XII

The shabby-genteel little houses of the Appian Way, in Cambridge, whose

window-eyes with their blue-green lids had watched Bennie Hooker come

and go, trudging back and forth to lectures and recitations, first as

boy and then as man, for thirty years, must have blinked with amazement

at the sight of the little professor as he started on the afterward

famous Hooker Expedition to Labrador in search of the Flying Ring.

For the five days following Thornton's unexpected visit Bennie, existing

without sleep and almost without food save for his staple of

ready-to-serve chocolate, was the centre of a whirl of books,

logarithms, and calculations in the University Library, and constituted

himself an unmitigated, if respected, pest at the Cambridge Observatory.

Moreover--and this was the most iconoclastic spectacle of all to his

conservative pedagogical neighbours in the Appian Way--telegraph boys on

bicycles kept rushing to and fro in a stream between the Hooker

boarding-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 same

series of experiments to locate the origin of the phenomena which had

shaken the globe as had been made use of by Professor von Schwenitz at

the direction of General von Helmuth, the Imperial German Commissioner

for War, at Mainz. The result had been approximately identical, and

Hooker had satisfied himself that somewhere in the centre of Labrador

his fellow-scientist--the discoverer of the Lavender Ray--was conducting

the operations that had resulted in the dislocation of the earth's axis

and retardation of its motion. Filled with a pure and unselfish

scientific joy, it became his sole and immediate ambition to find the

man who had done these things, to shake him by the hand, and to compare

notes with him upon the now solved problems of thermic induction and of

atomic disintegration.

But how to get there? How to reach him? For Prof. Bennie Hooker had

never been a hundred miles from Cambridge in his life, and a journey to

Labrador seemed almost as difficult as an attempt to reach the pole. Off

again then to the University Library, with pale but polite young ladies

hastening to fetch him atlases, charts, guidebooks, and works dealing

with sport and travel, until at last the great scheme unfolded itself to

his mind--the scheme that was to result in the perpetuation of atomic

disintegration for the uses of mankind and the subsequent alteration of

civilization, 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 must

take with him the notes of his own experiments, the diagrams of his

apparatus, and his precious zirconium; and he must return with the great

secret of atomic disintegration in his breast, ready, with the

discoverer's permission, to give it to the dry and thirsty world. And

then, 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-gray

suds over his front steps--it was 6:30 A.M.--and was on the point of

resignedly kneeling and swabbing up the doctor's porch, when she saw the

door of the professor's residence open cautiously and a curious human

exhibit, the like of which had ne'er before been seen on sea or land,

surreptitiously emerge. It was Prof. Bennie Hooker--disguised as a

salmon fisherman!

Over a brand-new sportsman's knickerbocker suit of screaming yellow

check he had donned an English mackintosh. On his legs were gaiters, and

on his head a helmetlike affair of cloth with a visor in front and

another behind, with eartabs fastened at the crown with a piece of black

ribbon--in other words a "Glengarry." The suit had been manufactured in

Harvard Square, and was a triumph of sartorial art on the part of one

who had never been nearer to a real fisherman than a coloured fashion

plate. However, it did suggest a sportsman of the variety usually

portrayed in the comic supplements, and, to complete the picture, in

Professor Hooker's hands and under his arms were yellow pigskin bags and

rod cases, so that he looked like the show window of a harness store.

"Fo' de land sakes!" exclaimed the Jellys' coloured maid, oblivious of

her suds. "Fo' de Lawd! Am dat Perfesser Hookey?"

It was! But a new and glorified professor, with a soul thrilling to the

joy of discovery and romance, with a flash in his eyes, and the savings

of ten years in a large roll in his left-hand knickerbocker pocket.

Thus started the Hooker Expedition, which discovered the Flying Ring and

made the famous report to the Smithsonian Institution after the

disarmament of the nations. But could the nations have seen the

expedition as it emerged from its boarding-house that September morning

they would have rubbed their eyes.

With the utmost difficulty Prof. Bennie Hooker negotiated his bags and

rod cases as far as Harvard Square, where, through the assistance of a

friendly conductor with a sense of humour, he was enabled to board an

electric surface car to the North Station.

Beyond the start up the River Moisie his imagination refused to carry

him. But he had a faith that approximated certainty that over the Height

of Land--just over the edge--he would find Pax and the Flying Ring.

During all the period required for his experiments and preparations he

had never once glanced at a newspaper or inquired as to the progress of

the war that was rapidly exterminating the inhabitants of the globe.

Thermic induction, atomic disintegration, the Lavender Ray, these were

the 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 nations

assembled at Washington had been feverishly attempting to unite upon the

terms of a universal treaty that should end militarism and war forever.

And thereafter, also, although Professor Hooker was sublimely

unconscious of the fact, the celebrated conclave, known as Conference

No. 2, composed of the best-known scientific men from every laud, was

sitting, perspiring, in the great lecture hall of the Smithsonian

Institution, its members shouting at one another in a dozen different

languages, telling each other what they did and didn't know, and

becoming more and more confused and entangled in an underbrush of

contradictory facts and observations and irreconcilable theories until

they were making no progress whatever--which was precisely what the

astute and plausible Count von Koenitz, the German Ambassador, had

planned and intended.

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

The Flying Ring did not again appear, and in spite of the uncontroverted

testimony of Acting-Consul Quinn, Mohammed Ben Ali el Bad, and a

thousand others who had actually seen the Lavender Ray, people began

gradually, almost unconsciously, to assume that the destruction of the

Atlas Mountains had been the work of an unsuspected volcano and that the

presence of the Flying Ring had been a coincidence and not the cause of

the disruption. So the incident passed by and public attention

refocussed itself upon the conflict on the plains of Châlons-sur-Marne.

Only Bill Hood, Thornton, and a few others in the secret, together with

the President, the Cabinet, and the members of Conference No. 1 and of

Conference No. 2, truly apprehended the significance of what had

occurred, and realized that either war or the human race must pass away

forever. And no one at all, save only the German Ambassador and the

Imperial German Commissioners, suspected that one of the nations had

conceived and was putting into execution a plan designed to result in

the acquirement of the secret of how the earth could be rocked and in

the capture of the discoverer. For the _Sea Fox_, bearing the German

expeditionary force, had sailed from Amsterdam twelve days after the

conference held at Mainz between Professor von Schwenitz and General von

Helmuth, and having safely rounded the Orkneys was now already well on

its course toward Labrador. Bennie Hooker, however, was ignorant of all

these things. Like an immigrant with a tag on his arm, he sat on the

train which bore him toward Quebec, his ticket stuck into the band on

his hat, dreaming of a transformer that wouldn't--couldn't--melt at only

six thousand degrees.

When Professor Hooker awoke in his room at the hotel in Quebec the

morning after his arrival there, he ate a leisurely breakfast, and

having smoked a pipe on the terrace, strolled down to the wharves along

the river front. Here to his disgust he learned that the Labrador

steamer, the _Druro_, would not sail until the following Thursday--a

three days' wait. Apparently Labrador was a less-frequented locality

than he had supposed. He mastered his impatience, however, and

discovering a library presided over by a highly intelligent graduate of

Edinburgh, he became so interested in various profound treatises on

physics which he discovered that he almost missed his boat.

Assisted by the head porter, and staggering under the weight of his new

rod cases and other impedimenta, Bennie boarded the _Druro_ on Thursday

morning, engaged a stateroom, and purchased a ticket for Seven Islands,

which is the nearest harbour to the mouth of the River Moisie. She was a

large and comfortable river steamer of about eight hundred and fifty

tons, and from her appearance belied the fact that she was the

connecting link between civilization and the desolate and ice-clad

wastes of the Far North, as in fact she was. The captain regarded Bennie

with indifference, if not disrespect, grunted, and ascending to the

pilot house blew the whistle. Quebec, with its teeming wharves and

crowded shipping, overlooked by the cliffs that made Wolfe famous,

slowly fell behind. Off their leeward bow the Isle of Orléans swung

nearer and swept past, its neat homesteads inviting the weary traveller

to pastoral repose. The river cleared. Low, farm-clad shores began to

slip by. The few tourists and returning habitans settled themselves in

the bow and made ready for their voyage.

There would have been much to interest the ordinary American traveller

in this comparatively unfrequented corner of his native continent; but

our 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 several

exceedingly uninviting looking books which he produced from his valise.

The _Druro_, quite as oblivious to Professor Hooker, proceeded on her

accustomed way, passed by Tadousac, and made her first stop at the

Godbout. Bennie, finding the boat no longer in motion, reappeared on

deck under the mistaken impression that they had reached the end of the

voyage, for he was unfamiliar with the topography of the St. Lawrence,

and in fact had very vague ideas as to distances and the time required

to traverse them by rail or boat.

