your map. Put on rucksack and discard suit-case, which, of course,
is to have no identifying marks. Proceed along path to point "B," and
from under board you will find there take box with weapon enclosed.
Box will also contain vacuum searchlight and directions for use of
weapon, exact time, direction, and elevation for discharging same, and
further instructions how to proceed. Act on these to the second. If
interfered with, kill; but kill quietly, so as to avoid giving the
alarm.

I expect every man to do his duty to the full. There will be but one
excuse for failure, and that is death.

The Master.




CHAPTER V


IN THE NIGHT

The night was moonless, dark, warm with the inviting softness of late
spring that holds out promises of romance. Stars wavered and wimpled
in the black waters of the Hudson as a launch put out in silence from
the foot of Twenty-seventh Street.

This launch contained four men. They carried but little baggage; no
more than could be stowed in a rucksack apiece. All were in their old
service uniforms, with long coats over the uniforms to mask them. All
carried vacuum-flashlights in their overcoat pockets, and lethal-gas
pistols, in addition to ordinary revolvers or automatics. And all were
keyed to the top notch of energy, efficiency, eagerness. The Great
Adventure had begun.

In the stern of the swift, twenty-four cylinder launch--a racing
model--sat Captain Alden and Rrisa. The captain wore his aviator's
helmet and his goggles, despite the warmth of the night. To appear in
only his celluloid mask, even at a time like this when darkness would
have hidden him, seemed distasteful to the man. He seemed to want to
hide his misfortune as fully as possible; and, since this did no harm,
the Master let him have his way.

The bow was occupied by the Master and by Major Bohannan, with the
Master at the wheel. He seemed cool, collected, impassive; but
the major, of hotter Celtic blood, could not suppress his fidgety
nervousness.

Intermittently he gnawed at his reddish mustache. A cigar, he felt,
would soothe and quiet him. Cigars, however, were now forbidden. So
were pipes and cigarettes. The Master did not intend to have even
their slight distraction coming between the minds of his men and the
careful, intricate plan before them.

As the racer veered north, up the broad darkness of the Hudson--the
Hudson sparkling with city illumination on either hand, with still or
moving ships' lights on the breast of the waters--Bohannan murmured:

"Even now, as your partner in this enterprise--"

"My lieutenant," corrected the Master.

"As second in command," amended Bohannan, irritably, "I'm not wholly
convinced this is the correct procedure." He spoke in low tones,
covered by the purring exhaust of the launch and by the hiss of
swiftly cloven waters. "It looks like unnecessary complication, to me,
and avoidable danger."

"It is neither," answered the man at the wheel. "What would you have
done? What better plan could you have proposed?"

"You could have built your own flyer, couldn't you? Since money's no
object to you, and you don't even know, accurately, how much you've
got--nobody can keep track of figures like those--why risk legal
interference and international complications at the start, by--"

"To build the kind of flyer we need would have taken six or seven
months. Not all my money could have produced it, sooner. And absolute
ennui can't wait half a year. I'd have gone wholly stale, and so would
you, and all of them. We'd have lost them.

"Again, news of any such operations would have got out. My plans would
possibly have been checkmated. In the third place, what you propose
would have been tame sport, indeed, as a beginning! Three excellent
reasons, my dear Major, why this is positively the only way."

"Perhaps. But there's always the chance of failure, now. The guards--"

"After your own experience, when that capsule burst in the laboratory,
you talk to me about guards?"

"Suppose one escapes?"

The Master only smiled grimly, and sighted his course up the dark
river.

"And the alarm is sure to be given, in no time. Why didn't you just
buy the thing outright?"

"It's not for sale, at any price."

"Still--men can't run off with three and a half million dollars' worth
of property and with provisions and equipment like that, all ready for
a trial trip, without raising Hell. There'll be pursuit--"

"What with, my dear Bohannan?"

