. He realized thathis hands were numb. The sun was now only a foot or so above the skyline. 

This time it was Marc who grunted and thrust the canoe toward theriver's edge with a sideways push. It grounded on a belt of sand andthey dragged it ashore. Bennie, who had been looking forward to thenight with vivid apprehension, now discovered to his great happinessthat the chill was keeping away the black flies. Joyfully he assisted ingathering dry sticks, driving tent pegs, and picking reindeer moss forbedding. Then as darkness fell Edouard fried eggs and bacon, and withtheir boots off and their stockinged feet toasting to the blaze thethree men ate as becomes men who have laboured fifteen hours in the openair. They drank tin cups of scalding tea, a pint at a time, and found itgood; and they smoked their pipes with their backs propped against thetree trunks and found it heaven. Then as the stars came out and thewoods behind them snapped with strange noises, Edouard took his pipefrom his mouth. 

"It's getting cold, " said he. "The marionettes will dance to-night. "

Bennie heard him as if across a great, yawning gulf. Even the firelightseemed hundreds of yards away. The little professor was "all in, " and hesat with his chin dropped again to his chest, until he heard Marcexclaim:

"_Voilà! Elles dansent!_"

He raised his eyes. Just across the black, silent sweep of the riverthree giant prismatic searchlights were playing high toward thepolestar, such searchlights as the gods might be using in some monstrousgame. They wavered here and there, shifting and dodging, faded andsprang up again, till Bennie, dizzy, closed his eyes. The lights werestill dancing in the north as he stumbled to his couch of moss. 

"_Toujour les marionettes!_" whispered Marc gently, as he might to achild. "_Bon soir, monsieur. _"

The tent was hot and dazzling white above his head when low voices, footsteps, and the clink of tin against iron aroused the professor froma profound coma. The guides had already loaded the canoe and werewaiting for him. The sun was high. Apologetically he pulled on hisboots, and stepping to the sand dashed the icy water into his face. Hismuscles groaned and rasped. His neck refused to respond to his desireswith its accustomed elasticity. But he drank his tea and downed hisscrambled eggs with an enthusiasm unknown in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Marc gave him a hand into the canoe and they were off. The day hadbegun. 

The river narrowed somewhat and the shores grew more rocky. At noon theylunched on another sand-spit. At sunset they saw a caribou. Night came. "Always the marionettes. " Thus passed nine days--like a dream to Bennie;and then came the first adventure. 

It was about four o'clock on the afternoon of the tenth day of theirtrip up the Moisie when Marc suddenly stopped paddling and gazedintently shoreward. After a moment he said something in a low tone toEdouard, and they turned the canoe and drove it rapidly toward a smallcove half hidden by rocks. Bennie, straining his eyes, could see nothingat first, but when the canoe was but ten yards from shore he caughtsight of the motionless figure of a man, lying on his face with his headnearly in the water. Marc turned him over gently, but the limbs felllimp, one leg at a grotesque angle to the knee. Bennie saw instantlythat it was broken. The Indian's face was white and drawn, no doubt withpain. 

"_Il est mort!_" said Marc slowly, crossing himself. 

Edouard shrugged his shoulders and fetched a small flask of brandy fromthe professor's sack. Forcing open the jaws, he poured a few drops intothe man's mouth. The Indian choked and opened his eyes. Edouard grunted. 

"_La jeunesse pense qu'elle sait tout!_" he remarked scornfully. 

Thus they found Nichicun, without whom Bennie might never haveaccomplished the object of his quest. It took three days to nurse thehalf-dead and altogether starved Montagnais back to life, but hereceived the tenderest care. Marc shot a young caribou and gave him theblood to drink, and made a ragout to put the flesh back on his bones. Meanwhile the professor slept long hours on the moss and took amuch-needed rest; and by degrees they learned from Nichicun the story ofhis misfortune--the story that forms a part of the chronicle of theexpedition, which can be read at the Smithsonian Institution. 

He was a Montagnais, he said, with a line of traps to the northeast ofthe Height of Land, and last winter he had had very bad luck indeed. There had been less and less in his traps and he had seen no caribou. Sohe had taken his wife, who was sick, and had gone over into the Nascopeecountry for food, and there his wife had died. He had made up his mindvery late in the season to come down to Moisie and make his mass and geta new wife, and start a fresh line of traps in the autumn. All the otherMontagnais had descended the river in their canoes long before, so hewas alone. His provisions had given out and he saw no caribou. He beganto think he would surely starve to death. And then one evening, on thepoint just above their present camp, he had seen a caribou and shot it, but he had been too weak to take good aim and had only broken itsshoulder. It lay kicking among the boulders, pushing itself along by itshind legs, and he had feared that it would escape. In his haste to reachit he had slipped on a wet rock and fallen and broken his leg. In spiteof the pain he had crawled on, and then had taken place a wild, terriblefight for life between the dying man and the dying beast. 

He could not remember all that had occurred--he had been kicked, gored, and bitten; but finally he had got a grip on its throat and slashed itwith his knife. Then, lying there on the ground beside it, he drank itsblood and cut off the raw flesh in strips for food. Finally one day hehad crawled to the river for water and had fainted. 

The professor and his guides made for the Indian a hut of rocks andbark, and threw a great pile of moss into the corner of it for him tolie on. They carved a splint for his leg and bound it up, and cut a hugeheap of firewood for him, smoking caribou meat and hanging it up in thehut. Somebody would come up river and find him, or if not, the three menwould pick him up on their return. For this was right and the law of thewoods. But never a word of particular interest to Prof. Bennie Hookerdid Nichicun speak until the night before their departure, although thereason and manner of his speaking were natural enough. It happened asfollows: but first it should be said that the Nascopees are an ignorantand barbarous tribe, dirty and treacherous, upon whom the Montagnaislook down with contempt and scorn. They do not even wear civilizedclothes, and their ways are not the ways of _les bons sauvages_. Theyhave no priests; they do not come to the coast; and the Montagnais willnot mingle with them. Thus it bespoke the hunger of Nichicun that he waswilling to go into their country. 

As he sat round the fire with Marc and Edouard on that last night, Nichicun spoke his mind of the Nascopees, and Marc translated freely forBennie's edification. 

No, the injured Montagnais told them, the Nascopees were not nice; theywere dirty. They ate decayed food and they never went to mass. Moreover, they were half-witted. While he was there they were all planning tomigrate for the most absurd reason--what do you suppose? Magic! Theyclaimed the end of the world was coming! Of course it was coming sometime. But they said now, right away. But why? Because the marionetteswere dancing so much. And they had seen the Father of the Marionettesfloating in the sky and making thunder! Fools! But the strangest thingof all, they said they could hunt no longer, for they were afraid tocross something--an iron serpent that stung with fire if you touched it, and killed you! What foolishness! An iron serpent! But he had asked themand they had sworn on the holy cross that it was true. 

Bennie listened with a chill creeping up his spine. But it would neverdo to hint what this disclosure meant to him. Between puffs of his pipehe asked casual, careless questions of Nichicun. These Nascopees, forinstance, how far off might their land be? And where did they assertthis extraordinary serpent of iron to be? Were there rivers in theNascopee country? Did white men ever go there? All these things thewounded Montagnais told him. It appeared, moreover, that the RassiniRiver was near the Nascopee territory, and that it flowed into theMoisie only seven miles above the camp. All that night the marionettesdanced in Bennie's brain. 

Next morning they propped Nichicun on his bed of moss, laid a rifle anda box of matches beside him, and bade him farewell. At the mouth of theRassini River Prof. Bennie Hooker held up his hand and announced that hewas going to the Nascopee country. The canoe halted abruptly. OldEdouard declared that they had been engaged only to go to the big cache, and that their present trip was merely by way of a little excursion tosee the river. They had no supplies for such a journey, no proper amountof ammunition. No, they would deposit the professor on the nearestsandbar if he wished, but they were going back. 

Bennie arose unsteadily in the canoe and dug into his pocket, producinga roll of gold coin. Two hundred and fifty dollars he promised them ifthey would take him to the nearest tribe of Nascopees; five hundred ifthey could find the Iron Serpent. 

"_Bien!_" exclaimed both Indians without a moment's hesitation, and thecanoe plunged forward up the Rassini. 