At the Godbout the _Druro_ dropped a habitan or two, a few boatloads of

steel rods, crates of crockery and tobacco, and then thrust her bow out

into the stream and steered down river, rounding at length the Pointe

des Monts and winding in behind the Isles des Oeufs to the River

Pentecoute, where she deposited some more habitans, including a priest

in a black soutane, who somewhat incongruously was smoking a large

cigar. Then, nosing through a fog bank and breaking out at last into

sunlight again, she steamed across and put in past the Carousel, that

picturesque and rocky headland, into Seven Islands Bay. Here she

anchored, and, having discharged cargo, steamed out by the Grand Boule,

where eighteen miles beyond the islands Bennie saw the pilot house of

the old _St. Olaf_, of unhappy memory, just lifting above the water.

He had emerged from the retirement of his stateroom only on being asked

by the steward for his ticket and learning that the _Druro_ was nearing

the end of her journey. For nearly two days he had been submerged in

Soddy on The Interpretation of Radium. The _Druro_ was running along a

sandy, low-lying beach about half a mile offshore. They were nearing the

mouth of a wide river. The volume of black fresh water from the Moisie

rushed out into the St. Lawrence until it met the green sea water,

causing a sharp demarcation of colour and a no less pronounced conflict

of natural forces. For, owing to the pressure of the tide against the

solid mass of the fresh stream, acres of water unexpectedly boiled on

all 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 fleet

of canoes, skiffs, and sailboats came racing out from shore, for the

steamer does not land here, but hangs in the offing and lighters its

cargo ashore. Leading the lot was a sort of whaleboat propelled by two

oars on one side and one on the other, and in the sternsheets sat a

rosy-cheeked, good-natured looking man with a smooth-shaven face who

Bennie knew must be Malcolm Holliday.

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

The captain from the pilot house waved contemptuously in Bennie's

general 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 at

him.

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 salmon

fisherman is always spoken of by natives and local residents as an

"officer," the reason being that most of the sportsmen who visit these

waters are English army officers. Hence salmon fishermen are universally

termed "officers," and a habitan will describe the sportsmen who have

rented a certain river as "_les officiers de la Moisie_" or "_les

officiers de la Romaine_."]

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

anywhere."

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

appearance.

"I suppose I can go ashore, can't I?" insisted Bennie somewhat

indignantly. "I'll just take a camping trip then. I'd like to see the

big salmon cache up at the forks if I can't do anything else."

Instantly Holliday scented something. "Another fellow after gold," he

muttered to himself.

Just at that moment, the tide being at the ebb, a hundred acres of green

water off the _Druro's_ bow broke into whirling waves and jets of foam

again. All about them, and a mile to seaward, these merry men danced by

the score. Bennie thrilled at the beauty of it. The whaleboat containing

Holliday was now right under the ship's bows.

"I want to look round anyhow," expostulated Bennie. "I've come all the

way from Boston." He felt himself treated like a criminal, felt the

suspicion in Holliday's eye.

The factor laughed. "In that case you certainly deserve sympathy." Then

he hesitated. "Oh, well, come along," he said finally. "We'll see what

we can do for you."

A rope ladder had been thrown over the side and one of the sailors now

lowered Bennie's luggage into the boat. The professor followed, avoiding

with difficulty stepping on his mackintosh as he climbed down the

slippery rounds. Holliday grasped his hand and yanked him to a seat in

the stern.

"Yes," he repeated, "if you've come all the way from Boston I guess

we'll have to put you up for a few days anyway."

A crate of canned goods, a parcel of mail, and a huge bundle of

newspapers were deposited in the bow. Holliday waved his hand. The

_Druro_ churned the water and swung out into midstream again. Bennie

looked curiously after her. To the north lay a sandy shore dotted by a

scraggy forest of dwarf spruce and birch. A few fishing huts and a mass

of wooden shanties fringed the forest. To the east, seaward, many miles

down that great stretch of treacherous, sullen river waited a gray bank

of fog. But overhead the air was crystalline with that sparkling,

scratchy brilliance that is found only in northern climes. Nature seemed

hard, relentless. With his feet entangled in rod cases Professor Hooker

wondered for a moment what on earth he was there for, landing on this

inhospitable coast. Then his eyes sought the genial face of Malcolm

Holliday and hope sprang up anew. For there is that about this genial

frontiersman 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 his

father was before him, or as was old Peter McKenzie, the head factor,

who incidentally cast the best salmon fly ever thrown east of Montreal

or south of Ungava. Bennie found comfort in Holliday's smile, and felt

toward him as a child does toward its mother.

They neared shore and ran alongside a ramshackle pier, up the slippery

poles of which Bennie was instructed to clamber. Then, dodging rotten

boards and treacherous places, he gained the sand of the beach and stood

at last on Labrador. A group of Montagnais picked up the professor's

luggage and, headed by Holliday, they started for the latter's house. It

was a strange and amusing landing of an expedition the results of which

have revolutionized the life of the inhabitants of the entire globe. No

such inconspicuous event has ever had so momentous a conclusion. And now

when Malcolm Holliday makes his yearly trip home to Quebec, to report to

the firm of Holliday Brothers, who own all the nets far east of

Anticosti, he spends hours at the Club des Voyageurs, recounting in

detail all the circumstances surrounding the arrival of Professor Hooker

and how he took him for a gold hunter.

"Anyhow," he finishes, "I knew he wasn't a salmon fisherman in spite of

his rods and cases, for he didn't know a Black Dose from a Thunder and

Lightning or a Jock Scott, and he thought you could catch salmon with a

worm!"

It was true wholly. Bennie did suppose one killed the king of game fish

as he had caught minnows in his childhood, and his geologic researches

in the Harvard Library had not taught him otherwise. Neither had his

tailor.

"My dear fellow," said Holliday as they smoked their pipes on the narrow

board piazza at the Post, "of course I'll help you all I can, but you've

come at a bad season of the year all round. In the first place, you'll

be eaten alive by black flies, gnats, and mosquitoes." He slapped

vigorously as he spoke. "And you'll have the devil of a job getting

canoe men. You see all the Montagnais are down here at the settlement

'making their mass.' Once a year they leave the hunting grounds up by

the Divide and beyond and come down river to '_faire la messe_'--it's a

sacred duty with 'em. They're very religious, as you probably know--a

fine lot, too, take 'em altogether, gentle, obedient, industrious,

polite, cheerful, and fair to middling honest. They have a good deal of

French 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 the

birds--how caribou--migrate every year. Well, these Montagnais are just

like them. They have a regular routine. Each man has a line of traps of

his own, all the way up to the Height of Land. They all go up river in

the autumn with their winter's supply of pork, flour, tea, powder, lead,

axes, files, rosin to mend their canoes, and castoreum--made out of

beaver glands, you know--to take away the smell of their hands from the

baited traps. They go up in families, six or seven canoes together, and

as each man reaches his own territory his canoe drops out of the

procession and he makes a camp for his wife and babies. Then he spends

the winter--six or seven months--in the woods following his line of

traps. By and by the ice goes out and he begins to want some society. He

hasn'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 Newport

season 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 and

maybe 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 country

from here to Ungava. There's Marc now--_Venez ici_, Marc St. Ange." A

swarthy, lithe Montagnais was coming down the road, and Holliday

addressed him rapidly in habitan French: "This gentleman wishes to go up

river 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 telling

a 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 angry

he will come back."

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

"Why, when the aurora borealis--Northern Lights--plays in the sky the

Indians always say that the 'marionettes are dancing.' About four weeks

ago we had some electrical disturbances up here and a kind of an

earthquake. It scared these Indians silly. There was a tremendous

display, almost like a volcano. It beat anything I ever saw, and I've

been here fifteen years. The Indians said the Father of the Marionettes

was angry because they didn't dance enough to suit him, and that he was

making them dance. Then some of them caught a glimpse of a shooting

star, or a comet, or something, and called it the Father of the

Marionettes. They had quite a time--held masses, and so on--and were

really 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 more

about salmon. I know what you're after--it's _gold_!"

* * * * *

The moon was still hanging low over the firs at four o'clock the next

morning when three black and silent shadows emerged from the factor's

house and made their way, cautiously and with difficulty, across the

sand to where a canoe had been run into the riffles of the beach. Marc

came first, carrying a sheet-iron stove with a collapsible funnel; then

his Uncle Edouard, shouldering a bundle consisting of a tent and a

couple of sacks of flour and pork; and lastly Professor Hooker with his

mackintosh and rifle, entirely unaware of the fact that his careful

guides had removed all the cartridges from his luggage lest he should

shoot too many caribou and so spoil the winter's food supply. It was

cold, almost frosty. In the black flood of the river the stars burned

with a chill, wavering light. Bennie put on his mackintosh with a

shiver. The two guides quietly piled the luggage in the centre of the

canoe, 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 ripples

against the birch side of the canoe, the gurgle of the water round the

paddle blades, and the rush of the bow as, after it had paused on the

withdraw, it leaped forward on the stroke, were the only sounds that

broke the deathlike silence of the semi-arctic night. Bennie struck a

match, and it flared red against the black water as he lit his pipe, but

he felt a great stirring within his little breast, a great courage to

dare, to do, for he was off, really off, on his great hunt, his search

for the secret that would remake the world. With the current whispering

against its sides the canoe swept in a wide circle to midstream. The

moon was now partially obscured behind the treetops. To the east a faint

glow made the horizon seem blacker than ever. Ahead the wide waste of

the dark river seemed like an engulfing chasm. Drowsiness enwrapped

Professor Hooker, a drowsiness intensified by the rythmic swinging of

the paddles and the pile of bedding against which he reclined. He closed

his 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 des

marionettes!_"

Bennie awoke with a start that almost upset the canoe. The blood rushed

to 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. Was

he deceived? Was the wish father to the thought? Or did he really see at

an immeasurable distance upon the horizon a quickly dying trail of

orange-yellow light? He rubbed his eyes--his heart beating wildly under

his 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 deep

into the water.