"That's a foolish statement of mine, the last one, I admit," answered
the major, as his companion swung the launch a little toward the
Jersey shore. "Of course nothing can overhaul us, once we're away.
But you know my type of mind weighs every possibility, pro and con.
Wireless can fling out a fan of swift aerial police ahead of us from
Europe."

"How near can anything get to us?"

"I know it all looks quite simple and obvious, in theory.
Nevertheless--"

"Men of your character are useful, in places," said the Master,
incisively. "You are good in a charge, in sudden daring, in swift
attack. But in the approach to great decisions, you vacillate. That's
your racial character.

"I'm beginning to doubt my own wisdom in having chosen you as next in
command. There's a bit of doubting Thomas in your ego. It's not
too late, yet, for you to turn back. I'll let you, as a special
concession. Brodeur will jump at the chance to be your successor."

His hand swung the wheel, sweeping the racer in a curve toward the
Manhattan shore. Bohannan angrily pushed the spokes over again the
other way.

"I stick!" he growled. "I've said the last word of this sort you'll
ever hear me utter. Full speed ahead--to Paradise--or Hell!"

They said no more. The launch split her way swiftly toward the north.
By the vague, ghostly shimmer of light upon the waters, a tense smile
appeared on the steersman's lips. In his dark eyes gleamed the joy
which to some men ranks supreme above all other joys--that of bending
others to his will, of dominating them, of making them the puppets of
his fancy.

Some quarter hour the racer hummed upriver. Keenly the Master kept
his lookout, picking up landmarks. Finally he spoke a word to
Captain Alden, who came forward to the engines. The Master's
cross-questionings of this man had convinced him his credentials were
genuine and that he was loyal, devoted, animated by nothing but the
same thirst for adventure that formed the driving power behind them
all. Now he was trusting him with much, already.

"Three quarters speed," ordered the Master. The skilled hand of the
captain, well-versed in the operation of gas engines, obeyed the
command. The whipping breeze of their swift course, the hiss at the
bows as foam and water crumbled out and over, somewhat diminished. The
goal lay not far off.

To starboard, thinning lights told the Master they were breasting
Spuyten Duyvil. To port, only a few scattered gleams along the base of
the cliff or atop it, showed that the sparsely settled Palisades were
drawing abeam. The ceaseless, swarming activities of the metropolis
were being left behind. Silence was closing in, broken only by vagrant
steamer-whistles from astern.

A crawling string of lights, on the New York shore, told that an
express was hurling itself cityward. Its muffled roar began to echo
out over the star-flecked waters. The Master threw a scornful glance
at it. He turned in his seat, and peered at the shimmer of the city's
lights, strung like a luminous rosary along the river's edge. Then
he looked up at the roseate flush on the sky, flung there by the
metropolis as from the mouth of a crucible.

"Child's play!" he murmured. "All this coming and going in
crowded streets, all this fighting for bread, and scheming over
pennies--child's play. Less than that--the blind swarming of ants!
Tomorrow, where will all this be, for us?"

He turned back and thrust over the spokes. The launch drew in toward
the Jersey shore.

"Let the engines run at half-speed," he directed, "and control her now
with the clutch."

"Yes, sir!"

The aviator's voice was sharp, precise, determined. The Master nodded
to himself with satisfaction. This man, he felt, would surely be a
valued member of the crew. He might prove more than that. There might
be stuff in him that could be molded to executive ability, in case
that should be necessary.

The launch, now at half-speed, nosed her way directly toward the
cliff. Sounds from shore began to grow audible Afar, an auto siren
shrieked. A dog barked, irritatingly. A human voice came vaguely
hallooing.

Off to the right, over the cliff brow, a faint aura of light was
visible. The eyes of the Master rested on this a moment, brightening.
He smiled again; and his hand tightened a little on the wheel. But all
he said was:

"Dead slow, now, Captain Alden!"

As the cliff drew near, its black brows ate across the sky, devouring
stars. The Master spoke in Arabic to Rrisa, who seized a boat hook
and came forward. Out of the gloom small wharf advanced to meet the
launch. The boat-hook caught; the launch, easing to a stop, cradled
against the stringpiece.