Once more a dreamlike succession of brilliant, frosty days; once morethe star-studded sky in which always the marionettes danced. And then atlast the great falls of the Rassini, beyond which no white man had gone. They hid the canoe in the bushes and placed beneath it the iron stoveand half their supply of food. Then they plunged into the brush, eastward. Bennie had never known such grueling work and heartbreakingfatigue; and the clouds of flies pursued them venomously and withunrelenting persistence. At first they had to cut their way throughacres of brush, and then the land rose and they saw before them miles ofswamp and barren land dotted with dwarf trees and lichen-grown rocks. Here it was easier and they made better time; but the professor's legsached and his rifle wore a red bruise on his shoulder. And then afterfive days of torment they came upon the Iron Rail. It ran in almost adirect line from northwest to southwest, with hardly a waver, straightover the barrens and through the forests of scrub, with a five-footclearing upon either side. At intervals it was elevated to a height ofeight or ten inches upon insulated iron braces. Both Marc and Edouardstared at in wonder, while Bennie made them a little speech. 

It was, he said, a thing called a "monorail, " made by a man whopossessed strange secrets concerning the earth and the properties ofmatter. That man lived over the Height of Land toward Ungava. He was agood man and would not harm other good men. But he was a greatmagician--if you believed in magic. On the rail undoubtedly he ransomething called a gyroscopic engine, and carried his stores andmachinery into the wilderness. The Nascopees were not such fools afterall, for here was the something they feared to cross--the iron serpentthat bit and killed. Let them watch while he made it bite. He allowedhis rifle to fall against the rail, and instantly a shower of bluesparks flashed from it as the current leaped into the earth. 

Bennie counted out twenty-five golden eagles and handed them to Edouard. If they followed the rail to its source he would, he promised, on theirreturn to civilization give them as much again. Without more ado theIndians lifted their packs and swung off to the northwest along the lineof the rail. The stock of Prof. Bennie Hooker had risen in theirestimation. On they ploughed across the barrens, through swamps, overthe quaking muskeg, into the patches of scrub growth where the shortbranches slapped their faces, but always they kept in sight of the rail. 

 * * * * *

The extraordinary announcement, transmitted from various European newsagencies, that an attempt had been made by the general commanding theFirst Artillery Division of the German Army of the Meuse to violate thearmistice, had caused a profound sensation, particularly as the attemptto destroy Paris had been prevented only by the sudden appearance of thesame mysterious Flying Ring that had shortly before caused thedestruction of the Atlas Mountains and the flooding of the Sahara Desertby the Mediterranean Sea. 

The advent of the Flying Ring on this second occasion had been noted byseveral hundred thousand persons, both soldiers and non-combatants. Atabout the hour of midnight, as if to observe whether the warring nationsintended sincerely to live up to their agreement and bring about anactual cessation of hostilities, the Ring had appeared out of the northand, floating through the sky, had followed the lines of thebelligerents from Brussels to Verdun and southward. The blinding yellowlight that it had projected toward the earth had roused the soldierssleeping in their intrenchments and caused great consternation all alongthe line of fortifications, as it was universally supposed that thedirector of its flight intended to annihilate the combined armies ofFrance, England, Germany, and Belgium. But the Ring had sailedpeacefully along, three thousand feet aloft, deluging the countrysidewith its dazzling light, sending its beams into the casemates of thehuge fortresses of the Rhine and the outer line of the Frenchfortifications, searching the redoubts and trenches, but doing no harmto the sleeping armies that lay beneath it; until at last the silence ofthe night had been broken by the thunder of "Thanatos, " and in thetwinkling of an eye the Lavender Ray had descended, to turn the villageof Champaubert into the smoking crater of a dying volcano. The entiredivision of artillery had been annihilated, with the exception of a fewstragglers, and of the Relay Gun naught remained but a distorted puddleof steel and iron. 

Long before the news of the horrible retribution visited by the masterof the Ring upon Treitschke, the major-general of artillery, and theinventor, Von Heckmann, had reached the United States, Bill Hood, sitting in the wireless receiving station of the Naval Observatory atGeorgetown, had received through the ether a message from his mysteriouscorrespondent in the north that sent him hurrying to the White House. Pax had called the Naval Observatory and had transmitted the followingultimatum, repeating it, as was his custom, three times:

 "_To the President of the United States and to All Mankind:_

 "I have put the nations to the test and found them wanting. The solemn treaty entered into by the ambassadors of the belligerent nations at Washington has been violated. My attempt by harmless means to compel the cessation of hostilities and the abolition of war has failed. I cannot trust the nations of the earth. Their selfishness, their bloodthirstiness, and greed, will inevitably prevent their fulfilling their agreements with me or keeping the terms of their treaties with one another, which they regard, as they themselves declare, merely as 'scraps of paper. ' The time has come for me to compel peace. I am the dictator of human destiny and my will is law. War shall cease. On the 10th day of September I shall shift the axis of the earth until the North Pole shall be in the region of Strassburg and the South Pole in New Zealand. The habitable zone of the earth will be hereafter in South Africa, South and Central America, and regions now unfrequented by man. The nations must migrate and a new life in which war is unknown must begin upon the globe. This is my last message to the human race. 

 "PAX. "

The conference of ambassadors summoned by the President to the WhiteHouse that afternoon exhibited a character in striking contrast with thefirst, at which Von Koenitz and the ambassadors from France, Russia, andEngland had had their memorable disagreement. It was a serious, apprehensive, and subdued group of gentlemen that gathered round thegreat mahogany table in the Cabinet chamber to debate what course ofaction the nations should pursue to avert the impending calamity tomankind. For that Pax could shift the axis of the earth, or blow theglobe clean out of its orbit into space, if he chose to do so, no onedoubted any longer. 

And first it fell as the task of the ambassador representing theImperial German Commissioners to assure his distinguished colleaguesthat his nation disavowed and denied all responsibility for the conductof General Treitschke in bombarding Paris after the hour set for thearmistice. It was unjust and contrary to the dictates of reason, heargued, to hold the government of a nation comprising sixty-fivemillions of human beings and five millions of armed men accountable forthe actions of a single individual. He spoke passionately, eloquently, persuasively, and at the conclusion of his speech the ambassadorspresent were forced to acknowledge that what he said was true, and toaccept without reservation his plausible assurances that the ImperialGerman Commissioners had no thought but to cooperate with the othergovernments in bringing about a lasting peace such as Pax demanded. 

But the immediate question was, had not the time for this gone by? Wasit not too late to convince the master of the Flying Ring that hisorders would be obeyed? Could anything be done to avert the calamity hethreatened to bring upon the earth--to prevent the conversion of Europeinto a barren waste of ice fields? For Pax had announced that he hadspoken for the last time and that the fate of Europe was sealed. All theambassadors agreed that a general European immigration was practicallyimpossible; and as a last resort it was finally decided to transmit toPax, through the Georgetown station, a wireless message signed by allthe ambassadors of the belligerent nations, solemnly agreeing within oneweek to disband their armies and to destroy all their munitions andimplements of war. This message was delivered to Hood, with instructionsfor its immediate delivery. All that afternoon and evening the operatorsat in the observatory, calling over and over again the three lettersthat marked mankind's only communication with the controller of itsdestiny:

 "PAX--PAX--PAX!"

But no answer came. For long, weary hours Hood waited, his ears glued tothe receivers. An impenetrable silence surrounded the master of theRing. Pax had spoken. He would say no more. Late that night Hoodreluctantly returned to the White House and informed the President thathe was unable to deliver the message of the nations. 

And meantime Prof. Bennie Hooker, with Marc and Edouard, struggledacross the wilderness of Labrador, following the Iron Rail that led tothe hiding-place of the master of the world. 

 * * * * *

The terrible fate of the German expeditionary force is too well known torequire comment. As has been already told, the _Sea Fox_ had sailed fromAmsterdam twelve days after the conference in the War Office at Mainzbetween General von Helmuth and Professor von Schwenitz. Once north ofthe Orkneys it had encountered fair weather, and it had reached HamiltonInlet in ten days without mishap, and with the men and animals in thebest of condition. At Rigolet the men had disembarked and loaded theirhowitzers, mules, and supplies upon the flat-bottomed barges broughtwith them for that purpose. Thirty French and Indian guides had beenengaged, and five days later the expedition, towed by the powerful motorlaunches, had started up the river toward the chain of lakes lyingnorthwest toward Ungava. Every one was in the best of spirits andeverything moved with customary German precision like clockwork. Nothinghad been forgotten, not even the pungent invention of a Berlin chemistto discourage mosquitoes. Without labour, without anxiety, the fourteenbarges bored through the swift currents and at last reached a great lakethat lay like a silver mirror for miles about them. The moon rose andturned the boats into weird shapes as they ploughed through the graymists--a strange and terrible sight for the Nascopees lurking in theunderbrush along the shore. And while the men smoked and sang "Die Wachtam Rhein, " listening to the trill of the ripples against the bows, theforemost motorboat grounded. 