Day broke with staccato emphasis. The sun swung up out of Europe and

burned down upon the canoe with a heat so equatorial in quality that

Bennie discarded both his mackintosh and his sporting jacket. All signs

of human life had disappeared from the distant banks of the river and

the bow of the canoe faced a gray-blue flood emerging from a wilderness

of scrubby trees. A few gulls flopped their way coast-ward, and at rare

intervals a salmon leaped and slashed the slow-moving surface into a

boiling circle; but for the rest their surroundings were as set, as

immobile, as the painted scenery of a stage, save where the current

swept the scattered promontories of the shore. But they moved steadily

north. So wearied was Bennie with the unaccustomed light and fresh air

that by ten o'clock he felt the day must be over, although the sun had

not yet reached the zenith. Unexpectedly Marc and Edouard turned the

canoe 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 a

cup of tea. How wonderful it seemed--a genuine elixir! And then he felt

the stab of a mosquito, and putting up his hand found it blotched with

blood. And the black flies came also. Soon the professor was tramping up

and down, waving his handkerchief and clutching wildly at the air. Then

they pushed off again.

The sun dropped westward as they turned bend after bend, disclosing ever

the same view beyond. Shadows of rocks and trees began to jut across the

eddies. A great heron, as big as an ostrich, or so he seemed, arose

awkwardly and flapped off, trailing yards of legs behind him. Then

Bennie put on first his jacket and then his mackintosh. He realized that

his hands were numb. The sun was now only a foot or so above the sky

line.

This time it was Marc who grunted and thrust the canoe toward the

river's edge with a sideways push. It grounded on a belt of sand and

they dragged it ashore. Bennie, who had been looking forward to the

night with vivid apprehension, now discovered to his great happiness

that the chill was keeping away the black flies. Joyfully he assisted in

gathering dry sticks, driving tent pegs, and picking reindeer moss for

bedding. Then as darkness fell Edouard fried eggs and bacon, and with

their boots off and their stockinged feet toasting to the blaze the

three men ate as becomes men who have laboured fifteen hours in the open

air. They drank tin cups of scalding tea, a pint at a time, and found it

good; and they smoked their pipes with their backs propped against the

tree trunks and found it heaven. Then as the stars came out and the

woods behind them snapped with strange noises, Edouard took his pipe

from 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 firelight

seemed hundreds of yards away. The little professor was "all in," and he

sat with his chin dropped again to his chest, until he heard Marc

exclaim:

"_Voilà! Elles dansent!_"

He raised his eyes. Just across the black, silent sweep of the river

three giant prismatic searchlights were playing high toward the

polestar, such searchlights as the gods might be using in some monstrous

game. They wavered here and there, shifting and dodging, faded and

sprang up again, till Bennie, dizzy, closed his eyes. The lights were

still dancing in the north as he stumbled to his couch of moss.

"_Toujour les marionettes!_" whispered Marc gently, as he might to a

child. "_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 from

a profound coma. The guides had already loaded the canoe and were

waiting for him. The sun was high. Apologetically he pulled on his

boots, and stepping to the sand dashed the icy water into his face. His

muscles groaned and rasped. His neck refused to respond to his desires

with its accustomed elasticity. But he drank his tea and downed his

scrambled eggs with an enthusiasm unknown in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Marc gave him a hand into the canoe and they were off. The day had

begun.

The river narrowed somewhat and the shores grew more rocky. At noon they

lunched 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 their

trip up the Moisie when Marc suddenly stopped paddling and gazed

intently shoreward. After a moment he said something in a low tone to

Edouard, and they turned the canoe and drove it rapidly toward a small

cove half hidden by rocks. Bennie, straining his eyes, could see nothing

at first, but when the canoe was but ten yards from shore he caught

sight of the motionless figure of a man, lying on his face with his head

nearly in the water. Marc turned him over gently, but the limbs fell

limp, one leg at a grotesque angle to the knee. Bennie saw instantly

that it was broken. The Indian's face was white and drawn, no doubt with

pain.

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

Edouard shrugged his shoulders and fetched a small flask of brandy from

the professor's sack. Forcing open the jaws, he poured a few drops into

the 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 have

accomplished the object of his quest. It took three days to nurse the

half-dead and altogether starved Montagnais back to life, but he

received the tenderest care. Marc shot a young caribou and gave him the

blood 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 a

much-needed rest; and by degrees they learned from Nichicun the story of

his misfortune--the story that forms a part of the chronicle of the

expedition, which can be read at the Smithsonian Institution.

He was a Montagnais, he said, with a line of traps to the northeast of

the 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. So

he had taken his wife, who was sick, and had gone over into the Nascopee

country for food, and there his wife had died. He had made up his mind

very late in the season to come down to Moisie and make his mass and get

a new wife, and start a fresh line of traps in the autumn. All the other

Montagnais had descended the river in their canoes long before, so he

was alone. His provisions had given out and he saw no caribou. He began

to think he would surely starve to death. And then one evening, on the

point 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 its

shoulder. It lay kicking among the boulders, pushing itself along by its

hind legs, and he had feared that it would escape. In his haste to reach

it he had slipped on a wet rock and fallen and broken his leg. In spite

of the pain he had crawled on, and then had taken place a wild, terrible

fight 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 it

with his knife. Then, lying there on the ground beside it, he drank its

blood and cut off the raw flesh in strips for food. Finally one day he

had crawled to the river for water and had fainted.

The professor and his guides made for the Indian a hut of rocks and

bark, and threw a great pile of moss into the corner of it for him to

lie on. They carved a splint for his leg and bound it up, and cut a huge

heap of firewood for him, smoking caribou meat and hanging it up in the

hut. Somebody would come up river and find him, or if not, the three men

would pick him up on their return. For this was right and the law of the

woods. But never a word of particular interest to Prof. Bennie Hooker

did Nichicun speak until the night before their departure, although the

reason and manner of his speaking were natural enough. It happened as

follows: but first it should be said that the Nascopees are an ignorant

and barbarous tribe, dirty and treacherous, upon whom the Montagnais

look down with contempt and scorn. They do not even wear civilized

clothes, and their ways are not the ways of _les bons sauvages_. They

have no priests; they do not come to the coast; and the Montagnais will

not mingle with them. Thus it bespoke the hunger of Nichicun that he was

willing 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 for

Bennie's edification.

No, the injured Montagnais told them, the Nascopees were not nice; they

were dirty. They ate decayed food and they never went to mass. Moreover,

they were half-witted. While he was there they were all planning to

migrate for the most absurd reason--what do you suppose? Magic! They

claimed the end of the world was coming! Of course it was coming some

time. But they said now, right away. But why? Because the marionettes

were dancing so much. And they had seen the Father of the Marionettes

floating in the sky and making thunder! Fools! But the strangest thing

of all, they said they could hunt no longer, for they were afraid to

cross something--an iron serpent that stung with fire if you touched it,

and killed you! What foolishness! An iron serpent! But he had asked them

and they had sworn on the holy cross that it was true.

Bennie listened with a chill creeping up his spine. But it would never

do to hint what this disclosure meant to him. Between puffs of his pipe

he asked casual, careless questions of Nichicun. These Nascopees, for

instance, how far off might their land be? And where did they assert

this extraordinary serpent of iron to be? Were there rivers in the

Nascopee country? Did white men ever go there? All these things the

wounded Montagnais told him. It appeared, moreover, that the Rassini

River was near the Nascopee territory, and that it flowed into the

Moisie only seven miles above the camp. All that night the marionettes

danced in Bennie's brain.

Next morning they propped Nichicun on his bed of moss, laid a rifle and

a box of matches beside him, and bade him farewell. At the mouth of the

Rassini River Prof. Bennie Hooker held up his hand and announced that he

was going to the Nascopee country. The canoe halted abruptly. Old

Edouard 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 to

see the river. They had no supplies for such a journey, no proper amount

of ammunition. No, they would deposit the professor on the nearest

sandbar if he wished, but they were going back.

Bennie arose unsteadily in the canoe and dug into his pocket, producing

a roll of gold coin. Two hundred and fifty dollars he promised them if

they would take him to the nearest tribe of Nascopees; five hundred if

they could find the Iron Serpent.

"_Bien!_" exclaimed both Indians without a moment's hesitation, and the

canoe plunged forward up the Rassini.