Rrisa held with the hook, while Bohannan and Alden clambered out.
Before the Master left, he bent and seemed to be manipulating
something in the bottom of the launch. Then he stepped to the engine.

"Out, Rrisa," he commanded, "and hold hard with the hook, now!"

The Arab obeyed. All at once the propeller churned water, reversed.
The Master leaped to the wharf.

"Let go--and throw the hook into the boat!" he ordered.


While the three others stood wondering on the dark wharf, the launch
began to draw slowly back into the stream. Already it was riding a bit
low, going down gradually by the bows.

"What now?" questioned the major, astonished.

"She will sink a hundred or two yards from shore, in deep water,"
answered the Master, calmly. "The sea-cock is wide open."

"A fifteen thousand dollar launch--!"

"Is none the less, a clue. No man of this party, reaching the shore
tonight, is leaving any more trace than we are. Come, now, all this is
trivial. Forward!"

In silence, they followed him along the dark wharf, reached a narrow,
rocky path that serpented up the face of the densely wooded cliff,
and began to ascend. A lathering climb it was, laden as they were with
heavy rucksacks, in the moonless obscurity.

Now and then the Master's little searchlight--his own wonderful
invention, a heatless light like an artificial firefly, using no
batteries nor any power save universal, etheric rays in an absolute
vacuum--glowed with pale virescence over some particularly rough bit
of going. For the most part, however, not even this tiny gleam
was allowed to show. Silence, darkness, precision, speed were now
all-requisite.

Twenty-four minutes from leaving the wharf, they stood among a
confused, gigantic chaos of boulders flung, dicelike, amid heavy
timbers on the brow of the Palisades. Off to the north, the faint,
ghostly aura dimly silhouetted the trees. Far below, the jetty river
trembled here, there, with starlight.

They paused a moment to breathe, to shift straps that bound shoulders
not now hardened to such burdens. The Master glanced at the luminous
dial of his wrist-watch.

"Almost to the dot," he whispered. "Seventeen minutes to midnight. At
midnight, sharp, we take possession. Come!"

They trailed through a hard, rocky path among thick oak, pine,
and silver-birch. Now and then the little greenish-white light
will-o'-the-wisped ahead, flickering hither, yon. No one spoke a word.
Every footstep had to be laid down with care. After three minutes'
progress, the Master stopped, turned, held up his hand.

"Absolute silence, now," he breathed. "The outer guards are now within
an eighth of a mile."

They moved forward again. The light was no longer shown, but the
Master confidently knew the way. Bohannan felt a certain familiarity
with the terrain, which he had carefully studied on the large-scale
map he and the Master had used in planning the attack; but the
Master's intimate knowledge was not his. After two and one-half
minutes, the leader stopped again, and gestured at heavy fern-brakes
that could just be distinguished as black blotches in the dark of the
woods.

"The exact spot," he whispered. "Take cover, and follow your memorized
orders!"

He settled down noiselessly into the brakes. The others did likewise.
Utter silence fell, save for the far, vague roar of the city. A
vagrant little breeze was stirring the new foliage, through which a
few stars curiously peeped. The four men seemed far, very far from any
others. And yet--

_Were_ there any others near them? the major wondered. No sign, no
sound of them existed. Off to northward, where the dim glow ghosted up
against the sky, an occasional noise drifted to the night. A distant
laugh diffused itself through the dark. A dog yapped; perhaps the
same that they had heard barking, a few minutes before. Then came the
faint, sharp tapping of a hammer smiting metal.

"They're knocking out the holding-pins," thought the major. "In a few
minutes it'll be too late, _if_ we don't strike now!" He felt a great
temptation to urge haste, on the Master. But, aware of the futility of
any suggestion, the risk of being demoted for any other _faux pas_, he
bridled his impatience and held still.