The momentum of the barge immediately following could not be checked, and she in turn drove into what seemed to be a mud bank. At about thesame instant the other barges struck bottom. Intense excitement andconfusion prevailed among the members of the expedition, since they werealmost out of sight of land and the draft of the motorboats was onlynineteen inches. But no efforts could move the barges from where theywere. All night long the propellers churned the gleaming water of thelake to foam, but without result. Each and every barge and boat was hardand fast aground, and when the gray daylight came stealing across thelake there was no lake to be seen, only a reeking marsh, covered formiles with a welter of green slime and decaying vegetable matter acrosswhich it would seem no human being or animal could flounder. As far asthe eye could reach lay only a blackish ooze. And with the sun camemillions of mosquitoes and flies, and drove the men and mules franticwith their stings. 

Only one man, Ludwig Helmer, a gun driver from Potsdam, survived. Halfmad with the flies and nearly naked, he found his way somehow across thequaking bog, after all his comrades had died of thirst, and reached atribe of Nascopees, who took him to the coast. A great explosion, theytold him, had torn the River Nascopee from its bed and diverted itscourse. The lakes that it fed had all dried up. 

 * * * * *

Blinded by perspiration, sweltering under the heavy burden of theiroutfit, goaded almost to frenzy by the black flies and mosquitoes, Hooker and Marc and Edouard staggered through the brush, following themonorail. They had already reached the summit of the Height of Land andwhere now working down the northern slope in the direction of Ungava. The land was barren beyond the imagination of the unimaginative Bennie. Small dwarfed trees struggled for a footing amid the lichen-coveredoutcroppings and sun-dried moss of the hollows. The slightest riseshowed mile upon mile of great waste undulating interminably in everydirection. The heat shimmering off the rocks was almost suffocating. Atnoon on September 10th they threw themselves into the shade of a narrowledge, boiled some tea, and smoked their pipes, wildly fanning the airto drive away the swarms of insects that attacked them. 

Hooker was half drunk from lack of sleep and water. Already once ortwice he had caught himself wandering when talking to Marc and Edouard. The whole thing was like a horrible, disgusting nightmare. And then hesuddenly became aware that the two Indians were staring intently throughthe clouds of mosquitoes over the tree tops to the eastward. Through thesweat that trickled into his eyes he tried to make out what they couldsee. But he could discern nothing except mosquitoes. And then he thoughthe saw a mosquito larger than all the others. He waved at it, but itremained where it was. A slight breeze momentarily wafted the swarmaway, and he still saw the big mosquito hovering over the horizon. Thenhe heard Marc cry out:

"_Quelque chose vol en l'air!_"

He rubbed the moisture out of his eyes and stared at the mosquito, whichwas growing bigger every minute. With the velocity of a projectile, thismonstrous insect, or whatever it was, came sweeping up behind them fromthe Height of Land, soaring into the zenith in a great parabola, untilwith a shiver of excitement Bennie recognized that it was the FlyingRing. 

"It's him, " he chattered emphatically, if ungrammatically. 

Marc and Edouard nodded. 

"_Oui, oui!_" they cried in unison. "_C'est celui que vous cherchez!_"

"_Il retourne chez lui_, " said Marc. 

And then Bennie, without offering any explanation, found himself dancingup and down upon the rocks in the dizzying sun, waving his hat andshouting to the Father of the Marionettes. What he shouted he neverknew. And Marc and Edouard both shouted, too. But the master of the Ringheard them not, or if he heard he paid them no attention. Nearer andnearer came the Ring, until Bennie could see the gleaming cylinder ofits great steel circle. At a distance of about two miles it sweptthrough the air over a low ridge, and settled toward the earth in thedirection of Ungava. 

"He only goes ten mile maybe, " announced Marc confidently. "_Un petitbout de chemin. _ We get there to-night. "

On they struggled beside the Rail, but now hope ran high. Bennie sangand whistled, unmindful of the mosquitoes and black flies that renewedtheir attacks with unremitting ferocity. The sun lowered itself into thepine trees, shooting dazzling shafts through the low branches, and thensank in a welter of crimson-yellow light. The sky turned gray in theeast; faint stars twinkled through the quivering waves that still shookfrom the overheated rocks. It turned cold and the mosquitoes departed. Hugging the Rail, they staggered on, now over shaking muskeg, nowthrough thickets of tangled brush, now on great ledges of barren rock, and then across caribou barrens knee-deep in dry and crackling moss. Darkness fell and prudence dictated that they should make camp. But intheir excitement they trudged on, until presently a pale glow behind thedwarfed trees showed that the moon was rising. They boiled the water, made tea, and cooked some biscuits. Soon they could see to pursue theirway. 

"'Most there now, " encouraged Marc. 

Presently, instead of descending, they found the land was rising again, and forcing their way through the undergrowth they struggled up a rockyhillside, perhaps three hundred feet in height. Marc was in the lead, with Bennie a few feet behind him. As they reached the crest the Indianturned and pointed to something in front of him that Bennie was unableto distinguish. 

"_Nous sommes arrivees_, " he announced. 

With his heart thumping from the exertion of the climb, Bennie crawledup beside his guide and found himself confronted by a strong barbed-wireentanglement affixed to iron stanchions firmly imbedded in the rocks. They were on the top of a ridge that dropped away abruptly at their feetinto a valley, perhaps a mile in width, terminating on the other side inperpendicular cliffs, estimated by Bennie to be about eight hundred or athousand feet in height. Although the entanglement was by no meansimpassable, it was a distinct obstacle and one they preferred to tackleby daylight. Moreover, it indicated that their company was undesired. They were in the presence of an unknown quantity, the master of theFlying Ring. Whether he was a malign or a benevolent influence, thisFather of the Marionettes, they could not tell. 

With his back propped against a small spruce Bennie focused his glassesupon dim shapes barely discernible in the midst of the valley. He wasthrilled by a deep excitement, a strange fear. What would he see? Whatmysteries would those vague forms disclose? The shadows cast by thecliffs and a light mist gathering in the low ground made it difficult tosee; and then, even as he looked, the moon rose higher and shone throughsomething in the middle of the valley that looked like a tall, grislyskeleton. It seemed to have legs and arms, an odd mushroom-shaped head, and endless ribs. Below and at its feet were other and vaguershapes--flat domes or cupolas, bombproofs perhaps, buildings of somesort--Pax's home beyond peradventure. 

As he looked through the glasses at the skeleton-like tower Bennie hadan extraordinary feeling of having seen it all before somewhere. As in along-forgotten dream he remembered Tesla's tower near Smithtown, on LongIsland. And this was Tesla's tower, naught else! It is a strange thing, how at great crises of our lives come feelings of anticipatoryknowledge. There is, indeed, nothing new under the sun; else had Benniebeen more afraid. As it was, he saw only Tesla's Smithtown tower withits head like a young mushroom. And at the same time there flashed intohis memory: "Childe Harold to the Dark Tower Came. " Over and over herepeated it mechanically, feeling that he might be one of those of whomthe poet had sung. Yet he had not read the lines for years:

 _Burningly it came on me all at once, This was the place!. .. What in the midst lay but the Tower itself?_

His eyes searched the shadows round the base of the tower, for his earshad already caught a faint, almost inaudible throbbing that seemed togrow from moment to moment. There certainly was a dull vibration in theair, a vibration like the distant hum of machinery. Suddenly old Edouardtouched Bennie upon the shoulder. 

"_Regardez!_" he whispered. 

Some transformation was happening in the hood of the tower. From a blackopaque object it began to turn a dull red and to diffuse a subdued glow, while the hum turned into a distinct whir. 

Bennie became almost hysterical with excitement. 

Soon the hood of the tower had turned white and the glow had increaseduntil the whole valley was lit up with a suffused and gentle light. TheRing could be distinctly seen about half a mile away, resting upon ahuge circular support. 