Once more a dreamlike succession of brilliant, frosty days; once more

the star-studded sky in which always the marionettes danced. And then at

last 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 stove

and half their supply of food. Then they plunged into the brush,

eastward. Bennie had never known such grueling work and heartbreaking

fatigue; and the clouds of flies pursued them venomously and with

unrelenting persistence. At first they had to cut their way through

acres of brush, and then the land rose and they saw before them miles of

swamp and barren land dotted with dwarf trees and lichen-grown rocks.

Here it was easier and they made better time; but the professor's legs

ached and his rifle wore a red bruise on his shoulder. And then after

five days of torment they came upon the Iron Rail. It ran in almost a

direct line from northwest to southwest, with hardly a waver, straight

over the barrens and through the forests of scrub, with a five-foot

clearing upon either side. At intervals it was elevated to a height of

eight or ten inches upon insulated iron braces. Both Marc and Edouard

stared at in wonder, while Bennie made them a little speech.

It was, he said, a thing called a "monorail," made by a man who

possessed strange secrets concerning the earth and the properties of

matter. That man lived over the Height of Land toward Ungava. He was a

good man and would not harm other good men. But he was a great

magician--if you believed in magic. On the rail undoubtedly he ran

something called a gyroscopic engine, and carried his stores and

machinery into the wilderness. The Nascopees were not such fools after

all, for here was the something they feared to cross--the iron serpent

that bit and killed. Let them watch while he made it bite. He allowed

his rifle to fall against the rail, and instantly a shower of blue

sparks 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 their

return to civilization give them as much again. Without more ado the

Indians lifted their packs and swung off to the northwest along the line

of the rail. The stock of Prof. Bennie Hooker had risen in their

estimation. On they ploughed across the barrens, through swamps, over

the quaking muskeg, into the patches of scrub growth where the short

branches slapped their faces, but always they kept in sight of the rail.

* * * * *

The extraordinary announcement, transmitted from various European news

agencies, that an attempt had been made by the general commanding the

First Artillery Division of the German Army of the Meuse to violate the

armistice, had caused a profound sensation, particularly as the attempt

to destroy Paris had been prevented only by the sudden appearance of the

same mysterious Flying Ring that had shortly before caused the

destruction of the Atlas Mountains and the flooding of the Sahara Desert

by the Mediterranean Sea.

The advent of the Flying Ring on this second occasion had been noted by

several hundred thousand persons, both soldiers and non-combatants. At

about the hour of midnight, as if to observe whether the warring nations

intended sincerely to live up to their agreement and bring about an

actual cessation of hostilities, the Ring had appeared out of the north

and, floating through the sky, had followed the lines of the

belligerents from Brussels to Verdun and southward. The blinding yellow

light that it had projected toward the earth had roused the soldiers

sleeping in their intrenchments and caused great consternation all along

the line of fortifications, as it was universally supposed that the

director of its flight intended to annihilate the combined armies of

France, England, Germany, and Belgium. But the Ring had sailed

peacefully along, three thousand feet aloft, deluging the countryside

with its dazzling light, sending its beams into the casemates of the

huge fortresses of the Rhine and the outer line of the French

fortifications, searching the redoubts and trenches, but doing no harm

to the sleeping armies that lay beneath it; until at last the silence of

the night had been broken by the thunder of "Thanatos," and in the

twinkling of an eye the Lavender Ray had descended, to turn the village

of Champaubert into the smoking crater of a dying volcano. The entire

division of artillery had been annihilated, with the exception of a few

stragglers, and of the Relay Gun naught remained but a distorted puddle

of steel and iron.

Long before the news of the horrible retribution visited by the master

of the Ring upon Treitschke, the major-general of artillery, and the

inventor, Von Heckmann, had reached the United States, Bill Hood,

sitting in the wireless receiving station of the Naval Observatory at

Georgetown, had received through the ether a message from his mysterious

correspondent in the north that sent him hurrying to the White House.

Pax had called the Naval Observatory and had transmitted the following

ultimatum, 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 White

House that afternoon exhibited a character in striking contrast with the

first, at which Von Koenitz and the ambassadors from France, Russia, and

England had had their memorable disagreement. It was a serious,

apprehensive, and subdued group of gentlemen that gathered round the

great mahogany table in the Cabinet chamber to debate what course of

action the nations should pursue to avert the impending calamity to

mankind. For that Pax could shift the axis of the earth, or blow the

globe clean out of its orbit into space, if he chose to do so, no one

doubted any longer.

And first it fell as the task of the ambassador representing the

Imperial German Commissioners to assure his distinguished colleagues

that his nation disavowed and denied all responsibility for the conduct

of General Treitschke in bombarding Paris after the hour set for the

armistice. It was unjust and contrary to the dictates of reason, he

argued, to hold the government of a nation comprising sixty-five

millions of human beings and five millions of armed men accountable for

the actions of a single individual. He spoke passionately, eloquently,

persuasively, and at the conclusion of his speech the ambassadors

present were forced to acknowledge that what he said was true, and to

accept without reservation his plausible assurances that the Imperial

German Commissioners had no thought but to cooperate with the other

governments in bringing about a lasting peace such as Pax demanded.

But the immediate question was, had not the time for this gone by? Was

it not too late to convince the master of the Flying Ring that his

orders would be obeyed? Could anything be done to avert the calamity he

threatened to bring upon the earth--to prevent the conversion of Europe

into a barren waste of ice fields? For Pax had announced that he had

spoken for the last time and that the fate of Europe was sealed. All the

ambassadors agreed that a general European immigration was practically

impossible; and as a last resort it was finally decided to transmit to

Pax, through the Georgetown station, a wireless message signed by all

the ambassadors of the belligerent nations, solemnly agreeing within one

week to disband their armies and to destroy all their munitions and

implements of war. This message was delivered to Hood, with instructions

for its immediate delivery. All that afternoon and evening the operator

sat in the observatory, calling over and over again the three letters

that marked mankind's only communication with the controller of its

destiny:

"PAX--PAX--PAX!"

But no answer came. For long, weary hours Hood waited, his ears glued to

the receivers. An impenetrable silence surrounded the master of the

Ring. Pax had spoken. He would say no more. Late that night Hood

reluctantly returned to the White House and informed the President that

he was unable to deliver the message of the nations.

And meantime Prof. Bennie Hooker, with Marc and Edouard, struggled

across the wilderness of Labrador, following the Iron Rail that led to

the hiding-place of the master of the world.

* * * * *

The terrible fate of the German expeditionary force is too well known to

require comment. As has been already told, the _Sea Fox_ had sailed from

Amsterdam twelve days after the conference in the War Office at Mainz

between General von Helmuth and Professor von Schwenitz. Once north of

the Orkneys it had encountered fair weather, and it had reached Hamilton

Inlet in ten days without mishap, and with the men and animals in the

best of condition. At Rigolet the men had disembarked and loaded their

howitzers, mules, and supplies upon the flat-bottomed barges brought

with them for that purpose. Thirty French and Indian guides had been

engaged, and five days later the expedition, towed by the powerful motor

launches, had started up the river toward the chain of lakes lying

northwest toward Ungava. Every one was in the best of spirits and

everything moved with customary German precision like clockwork. Nothing

had been forgotten, not even the pungent invention of a Berlin chemist

to discourage mosquitoes. Without labour, without anxiety, the fourteen

barges bored through the swift currents and at last reached a great lake

that lay like a silver mirror for miles about them. The moon rose and

turned the boats into weird shapes as they ploughed through the gray

mists--a strange and terrible sight for the Nascopees lurking in the

underbrush along the shore. And while the men smoked and sang "Die Wacht

am Rhein," listening to the trill of the ripples against the bows, the

foremost 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 the

same instant the other barges struck bottom. Intense excitement and

confusion prevailed among the members of the expedition, since they were

almost out of sight of land and the draft of the motorboats was only

nineteen inches. But no efforts could move the barges from where they

were. All night long the propellers churned the gleaming water of the

lake to foam, but without result. Each and every barge and boat was hard

and fast aground, and when the gray daylight came stealing across the

lake there was no lake to be seen, only a reeking marsh, covered for

miles with a welter of green slime and decaying vegetable matter across

which it would seem no human being or animal could flounder. As far as

the eye could reach lay only a blackish ooze. And with the sun came

millions of mosquitoes and flies, and drove the men and mules frantic

with their stings.

Only one man, Ludwig Helmer, a gun driver from Potsdam, survived. Half

mad with the flies and nearly naked, he found his way somehow across the

quaking bog, after all his comrades had died of thirst, and reached a

tribe of Nascopees, who took him to the coast. A great explosion, they

told him, had torn the River Nascopee from its bed and diverted its

course. The lakes that it fed had all dried up.

* * * * *

Blinded by perspiration, sweltering under the heavy burden of their

outfit, goaded almost to frenzy by the black flies and mosquitoes,

Hooker and Marc and Edouard staggered through the brush, following the

monorail. They had already reached the summit of the Height of Land and

where 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-covered

outcroppings and sun-dried moss of the hollows. The slightest rise

showed mile upon mile of great waste undulating interminably in every

direction. The heat shimmering off the rocks was almost suffocating. At

noon on September 10th they threw themselves into the shade of a narrow

ledge, boiled some tea, and smoked their pipes, wildly fanning the air

to drive away the swarms of insects that attacked them.