Realizing that they were now lying at the exact distance of 440 yards
from the stockade that protected the thing they had come to steal--if
you can call "stealing" the forced sale the Master now planned
consummating, by having his bankers put into unwilling hands every
ultimate penny of the more than $3,500,000 involved, once the _coup_
should be put through--realizing this fact, Bohannan felt the tug of a
profound excitement.

His pulses quickened; the tension of his Celtic nerves keyed itself up
like a banjo-string about to snap. Steeled in the grim usages of
war though he was, and more than once having felt the heart-breaking
stress of the zero hour, this final moment of waiting, of suspense
before the attack that was so profoundly to affect his life and the
lives of all these other hardy men, pulled heavily at his nerves. He
desperately wanted a smoke, again, but that was out of the question.
It seemed to him, there in the dark and stillness, one of the fateful
moments of time, pregnant with possibilities unlimited.

The Master, Alden, Rrisa, mere vague blurs among the ferns, remained
motionless. If their nerves were a-tingle, they gave no hint or sign
of it. Where might the others of the Legion be? No indication of
them could be made out. No other living thing seemed in the woods
encircling the stockade. Was each man really there and ready for the
predetermined role he was to play?

It seemed incredible, fantastic, to suppose that all these
adventurers, each separate and alone, each having no contact, with
any other, should all have taken their assigned posts. That each, with
luminous watch on wrist, was even now timing himself, to the second,
before striking the single note calculated to produce, in harmony with
all the rest, the finished composition. Such an assumption partook
more of the stuff of an Arabian Nights tale than of stern reality in
this Twentieth Century and on the outskirts of the world's greatest
city.

The Master, crouching, whispered:

"Two minutes more! Keep your eyes on your watches, now. Get your
lethal guns ready! In 120 seconds, you will hear the first capsule
burst. Ten seconds after that, Alden, fire yours. Ten later, yours,
Bohannan. Ten later, yours, Rrisa. Listen hard! Hold steady!"

The silence drew at them like a pain. Rrisa breathed something in
which the words: "_La Illaha ilia Allah_" transpired in a wraith of
sound. Alden nestled closer into the ferns. Bohannan could hardly hold
his poise.

All three now had their capsule pistols ready. The self-luminous
compass and level attached to each gun gave them their exact direction
and elevation. Glimmering watches marked the time, the dragging of the
last few seconds.

The Master drew no weapon. His mind, directing all, observing all, was
not to be distracted by even so small a detail as any personal hand in
the discharge of the lethal gas.

If he felt the strain of the final moment, on which hung vaster
issues than mere life or death, he gave no indication of it. His eyes
remained fixed on the watch-dial at his wrist. They were confident,
those eyes. The vague shimmer of the watch-glow showed them dark and
grave; his face, faintly revealed, was impassive, emotionless.

It seemed the face of a scientist, a chemist who--having worked out
his formula to its ultimate minutiae--now felt utter trust in its
reactions, now was only waiting to observe what he well knew must
inevitably happen.

"Thirty seconds more," he whispered, and fell silent. Presently, after
what seemed half an hour: "Fifteen!"

Another long wait. The Master breathed:

"In just five seconds the first capsule will burst there!" He pointed
with assurance. "In two--in one--"




CHAPTER VI


THE SILENT ATTACK

At the exact instant when the second hand notched to the minute's
edge, and in precisely the spot indicated, a slight, luminous spot
became dimly visible above the trees. The spot took uncertain form
high above the ghost-glow rising from the unseen stockade. For an
instant it hung suspended, pale-greenish, evanescent.

Then, as a faint plop! drifted to the watchers--a sound no louder
than a feeble clack of the tongue--this indefinite luminosity began to
sink, to fade, falling slowly, gradually dissipating itself in the dim
light over the stockade.

The Master nodded, smiling, with never any hint of praise or
approbation. The fulfilment of his order was to him no other than it
is to you, when you drop a pebble into water, to hear the splash of
it. That his plan should be working out, seemed to him a perfectly
obvious, inevitable thing. The only factor that could possibly have
astonished him, just now, would have been the nonappearance of that
slight, luminous cloudlet at the precise spot and moment designated.