"_C'est le feu!_" grunted Marc. "_C'est ainsi que l'on fait danser lesmarionettes!_"

There was no doubt that the hood of the tower was in fact white hot, forthe perpendicular cliffs of the mountain across the valley sharplyreflected the light that it disseminated. The humming whir of the greatalternator rose gradually into a scream like the outcry of some angrything. And then unexpectedly a shaft of pale lavender light shot outfrom the glowing hood and lost itself in the blackness of the midnightsky. Now appeared a wonderful and beautiful spectacle: immediately abovethe point where the rays disappeared into the ether hundreds of pointsof yellow fire suddenly sprang into being in the sky, darting hither andthither like fireflies, some moving slowly and others with such speedthey appeared as even, luminous lines. 

"_Les marionettes! Les marionettes!_" Marc cried trembling. 

"Not at all! Not at all! They are meteorites!" answered Bennie, entirelyengrossed in the scientific phase of the matter and forgetting that hedid not speak the other's language. "Space is jammed full of meteoricdust. The larger particles, which strike our atmosphere and which igniteby friction, form shooting stars. The Ray--the Lavender Ray--reachingout into the most distant regions of space meets them in countlessnumbers and disintegrates them, surrounding them with glowingatmospheres. By George, though, if he starts in playing the Ray uponthat cliff we've got to stand from under! Look here, boys, " he shouted, "stuff something in your ears. " He seized his handkerchief, tore itapart, and, making two plugs, thrust them into the openings of his earsas far as the drums. The others in wonderment followed his example. 

"He's going to rock the earth!" cried Bennie Hooker. "He's going to rockthe earth again!"

Slowly the Lavender Ray swung through the ether, followed by itsmillions of meteorites, dipping downward toward the northern side of thevalley and sinking ever lower and lower toward the cliff. Bennie threwhimself flat on his stomach upon the ridge, pressing his hands to hisears, and the others, feeling that something terrible was going tohappen, followed his example. Nearer and nearer toward the ridge droppedthe Ray. Bennie held his breath. Another instant and there came ablinding splash of yellow light, a crash like thunder, and a roar thatseemed to tear the mountain from its base. The earth shook. Into thezenith sprang a flame of incandescent vapour a mile in height. Thetumult increased. Vivid blue flashes of lightning shot out from the spotupon which the Ray played. The air was filled with thunderings, and theground beneath them rose and fell and swung from side to side. Then camea mighty wind, nay, a cyclone, and gravel and broken branches fell uponthem, and suffocating clouds of dust filled their eyes and shut out fromtime to time what was occurring in the valley. The face of the cliffglowed like the interior of a furnace, and the blazing yellow blast ofglowing helium shot over their heads and off into space, making thenight sky light as day. 

For a moment they all lay stunned and sightless. Then the dischargeappeared to diminish both in volume and in intensity. The air clearedsomewhat and the ground no longer trembled. The burst of flame slowlysubsided, like a fountain that is being gradually turned off. Either theRing man wasn't going to rock the earth or he had lost control of hismachinery. 

Something was clearly going wrong. Showers of sparks fell from the hoodand occasionally huge glowing masses of molten metal dropped from it. And now the Lavender Ray began slowly to sweep down the face of thecliff; and the yellow blast of helium gradually faded away until it wasscarcely visible. The roar of the alternator died down, first to a humand then to a purr. 

"Something's busted, " thought Bennie, "and he's shut it off. "

The Ray had now reached the bottom of the cliff and was sweeping acrossthe ground toward the base of the tower, its path being marked by asmall travelling volcano that hurled its smoke and steam high into theair. It was evident to Bennie that the hood of the tower was slowlyturning over, and that the now fast-fading Ray would presently play uponits base and the adjacent cupola in which the master of the Ring wasprobably attempting to control his recalcitrant machinery. 

And then Bennie lost consciousness. 

 * * * * *

A splash of rain. He awoke, and found himself lying by the barbed-wirefence in the graying light of dawn. His muscles were stiff and sore, buthe felt a strange sense of exhilaration. A mist was driving across thevalley and enshrouding the scene of the night's debacle. Through therain gusts he could see, still standing, the wreck of the tower, with afragment of melted inductor drooping from its apex--and a long way offthe Ring. The base of the tower and its surroundings were lost in mist. He crawled to his knees and looked about him for Marc and Edouard, butthey had disappeared. His field glasses lay beside him, and he pickedthem up and raised himself to his feet. Like stout Cortés, silent uponhis peak in Darien, he surveyed the Pacific of his dreams. For the Ringwas still there! Pax might be annihilated, his machinery destroyed, butthe secret remained--and it was his, Bennie Hooker's, of Appian Way, Cambridge, Massachusetts! In his excitement, in getting over the fencehe tore a jagged hole in what was left of his sporting suit, but in amoment more he was scrambling down the ridge into the ravine. 

He found it no easy task to climb down the jagged face of the cliff, buttwenty minutes of stiff work landed him in the valley and within athousand yards of the stark remains of the tower. Between where he stoodand the devastation caused by the culminating explosion of the nightbefore, the surface of the earth showed the customary ledges of barrenrock, the scraggy scattering of firs, and stretches of moss with whichhe had become so familiar. Behind him the monorail, springing into spacefrom the crest of the hill, ended in the dangling wreckage of a trestlewhich evidently had terminated in a station, now vanished, near thetower. From his point of observation little of the results of theupheaval was noticeable except the débris, which lay in a film ofshattered rock and gravel over the surface of the ground, but as he rantoward the tower the damage caused by the Ray quickly became apparent. 

At the distance of two hundred yards from the base he paused astounded. Why anything of the tower remained at all was a mystery, explicable onlyby reason of the skeleton-like character of its construction. All aboutit the surface had been rent as by an earthquake, and save for afragment of the dome or bombproof all trace of buildings haddisappeared. A glistening lake of leperous-like molten lead lay in thecentre of the crater, strangely iridescent. A broad path of destruction, fifty yards or so in width, led from the scene of the disruption to theprecipice against which the Ray had played. The face of the cliff itselfseemed covered with a white coating or powder which gave it a ghostlysheen. Moreover, the rain had turned to snow and already the entireaspect of the valley had changed. 

Bennie stood wonderingly on the edge of this inferno. He was cold, famished, horror-stricken. Like a flash in a pan the mechanism which hadrocked the earth and dislocated its axis had blown out; and there wasnow nothing left to tell the story, for its inventor had flashed outwith it into eternity. At his very feet a conscious human being, onlytwelve short hours before, had by virtue of his stupendous brain beenable to generate and control a force capable of destroying the planetitself, and now----! He was gone! It was all gone! Unless somewhere hardby was hovering amid the whirling snowflakes that which might be hissoul. But Pax would send no more messages! Bennie's journey had gone fornaught. He had arrived just too late to talk it all over with hisfellow-scientist, and discuss those little improvements on Hiroshito'stheory. Pax was dead!

He sat down wearily, noticing for the first time that his ears painedhim. In his depression and excitement he had totally forgotten the Ring. He wondered how he was ever going to get back to Cambridge. And then ashe raised his hand to adjust his Glengarry he saw it awaitinghim--unscathed. Far to the westward it rested snugly in its giganticnest of crossbeams, like the head of some colossal decapitated Chinesemandarin. With an involuntary shout he started running down the valley, heedless of his steps. Nearer and higher loomed the steel trestleworkupon which rested the giant engine. Panting, he blindly stumbled on, mindful only of the momentous fact that Pax's secret was not lost. 

Fifty feet above the ground, supported upon a cylindrical trestle ofsteel girders, rested the body of the car, constructed of aluminumplates in the form of an anchor ring some seventy-five feet in diameter, while over the circular structure of the Ring itself rose a skeletontower like a tripod, carrying at its summit a huge metal device shapedlike a thimble, the open mouth of which pointed downward through theopen centre of the machine. Obviously this must be the tractor orradiant engine. There, too, swung far out from the side of the ring on aframework of steel, was the thermic inductor which had played thedisintegrating Ray upon the Atlas Mountains and the great cannon of VonHeckmann. The whole affair resembled nothing which he had ever conceivedof either in the air, the earth, or the waters under the earth, thebizarre invention of a superhuman mind. It seemed as firmly anchored andas immovable as the Eiffel Tower, and yet Bennie knew that the thingcould lift itself into the air and sail off like a ball of thistledownbefore a breeze. He knew that it could do it, for he had seen it withhis own eyes. 