Hooker was half drunk from lack of sleep and water. Already once or

twice he had caught himself wandering when talking to Marc and Edouard.

The whole thing was like a horrible, disgusting nightmare. And then he

suddenly became aware that the two Indians were staring intently through

the clouds of mosquitoes over the tree tops to the eastward. Through the

sweat that trickled into his eyes he tried to make out what they could

see. But he could discern nothing except mosquitoes. And then he thought

he saw a mosquito larger than all the others. He waved at it, but it

remained where it was. A slight breeze momentarily wafted the swarm

away, and he still saw the big mosquito hovering over the horizon. Then

he heard Marc cry out:

"_Quelque chose vol en l'air!_"

He rubbed the moisture out of his eyes and stared at the mosquito, which

was growing bigger every minute. With the velocity of a projectile, this

monstrous insect, or whatever it was, came sweeping up behind them from

the Height of Land, soaring into the zenith in a great parabola, until

with a shiver of excitement Bennie recognized that it was the Flying

Ring.

"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 dancing

up and down upon the rocks in the dizzying sun, waving his hat and

shouting to the Father of the Marionettes. What he shouted he never

knew. And Marc and Edouard both shouted, too. But the master of the Ring

heard them not, or if he heard he paid them no attention. Nearer and

nearer came the Ring, until Bennie could see the gleaming cylinder of

its great steel circle. At a distance of about two miles it swept

through the air over a low ridge, and settled toward the earth in the

direction of Ungava.

"He only goes ten mile maybe," announced Marc confidently. "_Un petit

bout de chemin._ We get there to-night."

On they struggled beside the Rail, but now hope ran high. Bennie sang

and whistled, unmindful of the mosquitoes and black flies that renewed

their attacks with unremitting ferocity. The sun lowered itself into the

pine trees, shooting dazzling shafts through the low branches, and then

sank in a welter of crimson-yellow light. The sky turned gray in the

east; faint stars twinkled through the quivering waves that still shook

from the overheated rocks. It turned cold and the mosquitoes departed.

Hugging the Rail, they staggered on, now over shaking muskeg, now

through 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 in

their excitement they trudged on, until presently a pale glow behind the

dwarfed trees showed that the moon was rising. They boiled the water,

made tea, and cooked some biscuits. Soon they could see to pursue their

way.

"'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 rocky

hillside, perhaps three hundred feet in height. Marc was in the lead,

with Bennie a few feet behind him. As they reached the crest the Indian

turned and pointed to something in front of him that Bennie was unable

to distinguish.

"_Nous sommes arrivees_," he announced.

With his heart thumping from the exertion of the climb, Bennie crawled

up beside his guide and found himself confronted by a strong barbed-wire

entanglement affixed to iron stanchions firmly imbedded in the rocks.

They were on the top of a ridge that dropped away abruptly at their feet

into a valley, perhaps a mile in width, terminating on the other side in

perpendicular cliffs, estimated by Bennie to be about eight hundred or a

thousand feet in height. Although the entanglement was by no means

impassable, it was a distinct obstacle and one they preferred to tackle

by daylight. Moreover, it indicated that their company was undesired.

They were in the presence of an unknown quantity, the master of the

Flying Ring. Whether he was a malign or a benevolent influence, this

Father of the Marionettes, they could not tell.

With his back propped against a small spruce Bennie focused his glasses

upon dim shapes barely discernible in the midst of the valley. He was

thrilled by a deep excitement, a strange fear. What would he see? What

mysteries would those vague forms disclose? The shadows cast by the

cliffs and a light mist gathering in the low ground made it difficult to

see; and then, even as he looked, the moon rose higher and shone through

something in the middle of the valley that looked like a tall, grisly

skeleton. It seemed to have legs and arms, an odd mushroom-shaped head,

and endless ribs. Below and at its feet were other and vaguer

shapes--flat domes or cupolas, bombproofs perhaps, buildings of some

sort--Pax's home beyond peradventure.

As he looked through the glasses at the skeleton-like tower Bennie had

an extraordinary feeling of having seen it all before somewhere. As in a

long-forgotten dream he remembered Tesla's tower near Smithtown, on Long

Island. And this was Tesla's tower, naught else! It is a strange thing,

how at great crises of our lives come feelings of anticipatory

knowledge. There is, indeed, nothing new under the sun; else had Bennie

been more afraid. As it was, he saw only Tesla's Smithtown tower with

its head like a young mushroom. And at the same time there flashed into

his memory: "Childe Harold to the Dark Tower Came." Over and over he

repeated it mechanically, feeling that he might be one of those of whom

the 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 ears

had already caught a faint, almost inaudible throbbing that seemed to

grow from moment to moment. There certainly was a dull vibration in the

air, a vibration like the distant hum of machinery. Suddenly old Edouard

touched Bennie upon the shoulder.

"_Regardez!_" he whispered.

Some transformation was happening in the hood of the tower. From a black

opaque 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 increased

until the whole valley was lit up with a suffused and gentle light. The

Ring could be distinctly seen about half a mile away, resting upon a

huge circular support.

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

marionettes!_"

There was no doubt that the hood of the tower was in fact white hot, for

the perpendicular cliffs of the mountain across the valley sharply

reflected the light that it disseminated. The humming whir of the great

alternator rose gradually into a scream like the outcry of some angry

thing. And then unexpectedly a shaft of pale lavender light shot out

from the glowing hood and lost itself in the blackness of the midnight

sky. Now appeared a wonderful and beautiful spectacle: immediately above

the point where the rays disappeared into the ether hundreds of points

of yellow fire suddenly sprang into being in the sky, darting hither and

thither like fireflies, some moving slowly and others with such speed

they appeared as even, luminous lines.

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

"Not at all! Not at all! They are meteorites!" answered Bennie, entirely

engrossed in the scientific phase of the matter and forgetting that he

did not speak the other's language. "Space is jammed full of meteoric

dust. The larger particles, which strike our atmosphere and which ignite

by friction, form shooting stars. The Ray--the Lavender Ray--reaching

out into the most distant regions of space meets them in countless

numbers and disintegrates them, surrounding them with glowing

atmospheres. By George, though, if he starts in playing the Ray upon

that cliff we've got to stand from under! Look here, boys," he shouted,

"stuff something in your ears." He seized his handkerchief, tore it

apart, and, making two plugs, thrust them into the openings of his ears

as 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 rock

the earth again!"

Slowly the Lavender Ray swung through the ether, followed by its

millions of meteorites, dipping downward toward the northern side of the

valley and sinking ever lower and lower toward the cliff. Bennie threw

himself flat on his stomach upon the ridge, pressing his hands to his

ears, and the others, feeling that something terrible was going to

happen, followed his example. Nearer and nearer toward the ridge dropped

the Ray. Bennie held his breath. Another instant and there came a

blinding splash of yellow light, a crash like thunder, and a roar that

seemed to tear the mountain from its base. The earth shook. Into the

zenith sprang a flame of incandescent vapour a mile in height. The

tumult increased. Vivid blue flashes of lightning shot out from the spot

upon which the Ray played. The air was filled with thunderings, and the

ground beneath them rose and fell and swung from side to side. Then came

a mighty wind, nay, a cyclone, and gravel and broken branches fell upon

them, and suffocating clouds of dust filled their eyes and shut out from

time to time what was occurring in the valley. The face of the cliff

glowed like the interior of a furnace, and the blazing yellow blast of

glowing helium shot over their heads and off into space, making the

night sky light as day.

For a moment they all lay stunned and sightless. Then the discharge

appeared to diminish both in volume and in intensity. The air cleared

somewhat and the ground no longer trembled. The burst of flame slowly

subsided, like a fountain that is being gradually turned off. Either the

Ring man wasn't going to rock the earth or he had lost control of his

machinery.

Something was clearly going wrong. Showers of sparks fell from the hood

and occasionally huge glowing masses of molten metal dropped from it.

And now the Lavender Ray began slowly to sweep down the face of the

cliff; and the yellow blast of helium gradually faded away until it was

scarcely visible. The roar of the alternator died down, first to a hum

and 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 across

the ground toward the base of the tower, its path being marked by a

small travelling volcano that hurled its smoke and steam high into the

air. It was evident to Bennie that the hood of the tower was slowly

turning over, and that the now fast-fading Ray would presently play upon

its base and the adjacent cupola in which the master of the Ring was

probably attempting to control his recalcitrant machinery.

And then Bennie lost consciousness.

* * * * *

A splash of rain. He awoke, and found himself lying by the barbed-wire

fence in the graying light of dawn. His muscles were stiff and sore, but

he felt a strange sense of exhilaration. A mist was driving across the

valley and enshrouding the scene of the night's debacle. Through the

rain gusts he could see, still standing, the wreck of the tower, with a

fragment of melted inductor drooping from its apex--and a long way off

the 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, but

they had disappeared. His field glasses lay beside him, and he picked

them up and raised himself to his feet. Like stout Cortés, silent upon

his peak in Darien, he surveyed the Pacific of his dreams. For the Ring

was still there! Pax might be annihilated, his machinery destroyed, but

the secret remained--and it was his, Bennie Hooker's, of Appian Way,

Cambridge, Massachusetts! In his excitement, in getting over the fence

he tore a jagged hole in what was left of his sporting suit, but in a

moment 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, but

twenty minutes of stiff work landed him in the valley and within a

thousand yards of the stark remains of the tower. Between where he stood

and the devastation caused by the culminating explosion of the night

before, the surface of the earth showed the customary ledges of barren

rock, the scraggy scattering of firs, and stretches of moss with which

he had become so familiar. Behind him the monorail, springing into space

from the crest of the hill, ended in the dangling wreckage of a trestle

which evidently had terminated in a station, now vanished, near the

tower. From his point of observation little of the results of the

upheaval was noticeable except the débris, which lay in a film of

shattered rock and gravel over the surface of the ground, but as he ran

toward 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 only

by reason of the skeleton-like character of its construction. All about

it the surface had been rent as by an earthquake, and save for a

fragment of the dome or bombproof all trace of buildings had

disappeared. A glistening lake of leperous-like molten lead lay in the

centre of the crater, strangely iridescent. A broad path of destruction,

fifty yards or so in width, led from the scene of the disruption to the

precipice against which the Ray had played. The face of the cliff itself

seemed covered with a white coating or powder which gave it a ghostly

sheen. Moreover, the rain had turned to snow and already the entire

aspect 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 had

rocked the earth and dislocated its axis had blown out; and there was

now nothing left to tell the story, for its inventor had flashed out

with it into eternity. At his very feet a conscious human being, only

twelve short hours before, had by virtue of his stupendous brain been

able to generate and control a force capable of destroying the planet

itself, and now----! He was gone! It was all gone! Unless somewhere hard

by was hovering amid the whirling snowflakes that which might be his

soul. But Pax would send no more messages! Bennie's journey had gone for

naught. He had arrived just too late to talk it all over with his

fellow-scientist, and discuss those little improvements on Hiroshito's

theory. Pax was dead!

He sat down wearily, noticing for the first time that his ears pained

him. 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 as

he raised his hand to adjust his Glengarry he saw it awaiting

him--unscathed. Far to the westward it rested snugly in its gigantic

nest of crossbeams, like the head of some colossal decapitated Chinese

mandarin. With an involuntary shout he started running down the valley,

heedless of his steps. Nearer and higher loomed the steel trestlework

upon 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 of

steel girders, rested the body of the car, constructed of aluminum

plates in the form of an anchor ring some seventy-five feet in diameter,

while over the circular structure of the Ring itself rose a skeleton

tower like a tripod, carrying at its summit a huge metal device shaped

like a thimble, the open mouth of which pointed downward through the

open centre of the machine. Obviously this must be the tractor or

radiant engine. There, too, swung far out from the side of the ring on a

framework of steel, was the thermic inductor which had played the

disintegrating Ray upon the Atlas Mountains and the great cannon of Von

Heckmann. The whole affair resembled nothing which he had ever conceived

of either in the air, the earth, or the waters under the earth, the

bizarre invention of a superhuman mind. It seemed as firmly anchored and

as immovable as the Eiffel Tower, and yet Bennie knew that the thing

could lift itself into the air and sail off like a ball of thistledown

before a breeze. He knew that it could do it, for he had seen it with

his own eyes.

A few steps more brought him into the centre of the circle of steel

girders which supported the landing stage. Here the surface of the earth

at his feet had been completely denuded and the underlying rock exposed,

evidently by some artificial action, the downward blast of gas from the

tractor. Even the rock itself had been seared by the discharge; little

furrows worn smooth as if by a mountain torrent radiating in all

directions from the central point. More than anything it reminded Bennie

of the surface of a meteorite, polished and scarred by its rush through

the atmosphere. He paused, filled with a kind of awe. The most wonderful

engine of all time waited his inspection. The great secret was his

alone. The inventor and his associates had been wiped out of existence

in a flash, and the Flying Ring was his by every right of treasure

trove. In the heart of the Labrador wilderness Prof. Benjamin Hooker of

Cambridge, 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. A

red 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 thought

first 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 the

level floor of the platform. He steadied himself and opened his eyes.

Before him stood a man in blue overalls, under whose forehead, burned

bright 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"--he

hesitated--"where were you when it happened?"

The man looked at him stupidly. "What?" he mumbled. "I--I don't seem to

remember. You see--I was in--the condenser room building up the

charge--for to-morrow--I mean to-day--sixty thousand volts at the

terminals, and the fluid clearing up. I guess I looked out of the window

a minute--to see--the fireworks--and then--somehow--I was out on the

platform." He shaded his eyes and looked off down the valley at the

half-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 gone

to hell! But I guess everything's all right now, if you want to fly." He

touched 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! And

Hoskins--and the others. All gone, by God! All wiped out! Only me and

you 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 had

already formulated itself in his brain. Even as he was the man might be

able to go through his customary duties in handling the Ring. It was not

impossible. He had heard of such things, and the thought of the long

marches over the frozen barrens and the perilous canoe trip down the

coast, contrasted with a swift rush for an hour or two through the

sunlit air, gave the professor the courage which might not have availed

him otherwise. At the top of a short ladder a trapdoor opened inward,

and Bennie found himself in a small compartment scarcely large enough to

turn around in, from which a second door opened into the body of the

Ring proper.

"It's all right--to-day," said the man hesitatingly. "I fixed--the

air-lock--yesterday, sir. The leak--was here--at the hinge--but it's

quite 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 of

investigation absolutely essential at the moment. Once he could master

the secret of the Ring and be sure that the part of the fellow's brain

which controlled the performance of his customary duties had not been

injured by the shock of the night before, it might be possible to carry

out the daring project which had suggested itself.

Passing through the inner door of the air-lock he entered the chart room

of the Ring, followed stumblingly by his companion. It was warm and

cozy; the first warmth Hooker had experienced for nearly a month. It

made him feel faint, and he dropped into an armchair and pulled off his

Glengarry. The survivor of the explosion, standing awkwardly at his

side, fumbled with his cap. Ever and anon he rubbed his head.

Bennie sank back into the cushions and looked about him. On the opposite

wall hung a map of the world on Mercator's Projection, and from a spot

in Northern Labrador red lines radiated in all directions, which formed

great curved loops, returning to the starting-point.

"The flights of the Ring," thought Bennie. "There's the one where they

busted the Atlas Mountains," following with his eyes the crimson thread

which ran diagonally across the Atlantic, traversed Spain and the

Mediterranean, and circling in a narrow loop over the coast of Northern

Africa turned back into its original track. Visions came to him of

guiding the car for an afternoon jaunt across the Sahara, the gloomy

forests of the Congo, into the Antarctic, and thence home in time for

afternoon tea, via the Easter Islands, Hawaii, and Alaska. But why stop

there? What was to prevent a trip to the moon? Or Mars? Or for that

matter into the unknown realms outside the solar system--the fourth

dimension, perhaps--or even the fifth dimension----

"Excuse me," said the machinist suddenly, "I just forgot--whether you

take--cigars or cigarettes. You see I only acted as--table

orderly--once--when Smith had that sprain." His hands moved uncertainly

on 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 drink

as well. He began to feel strangely exhilarated. But how to handle the

man beside him? Pax would certainly never ask the questions that he

wished to ask. He smoked rapidly, thinking hard. Of course he might

pretend that he, too, had forgotten things. And at first this seemed to

be 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 you

have forgotten everything you ever knew? You remember your name?"

"My name, sir?" The man laughed in a foolish fashion. "Why--of course I

remember--my name. I wouldn't--be likely--to forget--that:

Atterbury--I'm Atterbury--electrician of the _Chimaera_." And he drew

himself up.

"That's all right," said Bennie, "but what were we doing yesterday? What

is the very last thing that you can go back to?"

The man wrinkled his forehead. "The last thing? Why, sir, you told us

you were going--to turn over the pole a bit--and freeze up Europe. I was

up 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 had

enough. Next--everything was clouded, and I went--over to the window to

see--what was going on."

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

then?"

"Why, after that, sir, after that, there was the Ray of course, and

er--I don't seem to remember--oh, yes, a short circuit--and I ran--out

on the platform--forgot all about the danger! After that, everything's

confused. It's like a dream. Your coming up--the ladder--seemed--to wake

me 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?" he

asked, inspecting the map.

"Why not?" answered Atterbury. "The balancer is working--better

now--and--doesn't take--much attention--and you can lay the course--and

manage--the landing. I was going to put a fresh uranium cylinder in the

tractor this morning--but I--forgot."

"There you go, forgetting again!" growled Bennie, realizing that his

only excuse for asking questions hung on this fiction. And there were

many, many more questions that he must ask before he would be able to

fly. "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 numerous

parallel plates were supported, lined the walls from floor to ceiling.