A few steps more brought him into the centre of the circle of steelgirders which supported the landing stage. Here the surface of the earthat his feet had been completely denuded and the underlying rock exposed, evidently by some artificial action, the downward blast of gas from thetractor. Even the rock itself had been seared by the discharge; littlefurrows worn smooth as if by a mountain torrent radiating in alldirections from the central point. More than anything it reminded Bennieof the surface of a meteorite, polished and scarred by its rush throughthe atmosphere. He paused, filled with a kind of awe. The most wonderfulengine of all time waited his inspection. The great secret was hisalone. The inventor and his associates had been wiped out of existencein a flash, and the Flying Ring was his by every right of treasuretrove. In the heart of the Labrador wilderness Prof. Benjamin Hooker ofCambridge, Massachusetts, gave an exultant shout, threw off his coat, and swarmed up the steel ladder leading to the landing stage. 

He had ascended about halfway when a voice echoed among the girders. Ared face was peering down at him over the edge of the platform. 

"Hello!" said the face. "I'm all right, I guess. "

Bennie gripped tight hold of the ladder, stiff with fear. He thoughtfirst of jumping down, changed his mind, and, shutting his eyes, continued automatically climbing up the ladder. 

Then a hand gripped him under the arm and gave him a lift on to thelevel floor of the platform. He steadied himself and opened his eyes. Before him stood a man in blue overalls, under whose forehead, burnedbright red by the Labrador sun, a pair of blue eyes looked out vaguely. The man appeared to be waiting for the visitor to make the next move. "Good morning, " said Bennie, sparring for time. "Well"--hehesitated--"where were you when it happened?"

The man looked at him stupidly. "What?" he mumbled. "I--I don't seem toremember. You see--I was in--the condenser room building up thecharge--for to-morrow--I mean to-day--sixty thousand volts at theterminals, and the fluid clearing up. I guess I looked out of the windowa minute--to see--the fireworks--and then--somehow--I was out on theplatform. " He shaded his eyes and looked off down the valley at thehalf-shattered, wrecked tower. "The wind and the smoke!" he muttered. "The wind and the smoke--and the dust in my eyes--and now it's all goneto hell! But I guess everything's all right now, if you want to fly. " Hetouched his cap automatically. "We can start whenever you are ready, sir. You see I thought you were gone, too! That would have been a mess!I'm sure you can handle the balancer without Perkins. Poor old Perk! AndHoskins--and the others. All gone, by God! All wiped out! Only me andyou left, sir!" He laughed hysterically. 

"Bats in his belfry!" thought Bennie. "Something hit him!"

Slowly it came over him that the half-stunned creature thought that he, Bennie Hooker, was Pax, the Master of the World!

He took the fellow by the arm. "Come on inside, " he said. A plan hadalready formulated itself in his brain. Even as he was the man might beable to go through his customary duties in handling the Ring. It was notimpossible. He had heard of such things, and the thought of the longmarches over the frozen barrens and the perilous canoe trip down thecoast, contrasted with a swift rush for an hour or two through thesunlit air, gave the professor the courage which might not have availedhim otherwise. At the top of a short ladder a trapdoor opened inward, and Bennie found himself in a small compartment scarcely large enough toturn around in, from which a second door opened into the body of theRing proper. 

"It's all right--to-day, " said the man hesitatingly. "I fixed--theair-lock--yesterday, sir. The leak--was here--at the hinge--but it'squite tight--now. " He pointed at the door. 

"Good, " remarked Bennie. "I'll look around and see how things are. "

This seemed to him to be eminently safe--and allowing for a program ofinvestigation absolutely essential at the moment. Once he could masterthe secret of the Ring and be sure that the part of the fellow's brainwhich controlled the performance of his customary duties had not beeninjured by the shock of the night before, it might be possible to carryout the daring project which had suggested itself. 

Passing through the inner door of the air-lock he entered the chart roomof the Ring, followed stumblingly by his companion. It was warm andcozy; the first warmth Hooker had experienced for nearly a month. Itmade him feel faint, and he dropped into an armchair and pulled off hisGlengarry. The survivor of the explosion, standing awkwardly at hisside, fumbled with his cap. Ever and anon he rubbed his head. 

Bennie sank back into the cushions and looked about him. On the oppositewall hung a map of the world on Mercator's Projection, and from a spotin Northern Labrador red lines radiated in all directions, which formedgreat curved loops, returning to the starting-point. 

"The flights of the Ring, " thought Bennie. "There's the one where theybusted the Atlas Mountains, " following with his eyes the crimson threadwhich ran diagonally across the Atlantic, traversed Spain and theMediterranean, and circling in a narrow loop over the coast of NorthernAfrica turned back into its original track. Visions came to him ofguiding the car for an afternoon jaunt across the Sahara, the gloomyforests of the Congo, into the Antarctic, and thence home in time forafternoon tea, via the Easter Islands, Hawaii, and Alaska. But why stopthere? What was to prevent a trip to the moon? Or Mars? Or for thatmatter into the unknown realms outside the solar system--the fourthdimension, perhaps--or even the fifth dimension----

"Excuse me, " said the machinist suddenly, "I just forgot--whether youtake--cigars or cigarettes. You see I only acted as--tableorderly--once--when Smith had that sprain. " His hands moved uncertainlyon the shelves, beyond the map. The heart of Professor Hooker leaped. 

"Cigars!" he almost shouted. 

The man found a box of Havanas and struck a match. 

The bliss of it! And if there was tobacco there must be food and drinkas well. He began to feel strangely exhilarated. But how to handle theman beside him? Pax would certainly never ask the questions that hewished to ask. He smoked rapidly, thinking hard. Of course he mightpretend that he, too, had forgotten things. And at first this seemed tobe the only way out of the difficulty. Then he had an inspiration. 

"Look here, " he remarked, rather severely. "Something's happened to you. You say you've forgotten what occurred yesterday? How do I know but youhave forgotten everything you ever knew? You remember your name?"

"My name, sir?" The man laughed in a foolish fashion. "Why--of course Iremember--my name. I wouldn't--be likely--to forget--that:Atterbury--I'm Atterbury--electrician of the _Chimaera_. " And he drewhimself up. 

"That's all right, " said Bennie, "but what were we doing yesterday? Whatis the very last thing that you can go back to?"

The man wrinkled his forehead. "The last thing? Why, sir, you told usyou were going--to turn over the pole a bit--and freeze up Europe. I wasup here--loading the condenser--when you cut me off from the alternator. I opened the switch--and put on the electrometer to see--if we hadenough. Next--everything was clouded, and I went--over to the window tosee--what was going on. "

"Yes, " commented Bennie approvingly, "all right so far. What happenedthen?"

"Why, after that, sir, after that, there was the Ray of course, ander--I don't seem to remember--oh, yes, a short circuit--and I ran--outon the platform--forgot all about the danger! After that, everything'sconfused. It's like a dream. Your coming up--the ladder--seemed--to wakeme up. " The machinist smiled sheepishly. 

The plan was working well. Professor Hooker was learning things fast. 

"Do you think that the two of us can fly the _Chimaera_ south again?" heasked, inspecting the map. 

"Why not?" answered Atterbury. "The balancer is working--betternow--and--doesn't take--much attention--and you can lay the course--andmanage--the landing. I was going to put a fresh uranium cylinder in thetractor this morning--but I--forgot. "

"There you go, forgetting again!" growled Bennie, realizing that hisonly excuse for asking questions hung on this fiction. And there weremany, many more questions that he must ask before he would be able tofly. "You don't seem quite right in your coco this morning, Atterbury, "he said. "I think we'll look things over a bit--the condenser first. "

"Very well, sir. " Atterbury turned and groped his way through a doorway, and they passed first into what appeared to be a storage-battery room. Huge glass tanks filled with amber-coloured fluid, in which numerousparallel plates were supported, lined the walls from floor to ceiling. 

An ammeter on the wall caught Bennie's attention. "Weston Direct ReadingA. C. Ammeter, " he read on the dial. Alternate current! What were theydoing with an alternating current in the storage-battery room? His eyesfollowed the wires along the wall. Yes, they ran to the terminals of thebattery. It dawned upon him that there might be something here undreamedof in electrical engineering--a storage battery for an alternatingcurrent!