An ammeter on the wall caught Bennie's attention. "Weston Direct Reading

A. C. Ammeter," he read on the dial. Alternate current! What were they

doing with an alternating current in the storage-battery room? His eyes

followed the wires along the wall. Yes, they ran to the terminals of the

battery. It dawned upon him that there might be something here undreamed

of in electrical engineering--a storage battery for an alternating

current!

The electrician closed a row of switches, brought the two polished brass

spheres of the discharger within striking distance, and instantly a

blinding current of sparks roared between the terminals. He had been

right. This battery not only was charged by an alternating current, but

delivered one of high potential. He peered into the cells, racking his

brain for an explanation.

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

that?"

"Yes," answered the man. "You--told me--once. The two metals--in the

electrolyte--come down--on the plates--in alternate films--as--the

current changes direction. But you never told me--what the electrolyte

was--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 formed

layers of molecular thickness of two different metals in alternation by

the to-and-fro swing of his charging current. When the battery

discharged the metals went into solution, each plate becoming

alternately positive and negative. He wondered what Pax had used for an

electrolyte that enabled him to get a metallic deposit at each

electrode. And he wondered also why the metals did not alloy. But it

would 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 which

occupied most of the morning, and during which he found a well-stocked

gallery and made himself a cup of coffee.[5]

[Footnote 5: He even climbed with Atterbury to the very summit of the

tractor, where he discovered that his original guess had been correct

and that the car rose from the earth rocket fashion, due to the back

pressure of the radiant discharge from a massive cylinder of uranium

contained in the tractor. Against this block played a disintegrating ray

from a small thermic inductor, the inner construction of which he was

not able to determine, although it was obviously different from his own,

and the coils were wound in a curious manner which he did not

understand. There might be something in Hiroshito's theory after all.

The cylinder of the tractor pointed directly downward so that the blast

was discharged through the very centre of the Ring, but it could be

swung through a small angle in any direction, and by means of this

slight deflection the horizontal motion of the machine secured. Perhaps

the most interesting feature of the mechanism was that the Ring appeared

to have automatic stability, for the angle of the direction in which the

tractor was pointed was controlled not only by a pair of gyroscopes

which kept the Ring on an even keel, but also by a manometric valve

causing it to fly at a fixed height above the earth's surface. Should it

start to rise, the diminished pressure of the atmosphere operating on

the valve swung the tractor more to one side, and the horizontal

acceleration was thus increased at the expense of the vertical.]

But the more he learned about the mechanism of the Ring the greater

became his misgivings about undertaking the return journey alone with

Atterbury through the air. If they were to go, the start must be made

within a few days, for the condenser held its charge but a comparatively

short time, and its energy was necessary for starting the Ring. When

freshly charged it supplied current for the thermic inductor for nearly

three minutes, but the metallic films, deposited on the plates,

dissolved slowly in the fluid, and after three or four days there

remained only enough for a thirty-second run, hardly enough to lift the

Ring from the earth. Once in the air, the downward blast from the

tractor operated a turbine alternator mounted on a skeleton framework at

the centre of the Ring, and the current supplied by this machine enabled

the Ring to continue its flight indefinitely, or until the cylinder of

uranium was completely disintegrated.

Yet to trek back over the route by which he had come appeared to be

equally impossible. There was little likelihood that the two Indians

would return; they were probably already thirty miles on their way back

to the coast. If only he could get word to Thornton or some of those

chaps at Washington they might send a relief expedition! But a ship

would be weeks in getting to the coast, and how could he live in the

meantime? There were provisions for only a few days in the Ring, and the

storehouse in the valley had been wiped out of existence. Only an

aeroplane could do the trick. And then he thought of Burke, his

classmate--Burke who had devoted his life to heavier-than-air machines,

and who, since his memorable flight across the Atlantic in the _Stormy

Petrol_, 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 of

Labrador he might as well be on another planet, as far as communication

with the civilized world was concerned.

A burst of sunlight shot through the window and formed an oval patch on

the floor at his feet. The weather was clearing. He went out upon the

platform. Patches of blue sky appeared overhead. As he gazed

disconsolately across the valley toward the tower, his eye caught the

glisten of something high in the air. From the top of the wreckage five

thin shining lines ran parallel across the sky and disappeared in a

small cloud which hung low over the face of the cliff.

"The antennæ!" exclaimed Bennie. "A wireless to Burke." Burke would

come; 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 to

the pole and bring back Peary's flag--with no takers? Why, Burke would

take him home with as little trouble as a taxicab. And then, aghast, he

remembered the complete destruction in the valley. The wireless plant

had gone with the rest. He ran back into the chart room and called

Atterbury.

"Can we get off a message to Washington?" he demanded. "The wires are

still up, and we have the condenser."

"We might, sir, if it's not--a long one, though you've always said there

was danger in running the engine with the car bolted down. We did it the

time the big machine burnt out a coil. I can throw--a wire--over the

antennæ with a rocket--and join up--with the turbine machine. It will

increase--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 from

Boston to the point where the red lines converged. It was a trifle less

than the distance between Boston and Chicago. Burke had done that in

nine hours on the trial trip of his trans-Atlantic monoplane. If the

machine was in order and Burke started in the morning he would be with

them by sunset, if he didn't get lost. But Bennie knew that Burke could

drive his machine by dead reckoning and strike within a few leagues of a

target a thousand miles away.

A muffled roar outside interrupted his musings, and running out on the

platform again he found Atterbury attaching the cord of the aluminum

ribbon, which the rocket had carried up and over the antennæ, to one of

the brush bars of the alternator.

"Nearly ready, sir," he said. "We'd best--lock the storm bolts--to hold

her down--in case we have--to crowd on the power. We've got to

use--pretty near the full lift--to get the alternator up--to the proper

speed."

A chill ran down Bennie's spine. They were going to start the engine! In

a moment he would be within twenty feet of a blast of disintegration

products capable of lifting the whole machine into the air, and it was

to be started at his command, after he had worked and pottered for two

years with a thermic inductor the size of a thimble! He felt as he used

to feel before taking a high dive, or as he imagined a soldier feels

when 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 him

for the management of details? He felt singularly helpless as he

reëntered the chart room to compose his message.

He turned on the electric lamp which hung over the desk, for in the

fast-gathering dusk the interior of the Ring was in almost total

darkness. How should his message read? It must be brief: it must tell

the 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 you

send, sir?"

Bennie handed him a scrap of yellow paper, and Atterbury put on a pair

of 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 the

condenser room.

Atterbury mechanically pushed the brass balls in contact, shoved a

bundle of iron wires halfway through the core of a great coil, and

closed a switch. A humming sound filled the air, and a few seconds later

a glow of yellow light came in through the window. A cone of luminous

vapour was shooting downward through the centre of the Ring from the

tractor. At first it was soft and nebulous, but it increased rapidly in

brilliancy, and a dull roar, like that of a waterfall, added itself to

the hum of the alternating current in the wires. And now a third sound

came to his ears, the note of the turbine, low at first, but gradually

rising like the scream of a siren, and the floor of the Ring beneath his

feet throbbed with the vibration.

Bennie forgot the dynamometer, forgot his message to Burke, was

conscious only that he had wakened a sleeping volcano. Then came the

crack of the sparks, and the room seemed filled with the glare of the

blue lightning, for Atterbury, with his telephones at his ears, staring

through his yellow glasses, was sending out the call for the Naval

Observatory.

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

Over and over again he sent the call, while in the meantime the

condenser built up its charge from the overflow of current from the

turbine generator. Then the electrician opened a switch, and the roar

outside diminished and finally ceased.

"We can't listen--with the tractor running," he fretted. "The

static--from the discharge--would tear--our detector--to pieces." He

threw in the receiving instrument. For a few moments the telephones

spoke only the whisperings of the arctic aurora, and then suddenly the

faint cry of the answering spark was heard. Bennie watched the words as

the 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 running

down," muttered Atterbury. "I think we can send--with the

condenser--now."

He picked up the scrap of yellow paper, read it over, and threw out into

space 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, before

you go see if you can find me a glass of brandy."

* * * * *

It was decided that Burke must land on the plateau above the cliff, and

here the material for the fire was collected. There was little enough of

it and it was hard work carrying the oil up the steep trail. At times

Bennie was almost in despair.

"It won't burn half an hour," said he, surveying the pile. "And we ought

to be able to keep it going all night. There's plenty of stuff in the

valley, but we can't have him come down there, with the tower, the

antennæ, and all the rest of the mess."

"We might--show him--the big Ray," ventured Atterbury. "The thing--can

be pointed up--and I can--keep the turbine running. You can start--the

fire--as soon as you--hear his motors--and I'll shut down--as soon as I

see your fire."

"Good idea!" agreed Bennie. "Only don't run continuously. Show the Ray

for a minute every quarter of an hour, and on no account start up after

you see the fire. If he thought the vertical beam was a searchlight and

flew through it----" Bennie shuddered at the thought of Burke driving

his aeroplane through the Ray that had shattered the Atlas Mountains.