The electrician closed a row of switches, brought the two polished brassspheres of the discharger within striking distance, and instantly ablinding current of sparks roared between the terminals. He had beenright. This battery not only was charged by an alternating current, butdelivered one of high potential. He peered into the cells, racking hisbrain for an explanation. 

"Atterbury, " said he meditatively, "did I ever tell you why they dothat?"

"Yes, " answered the man. "You--told me--once. The two metals--in theelectrolyte--come down--on the plates--in alternate films--as--thecurrent changes direction. But you never told me--what the electrolytewas--I don't suppose--you--would be willing to now, would you?"

"H'm, " said Bennie, "some time, maybe. "

But this cue was all that he required. A clever scheme! Pax had formedlayers of molecular thickness of two different metals in alternation bythe to-and-fro swing of his charging current. When the batterydischarged the metals went into solution, each plate becomingalternately positive and negative. He wondered what Pax had used for anelectrolyte that enabled him to get a metallic deposit at eachelectrode. And he wondered also why the metals did not alloy. But itwould not do for him to linger too long over a mere detail of equipment. And he turned away to continue his tour of inspection, a tour whichoccupied most of the morning, and during which he found a well-stockedgallery and made himself a cup of coffee. [5]

[Footnote 5: He even climbed with Atterbury to the very summit of thetractor, where he discovered that his original guess had been correctand that the car rose from the earth rocket fashion, due to the backpressure of the radiant discharge from a massive cylinder of uraniumcontained in the tractor. Against this block played a disintegrating rayfrom a small thermic inductor, the inner construction of which he wasnot able to determine, although it was obviously different from his own, and the coils were wound in a curious manner which he did notunderstand. There might be something in Hiroshito's theory after all. The cylinder of the tractor pointed directly downward so that the blastwas discharged through the very centre of the Ring, but it could beswung through a small angle in any direction, and by means of thisslight deflection the horizontal motion of the machine secured. Perhapsthe most interesting feature of the mechanism was that the Ring appearedto have automatic stability, for the angle of the direction in which thetractor was pointed was controlled not only by a pair of gyroscopeswhich kept the Ring on an even keel, but also by a manometric valvecausing it to fly at a fixed height above the earth's surface. Should itstart to rise, the diminished pressure of the atmosphere operating onthe valve swung the tractor more to one side, and the horizontalacceleration was thus increased at the expense of the vertical. ]

But the more he learned about the mechanism of the Ring the greaterbecame his misgivings about undertaking the return journey alone withAtterbury through the air. If they were to go, the start must be madewithin a few days, for the condenser held its charge but a comparativelyshort time, and its energy was necessary for starting the Ring. Whenfreshly charged it supplied current for the thermic inductor for nearlythree minutes, but the metallic films, deposited on the plates, dissolved slowly in the fluid, and after three or four days thereremained only enough for a thirty-second run, hardly enough to lift theRing from the earth. Once in the air, the downward blast from thetractor operated a turbine alternator mounted on a skeleton framework atthe centre of the Ring, and the current supplied by this machine enabledthe Ring to continue its flight indefinitely, or until the cylinder ofuranium was completely disintegrated. 

Yet to trek back over the route by which he had come appeared to beequally impossible. There was little likelihood that the two Indianswould return; they were probably already thirty miles on their way backto the coast. If only he could get word to Thornton or some of thosechaps at Washington they might send a relief expedition! But a shipwould be weeks in getting to the coast, and how could he live in themeantime? There were provisions for only a few days in the Ring, and thestorehouse in the valley had been wiped out of existence. Only anaeroplane could do the trick. And then he thought of Burke, hisclassmate--Burke who had devoted his life to heavier-than-air machines, and who, since his memorable flight across the Atlantic in the _StormyPetrol_, had been a national hero. Burke could reach him in ten hours, but how could _he_ reach Burke? In the heart of the frozen wilderness ofLabrador he might as well be on another planet, as far as communicationwith the civilized world was concerned. 

A burst of sunlight shot through the window and formed an oval patch onthe floor at his feet. The weather was clearing. He went out upon theplatform. Patches of blue sky appeared overhead. As he gazeddisconsolately across the valley toward the tower, his eye caught theglisten of something high in the air. From the top of the wreckage fivethin shining lines ran parallel across the sky and disappeared in asmall cloud which hung low over the face of the cliff. 

"The antennæ!" exclaimed Bennie. "A wireless to Burke. " Burke wouldcome; he knew Burke. A thousand miles overland was nothing to him. Hadn't he wagered five thousand dollars at the club that he would fly tothe pole and bring back Peary's flag--with no takers? Why, Burke wouldtake him home with as little trouble as a taxicab. And then, aghast, heremembered the complete destruction in the valley. The wireless planthad gone with the rest. He ran back into the chart room and calledAtterbury. 

"Can we get off a message to Washington?" he demanded. "The wires arestill up, and we have the condenser. "

"We might, sir, if it's not--a long one, though you've always said therewas danger in running the engine with the car bolted down. We did it thetime the big machine burnt out a coil. I can throw--a wire--over theantennæ with a rocket--and join up--with the turbine machine. It willincrease--our wave length, but they ought to pick us up. "

"We'll try it, anyway, " announced Bennie. 

He inspected the chart and measured the distance in an airline fromBoston to the point where the red lines converged. It was a trifle lessthan the distance between Boston and Chicago. Burke had done that innine hours on the trial trip of his trans-Atlantic monoplane. If themachine was in order and Burke started in the morning he would be withthem by sunset, if he didn't get lost. But Bennie knew that Burke coulddrive his machine by dead reckoning and strike within a few leagues of atarget a thousand miles away. 

A muffled roar outside interrupted his musings, and running out on theplatform again he found Atterbury attaching the cord of the aluminumribbon, which the rocket had carried up and over the antennæ, to one ofthe brush bars of the alternator. 

"Nearly ready, sir, " he said. "We'd best--lock the storm bolts--to holdher down--in case we have--to crowd on the power. We've got touse--pretty near the full lift--to get the alternator up--to the properspeed. "

A chill ran down Bennie's spine. They were going to start the engine! Ina moment he would be within twenty feet of a blast of disintegrationproducts capable of lifting the whole machine into the air, and it wasto be started at his command, after he had worked and pottered for twoyears with a thermic inductor the size of a thimble! He felt as he usedto feel before taking a high dive, or as he imagined a soldier feelswhen about to go under fire for the first time. How would it turn out?Was he taking too much responsibility, and was Atterbury counting on himfor the management of details? He felt singularly helpless as hereëntered the chart room to compose his message. 

He turned on the electric lamp which hung over the desk, for in thefast-gathering dusk the interior of the Ring was in almost totaldarkness. How should his message read? It must be brief: it must tellthe story, and, above all, it must be compelling. 

He was joined by the electrician. 

"I think--we are all--ready now, " stammered the latter. "What will yousend, sir?"

Bennie handed him a scrap of yellow paper, and Atterbury put on a pairof dark amber glasses, to protect his eyes from the light of the spark. 

 "_Thornton, Naval Observatory, Washington:_

 "Stranded fifty-four thirty-eight north, seventy-four eighteen west. Have the Ring machine. Ask Burke come immediately. Life and death matter. 

 "B. HOOKER. "

Atterbury read the message and then gazed blankly at Hooker. 

"I--don't--understand, " he said. 

"Never mind, send it. I'll explain later. " Together they went into thecondenser room. 

Atterbury mechanically pushed the brass balls in contact, shoved abundle of iron wires halfway through the core of a great coil, andclosed a switch. A humming sound filled the air, and a few seconds latera glow of yellow light came in through the window. A cone of luminousvapour was shooting downward through the centre of the Ring from thetractor. At first it was soft and nebulous, but it increased rapidly inbrilliancy, and a dull roar, like that of a waterfall, added itself tothe hum of the alternating current in the wires. And now a third soundcame to his ears, the note of the turbine, low at first, but graduallyrising like the scream of a siren, and the floor of the Ring beneath hisfeet throbbed with the vibration. 

Bennie forgot the dynamometer, forgot his message to Burke, wasconscious only that he had wakened a sleeping volcano. Then came thecrack of the sparks, and the room seemed filled with the glare of theblue lightning, for Atterbury, with his telephones at his ears, staringthrough his yellow glasses, was sending out the call for the NavalObservatory. 

"NAA--NAA--P--A--X. "

Over and over again he sent the call, while in the meantime thecondenser built up its charge from the overflow of current from theturbine generator. Then the electrician opened a switch, and the roaroutside diminished and finally ceased. 