So it was arranged. Half an hour after sunset Atterbury shut himself up

in the Ring, and while Bennie climbed the trail leading to his post on

the plateau, he heard the creaking of the great inductor as it slowly

turned on its trunions.

It was pitch dark by the time he reached the pitifully small pile of

brush which they had collected, and he poured some of the oil over it

and sat down, drawing a blanket around his shoulders. He felt very much

alone. Suppose the inductor failed to work? Suppose Atterbury turned the

Ray on him? Suppose.... But his musings were shattered by a noise from

the valley, a sound like that of escaping steam, and a moment later the

Lavender Ray shot up toward the zenith. Bennie lay on his back and

watched it, mindful of the night before the last when he had watched the

Ray from the tower descending upon the cliff. He wondered if he should

see any meteorites kindle in its path, but nothing appeared and the Ray

died down, leaving everything in darkness again. Fifteen minutes passed

and again the ghostly beam shot up into the night sky. Bennie looked at

his watch. It was nearly half-past eight. The cold made him sleepy. He

drew the blanket about him....

Two hours later through his half-dreams he caught the faint sound for

which he had been listening. At first he was not sure. It might be the

turbine alternator of the Ring running by its own inertia for some time

after the discharge had ceased. But no, it was growing louder

momentarily, and appeared to come from high up in the air. Now it died

away to nothingness, and now it swelled in volume, and again died away.

But at each subsequent recurrence it was louder than before. There was

no longer any doubt. Burke was coming! It was time to start the brush

pile. He lit match after match, only for the wind to blow them out. Yet

all the time the machine in the air was coming nearer, the roar of its

twin engines beating on the stillness of the Labrador night. In despair

Bennie threw himself flat on his face by the brush pile and made a tent

of the blanket, under which he at last succeeded in starting a blaze

among the oil-soaked twigs. Then he pushed the half-empty keg into the

fire, arose and stared up at the sky.

The machine was somewhere directly above him--just where he could not

say. Presently the motors stopped. He shouted feebly, running up and

down with his eyes turned skyward, and several times nearly fell into

the fire. He wondered why it didn't appear. It seemed hours since the

motors stopped! Then unexpectedly against the black background of the

sky the great wings of the machine appeared, illuminated on their

underside by the light of the fire. Silently it swung around on its

descending spiral, instantly to be swallowed up in the darkness again, a

moment later reappearing from the opposite direction, this time low down

and headed straight for him. He jumped hastily to one side and fell

flat. The machine grounded, rose once or twice as it ran along the

ground, and came to a stop twenty yards from the fire. A man climbed

out, slowly removed his goggles, and shook himself. Bennie scrambled to

his 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 gradually

regained his normal mental status, explored and charted the valley of

the Ring is strictly no part of this tale which deals solely with the

end of War upon the Earth. But next day, after several hours of

excavation among the débris of the smelter, where Pax had extracted his

uranium from the pitch blend mined at the cliff, they uncovered eight

cylinders of the precious metal weighing about one hundred pounds

apiece--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 frozen

wilderness, they next examined the high cliffs which shut in the valley

on the west and against the almost perpendicular walls of which he had

played the Lavender Ray. These cliffs proved, as Bennie had already

suspected, to be a gigantic outcrop of pitchblende or black oxide of

uranium. He estimated that nature had stored more uranium in but one of

the abutments of this cliff than in all the known mines of the entire

world. This radioactive mountain was the fulcrum by which this modern

Archimedes had moved the earth. The vast amount of matter disintegrated

by the Ray and thrown off into space with a velocity a thousandfold

greater than the blast of a siege gun produced a back pressure or recoil

against the face of the cliff, which thus became the "thrust block" of

the 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 stage

of the Ring Bennie could see stretching away to the east, west, and

south, the interminable plains, dotted with firs, which had formed the

natural barrier to the previous discovery of Pax's secret. Overhead the

dome of the sky fitted the horizon like an enormous shell--a shell

which, 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 of

triumph little Bennie Hooker felt the qualm which must inevitably come

to those who take their lives in their hands. An hour and he would be

either soaring Phoebus-like toward the south, or lying crushed and

mangled within a tangled mass of wreckage. Even here in this desolate

waste 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 mechanism

back to civilization? Yet something told him that unless he put his fate

to the test now he would never return. He had the utmost confidence in

Burke--he might never be able to secure his services again--no, it was

now or never. He entered the air-lock, closing and bolting the door, and

passed on into the chart room.

At all events, he thought, they were no worse off than Pax when he had

made his first trial flight, and they were working with a proven

machine, tuned to its fullest efficiency, and one which apparently

possessed automatic stability. Atterbury had gone to the condenser room

and was waiting for the order to start, while Burke was making the final

adjustment of the gyroscopes which would put the Ring on its

predetermined course. He came through the door and joined Bennie.

"Hooker," he said, "we're sure going to have some experience. If I can

keep her from turning over, I think I can manage her. The trouble will

come when we slant the tractor. I'm not sure how much depends on the

atmospheric valve, and how much on me. Things may happen quickly. If we

turn 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 as

well die now as any time!"

He walked swiftly over to the speaking-tube which communicated with the

condenser 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 sound

filled the air, and the gyroscopes slowly began to revolve. He looked up

through the window at the tractor, from which shot streaks of pale

vapour with a noise like escaping steam. Somehow it seemed alive.

The Ring was throbbing as if it, too, was impregnated with life. The

discharge of the tractor had risen to a muffled roar. Shaking all over,

Bennie crossed to the inside window and looked across the inner space of

the Ring. As yet the yellow glow of the discharge was scarcely visible,

but the steel sides of the Ring danced and quivered, undulating in

waves, and, as the intensity of the blast increased and the turbine

commenced to revolve, everything outside went suddenly blurred and

indistinct.

Dropping to his knees, Bennie looked down through the observation window

in the floor. A blinding cloud of yellow dust was driving out and away

from the base of the landing stage in the form of a gigantic ring. The

earth at their feet was hidden in whirls of vapour; and ripples of light

and shade chased each other outward in all directions, like shadows on

the bottom of a sandy pond rippled by a breeze. It made him dizzy to

look down there, and he arose from the window. Burke stood grimly at the

control, unmindful of his associate. Bennie crossed to the other side,

and as he passed the gyroscopes, the air from the swiftly spinning discs

blew back his hair. He could see nothing through the tumult that roared

down through the centre of the Ring, like a Niagara of hot steam shot

through with a pale yellow phosphorescent light. The floor quivered

under his feet, and ominous creaking and snapping sounds reverberated

through the outer shell, as the steel girders of the landing stage were

gradually relieved of its weight. Just as it seemed to him that

everything was going to pieces, suddenly there was silence, save for the

purr 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 fro

like a pendulum. Bennie threw himself upon his stomach. The earth was

dropping away from them like a stone. He felt a sickening sensation.

"Two thousand feet already," gasped Burke. "The atmospheric valve is set

for five thousand. I'll make it ten! It will give us more room to

recover in--if anything--goes wrong!"

He gave the knob another half turn and laid his hand lightly on the

lever which controlled the movements of the tractor. Bennie, flattened

against the window, gazed below. The great dust ring showed indistinctly

through a blue haze no longer directly beneath them, but a quarter of a

mile to the north. Evidently they were not rising vertically.

The valley of the Ring looked like a black crack in a greenish-gray

desert of rock and moss, the landing stage like a tiny bird's nest. The

floor of the car moved slightly from side to side. Burke's face had gone

gray, and he crouched unsteadily, one hand gripping a steel bracket on

the wall.

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

Bennie, momentarily expecting annihilation, crawled on all fours to

Burke's side.

The needle of the manometer indicated nine thousand five hundred feet,

and was rapidly nearing the next division. Suddenly Burke felt the lever

move slowly under his hand as though operated by some outside

intelligence, and at the same moment the axis of one gyroscope swung

slowly in a horizontal plane through an angle of nearly ninety degrees,

while that of the other dipped slightly from the vertical. Both men had

a ghastly feeling that the ghost of Pax had somehow returned and assumed

control of the car. Bennie rotated the map under the gyroscope until the

fine black line on the dial again lay across their destination. Then he

crept back to his window again. The earth, far below and dimly visible,

was sliding slowly northward, and the dust ring which marked their

starting-point now lay as a flattened ellipse on the distant horizon.

Beneath and behind them in their flight trailed a thin streak of pale

bluish 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 save

the dull roar of the tractor and a slight humming from the vibration of

the light steel cables. Bennie no longer felt any disagreeable

sensation. A strange detachment possessed him. Dark forests, lakes, and

a mighty river appeared to the south--the Moisie--and they followed it

as a fishhawk might have done, until the wilderness broke away before

them and they saw the broad reach of the St. Lawrence streaked with the

smoke of ocean liners.

And then he lost control of himself for the first time and sobbed like a

woman--not from fear, nor weariness, nor excitement, but for joy--the

joy of the true scientist who has sought the truth and found it, has

achieved 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!"