"We can't listen--with the tractor running, " he fretted. "Thestatic--from the discharge--would tear--our detector--to pieces. " Hethrew in the receiving instrument. For a few moments the telephonesspoke only the whisperings of the arctic aurora, and then suddenly thefaint cry of the answering spark was heard. Bennie watched the words asthe electrician's pencil scrawled along on the paper. 

 "Waiting for you. Why don't you send? N. A. A. "

"They must have--called us before--while the discharge--was runningdown, " muttered Atterbury. "I think we can send--with thecondenser--now. "

He picked up the scrap of yellow paper, read it over, and threw out intospace the message which he did not understand. 

"O. K. Wait. Thornton, " came in reply. 

Two hours later came a second message:

 "P--A--X. Burke starts at daybreak. Expects reach you by nine P. M. Asks you to show large beacon fire if possible. 

 "THORNTON, N. A. A. "

"Hurrah!" cried Bennie. "Good for Burke! Atterbury, we're saved--saved, do you hear! Go to bed now and don't ask any questions. And say, beforeyou go see if you can find me a glass of brandy. "

 * * * * *

It was decided that Burke must land on the plateau above the cliff, andhere the material for the fire was collected. There was little enough ofit and it was hard work carrying the oil up the steep trail. At timesBennie was almost in despair. 

"It won't burn half an hour, " said he, surveying the pile. "And we oughtto be able to keep it going all night. There's plenty of stuff in thevalley, but we can't have him come down there, with the tower, theantennæ, and all the rest of the mess. "

"We might--show him--the big Ray, " ventured Atterbury. "The thing--canbe pointed up--and I can--keep the turbine running. You can start--thefire--as soon as you--hear his motors--and I'll shut down--as soon as Isee your fire. "

"Good idea!" agreed Bennie. "Only don't run continuously. Show the Rayfor a minute every quarter of an hour, and on no account start up afteryou see the fire. If he thought the vertical beam was a searchlight andflew through it----" Bennie shuddered at the thought of Burke drivinghis aeroplane through the Ray that had shattered the Atlas Mountains. 

So it was arranged. Half an hour after sunset Atterbury shut himself upin the Ring, and while Bennie climbed the trail leading to his post onthe plateau, he heard the creaking of the great inductor as it slowlyturned on its trunions. 

It was pitch dark by the time he reached the pitifully small pile ofbrush which they had collected, and he poured some of the oil over itand sat down, drawing a blanket around his shoulders. He felt very muchalone. Suppose the inductor failed to work? Suppose Atterbury turned theRay on him? Suppose. .. . But his musings were shattered by a noise fromthe valley, a sound like that of escaping steam, and a moment later theLavender Ray shot up toward the zenith. Bennie lay on his back andwatched it, mindful of the night before the last when he had watched theRay from the tower descending upon the cliff. He wondered if he shouldsee any meteorites kindle in its path, but nothing appeared and the Raydied down, leaving everything in darkness again. Fifteen minutes passedand again the ghostly beam shot up into the night sky. Bennie looked athis watch. It was nearly half-past eight. The cold made him sleepy. Hedrew the blanket about him. .. . 

Two hours later through his half-dreams he caught the faint sound forwhich he had been listening. At first he was not sure. It might be theturbine alternator of the Ring running by its own inertia for some timeafter the discharge had ceased. But no, it was growing loudermomentarily, and appeared to come from high up in the air. Now it diedaway to nothingness, and now it swelled in volume, and again died away. But at each subsequent recurrence it was louder than before. There wasno longer any doubt. Burke was coming! It was time to start the brushpile. He lit match after match, only for the wind to blow them out. Yetall the time the machine in the air was coming nearer, the roar of itstwin engines beating on the stillness of the Labrador night. In despairBennie threw himself flat on his face by the brush pile and made a tentof the blanket, under which he at last succeeded in starting a blazeamong the oil-soaked twigs. Then he pushed the half-empty keg into thefire, arose and stared up at the sky. 

The machine was somewhere directly above him--just where he could notsay. Presently the motors stopped. He shouted feebly, running up anddown with his eyes turned skyward, and several times nearly fell intothe fire. He wondered why it didn't appear. It seemed hours since themotors stopped! Then unexpectedly against the black background of thesky the great wings of the machine appeared, illuminated on theirunderside by the light of the fire. Silently it swung around on itsdescending spiral, instantly to be swallowed up in the darkness again, amoment later reappearing from the opposite direction, this time low downand headed straight for him. He jumped hastily to one side and fellflat. The machine grounded, rose once or twice as it ran along theground, and came to a stop twenty yards from the fire. A man climbedout, slowly removed his goggles, and shook himself. Bennie scrambled tohis feet and ran forward waving his hat. 

"Well, Hooker!" remarked the man. "What th' hell are you doing _here_?You sure have some searchlight!"

 * * * * *

How Hooker and Burke, under the guidance of Atterbury, who graduallyregained his normal mental status, explored and charted the valley ofthe Ring is strictly no part of this tale which deals solely with theend of War upon the Earth. But next day, after several hours ofexcavation among the débris of the smelter, where Pax had extracted hisuranium from the pitch blend mined at the cliff, they uncovered eightcylinders of the precious metal weighing about one hundred poundsapiece--the fuel of the Flying Ring. Now they were safe. Nay, more:universal space was theirs to traffic in. 

Curious as to the reason why Pax had isolated himself in this frozenwilderness, they next examined the high cliffs which shut in the valleyon the west and against the almost perpendicular walls of which he hadplayed the Lavender Ray. These cliffs proved, as Bennie had alreadysuspected, to be a gigantic outcrop of pitchblende or black oxide ofuranium. He estimated that nature had stored more uranium in but one ofthe abutments of this cliff than in all the known mines of the entireworld. This radioactive mountain was the fulcrum by which this modernArchimedes had moved the earth. The vast amount of matter disintegratedby the Ray and thrown off into space with a velocity a thousandfoldgreater than the blast of a siege gun produced a back pressure or recoilagainst the face of the cliff, which thus became the "thrust block" ofthe force which had slowed down the period of the earth's rotation. 

 * * * * *

The day of the start dawned with a blazing sun. From the landing stageof the Ring Bennie could see stretching away to the east, west, andsouth, the interminable plains, dotted with firs, which had formed thenatural barrier to the previous discovery of Pax's secret. Overhead thedome of the sky fitted the horizon like an enormous shell--a shellwhich, with a thrill, he realized that he could crack and escape from, like a fledgling ready for its first flight. And yet in this moment oftriumph little Bennie Hooker felt the qualm which must inevitably cometo those who take their lives in their hands. An hour and he would beeither soaring Phoebus-like toward the south, or lying crushed andmangled within a tangled mass of wreckage. Even here in this desolatewaste life seemed sweet, and he had much, so much to do. Wasn't it, after all, a crazy thing to try to navigate the complicated mechanismback to civilization? Yet something told him that unless he put his fateto the test now he would never return. He had the utmost confidence inBurke--he might never be able to secure his services again--no, it wasnow or never. He entered the air-lock, closing and bolting the door, andpassed on into the chart room. 

At all events, he thought, they were no worse off than Pax when he hadmade his first trial flight, and they were working with a provenmachine, tuned to its fullest efficiency, and one which apparentlypossessed automatic stability. Atterbury had gone to the condenser roomand was waiting for the order to start, while Burke was making the finaladjustment of the gyroscopes which would put the Ring on itspredetermined course. He came through the door and joined Bennie. 

"Hooker, " he said, "we're sure going to have some experience. If I cankeep her from turning over, I think I can manage her. The trouble willcome when we slant the tractor. I'm not sure how much depends on theatmospheric valve, and how much on me. Things may happen quickly. If weturn over we're done for. "

He held out his hand to Bennie, who gripped it tremulously. 

"Well, " remarked the aviator, tossing away his cigarette, "we might aswell die now as any time!"

He walked swiftly over to the speaking-tube which communicated with thecondenser room and blew sharply into it. 

"Let her go, _Gallagher_!" he directed. 

"My God!" ejaculated Bennie. "Wait a second, can't you?"

But it was too late. He grabbed the rail, trembling. A humming soundfilled the air, and the gyroscopes slowly began to revolve. He looked upthrough the window at the tractor, from which shot streaks of palevapour with a noise like escaping steam. Somehow it seemed alive. 

The Ring was throbbing as if it, too, was impregnated with life. Thedischarge of the tractor had risen to a muffled roar. Shaking all over, Bennie crossed to the inside window and looked across the inner space ofthe Ring. As yet the yellow glow of the discharge was scarcely visible, but the steel sides of the Ring danced and quivered, undulating inwaves, and, as the intensity of the blast increased and the turbinecommenced to revolve, everything outside went suddenly blurred andindistinct. 

Dropping to his knees, Bennie looked down through the observation windowin the floor. A blinding cloud of yellow dust was driving out and awayfrom the base of the landing stage in the form of a gigantic ring. Theearth at their feet was hidden in whirls of vapour; and ripples of lightand shade chased each other outward in all directions, like shadows onthe bottom of a sandy pond rippled by a breeze. It made him dizzy tolook down there, and he arose from the window. Burke stood grimly at thecontrol, unmindful of his associate. Bennie crossed to the other side, and as he passed the gyroscopes, the air from the swiftly spinning discsblew back his hair. He could see nothing through the tumult that roareddown through the centre of the Ring, like a Niagara of hot steam shotthrough with a pale yellow phosphorescent light. The floor quiveredunder his feet, and ominous creaking and snapping sounds reverberatedthrough the outer shell, as the steel girders of the landing stage weregradually relieved of its weight. Just as it seemed to him thateverything was going to pieces, suddenly there was silence, save for thepurr of the machinery, and Bennie felt his knees sink under him. 

"We're off!" cried Burke. "Watch out!"

The floor swayed as the Ring, lifted by the tractor, swung to and frolike a pendulum. Bennie threw himself upon his stomach. The earth wasdropping away from them like a stone. He felt a sickening sensation. 

"Two thousand feet already, " gasped Burke. "The atmospheric valve is setfor five thousand. I'll make it ten! It will give us more room torecover in--if anything--goes wrong!"

He gave the knob another half turn and laid his hand lightly on thelever which controlled the movements of the tractor. Bennie, flattenedagainst the window, gazed below. The great dust ring showed indistinctlythrough a blue haze no longer directly beneath them, but a quarter of amile to the north. Evidently they were not rising vertically. 

The valley of the Ring looked like a black crack in a greenish-graydesert of rock and moss, the landing stage like a tiny bird's nest. Thefloor of the car moved slightly from side to side. Burke's face had gonegray, and he crouched unsteadily, one hand gripping a steel bracket onthe wall. 

"My Lord!" he mumbled with dry lips. "My Lord!"

Bennie, momentarily expecting annihilation, crawled on all fours toBurke's side. 

The needle of the manometer indicated nine thousand five hundred feet, and was rapidly nearing the next division. Suddenly Burke felt the levermove slowly under his hand as though operated by some outsideintelligence, and at the same moment the axis of one gyroscope swungslowly in a horizontal plane through an angle of nearly ninety degrees, while that of the other dipped slightly from the vertical. Both men hada ghastly feeling that the ghost of Pax had somehow returned and assumedcontrol of the car. Bennie rotated the map under the gyroscope until thefine black line on the dial again lay across their destination. Then hecrept back to his window again. The earth, far below and dimly visible, was sliding slowly northward, and the dust ring which marked theirstarting-point now lay as a flattened ellipse on the distant horizon. Beneath and behind them in their flight trailed a thin streak of palebluish fog--the wake of the Flying Ring. 

They were now searing the atmosphere at a height of nearly two miles, and the car was flying on a firm and even keel. There was no sound savethe dull roar of the tractor and a slight humming from the vibration ofthe light steel cables. Bennie no longer felt any disagreeablesensation. A strange detachment possessed him. Dark forests, lakes, anda mighty river appeared to the south--the Moisie--and they followed itas a fishhawk might have done, until the wilderness broke away beforethem and they saw the broad reach of the St. Lawrence streaked with thesmoke of ocean liners. 

And then he lost control of himself for the first time and sobbed like awoman--not from fear, nor weariness, nor excitement, but for joy--thejoy of the true scientist who has sought the truth and found it, hasachieved that for mankind which but for him it would have lacked, perchance, forever. And he looked up at Burke and smiled. 

The latter nodded. 

"Yes, " he remarked prosaically, "this is sure a little bit of all right!All to the good!"

EPILOGUE

Meanwhile, during the weeks that Hooker had been engaged in finding thevalley of the Ring, unbelievable things had happened in world politics. In spite of the fact that Pax, having decreed the shifting of the Poleand the transformation of Central Europe into the Arctic zone, hadrefused further communication with mankind, all the nations--and nonemore zealously than the German Republic--had proceeded immediately towithdraw their armies within their own borders, and under the personalsupervision of a General Commission to destroy all their armaments andmunitions of war. The lyddite bombs, manufactured in vast quantities bythe Krupps for the Relay Gun and all other high explosives, were used todemolish the fortresses upon every frontier of Europe. The contents ofevery arsenal was loaded upon barges and sunk in mid-Atlantic. And everyform of military organization, rank, service, and even uniform, wasabolished throughout the world. 

A coalition of nations was formed under a single general government, known as the United States of Europe, which in coöperation with theUnited States of North and South America, of Asia, and of Africa, arranged for an annual world congress at The Hague, and which enforcedits decrees by means of an International Police. In effect all theinhabitants of the globe came under a single control, as far as languageand geographical boundaries would permit. Each state enforced locallaws, but all were obedient to the higher law--the Law ofHumanity--which was uniform through the earth. If an individual offendedagainst the law of one nation, he was held to have offended against all, and was dealt with as such. The international police needed no treatiesof extradition. The New York embezzler who fled to Nairobi was sent backas a matter of course without delay. 

Any man was free to go and live where he chose, to manufacture, buy, andsell as he saw fit. And, because the fear and shadow of war wereremoved, the nations grew rich beyond the imagination of men; greathospitals and research laboratories, universities, schools, andkindergartens, opera houses, theatres, and gardens of every sort sprangup everywhere, paid for no one quite knew how. The nations ceased tobuild dreadnoughts, and instead used the money to send great troops ofchildren with the teachers travelling over the world. It was against thelaw to own or manufacture any weapon that could be used to take humanlife. And because the nations had nothing to fear from one another, andbecause there were no scheming diplomatists and bureaucrats to make aliving out of imaginary antagonisms, people forgot that they were Frenchor German or Russian or English, just as the people of the United Statesof America had long before practically disregarded the fact that theycame from Ohio or Oregon or Connecticut or Nevada. Russians with weakthroats went to live in Italy as a matter of course, and Spaniards wholiked German cooking settled in Münich. 

All this, of course, did not happen at once, but came about quitenaturally after the abolition of war. And after it had been done, everybody wondered why it had not been done ten centuries before; andpeople became so interested in destroying all the relics of thatdespicable employment, warfare, that they almost forgot that the Man WhoRocked the Earth had threatened that he would shift the axis of theglobe. So that when the day fixed by him came and everything remainedjust as it always had been--and everybody still wore linen-meshunderwear in Strassburg and flannels in Archangel--nobody thought verymuch about it, or commented on the fact that the Flying Ring was nolonger to be seen. And the only real difference was that you could takea P. & O. Steamer at Marseilles and buy a through ticket to TasiliAhaggar--if you wanted to go there--and that the shores of the Saharabecame the Riviera of the world, crowded with health resorts andwatering-places--so that Pax had not lived in vain, nor Thornton, norBill Hood, nor Bennie Hooker, nor any of them. 

The whole thing is a matter of record, as it should be. Thedeliberations of Conference No. 2 broke up in a hubbub, just as VonHelmuth and Von Koenitz had intended, and the transcripts of theirdiscussions proved to be not of the slightest scientific value. But inthe files of the old War Department--now called the Department for theAlleviation of Poverty and Human Suffering--can be read the messagesinterchanged between The Dictator of Human Destiny and the President ofthe United States, together with all the reports and observationsrelating thereto, including Professor Hooker's Report to the SmithsonianInstitute of his journey to the valley of the Ring and what he foundthere. Only the secret of the Ring--of thermic induction and atomicdisintegration--in short, of the Lavender Ray, is his by right ofdiscovery, or treasure trove, or what you will, and so is his patent onHooker's Space-Navigating Car, in which he afterward explored the solarsystem and the uttermost regions of the sidereal ether. But that shallbe told hereafter. 

THE END