Neither Bohannan, Alden, nor Rrisa was watching the slow descent of
the lethal gas. All three had their eyes fixed on their own lethal-gas
pistols and on their watches. At mathematically the correct second,
Bohannan discharged his piece, correctly sighting direction and
elevation.

As he pressed trigger, a light sighing eased itself from the slim
barrel. Something flicked through the leaves; and, almost on the
instant, the phenomenon of the little phosphorescent spot repeated
itself, though in a different place from the first one. Captain
Alden's and Rrisa's shots produced still other blurs of virescence.

Then, as they all waited, crouching, came another and another tiny
explosion, high aloft, at precisely ten-second intervals. Here, there,
they developed, until twenty-nine of these strange, bubble-like things
had burst above and all about the huge enclosure. Then darkness and
silence once more settled down.

Nothing seemed to have happened. Night still reigned, starry with
glimpses of sky through wind-swayed trees. One would have said
everything still remained precisely as it had been before.

Yet presently, within the stockade or near it, a certain uneasy
_mélange_ of sounds began to develop. Here a cry became audible, there
a command. A startled voice called an order, but suddenly fell silent,
half-way through it. The worrying of the dog ceased with eloquent
suddenness. A curse died, unfinished.

And silence, as perfect as the silence of the unseen watchers strung
all about the periphery of the stockade, once more dominated the
night.

For precisely ten minutes, nothing broke that silence--minutes
during all of which the Master remained calmly waiting, with grave
confidence. Bohannan shuddered a little. His Celtic imagination was at
work, again. Uncanny the attack seemed to him, unreal and ghostlike.
So, perhaps, might strange, unbelievable creatures from some other
planet attack and conquer the world, noiselessly, gently, irrevocably.

This assault was different from any other ever made since man and man
first began battling together in the dim twilights of the primeval.
Not with shout and cheer did it rush forward, nor yet with venomous
gases that gave the alarm, that choked, that strangled, that tortured.

Silence and concealment, and the invisible blight of sleep, like the
greater numbing that once fell on the hosts of Sennacherib, enfolded
all opposition. All who would have stood against the Legion, simply
sighed once, perhaps spoke a few disjointed words, then sank into
oblivion.

So far as anyone could see, save for the bursting of twenty-nine
insignificant little light-bubbles, in mid-air, nothing at all had
happened. And yet tremendously much had happened, inside the huge
stockade.

Ten minutes to a dot had drifted by, seeming at least six times as
long, when all at once the Master stood up.

"The gas has dissipated enough now," said he, "so that we can advance
in safety. Come!"

The three also arose, half at his command, half from the independent
impulses given them by their watches as these came to the designated
second for the forward movement. The Master blew no whistle, gave no
signal to the many others scattered all through those darkly silent
woods; but right and left, and over beyond the stockade, he knew with
the precision of a mathematical equation every man was at that exact
moment also arising, also obeying orders, also preparing to close
in on the precious thing whereof they meant to make themselves the
owners.

Forward the Master made his way, with the three others of his
immediate escort. Though there no longer existed any need of silence,
hardly a word was spoken. Something vast, imminent, overpowering,
seemed to have laid its finger on the lips of all, to have muted them
of speech.

The vacuum-lights, however, were now freely flashing in the little
party, as it advanced directly toward the stockade. The men clambered
over rocks, through bushes, across fallen logs. Rrisa stopped,
suddenly, played his light on a little bundle of gray fur, and touched
it with a curious finger. It was a squirrel, curled into a tiny ball
of oblivion.

Alden's foot narrowly missed the body of a sleeping robin. An owl,
lodged in the fork of a tree, moved not as the men passed. It, too,
was whelmed in deep, temporary Nirvana.

The party's next find arrested them, with a thrill of genuine
emotion, a triumph that could not be denied some few half-whispered
exclamations of exultation from the Master's three companions. He
himself was the only one who spoke no word. But, like the others, he
had stopped and was pointing the beam of his light on the figure lying
inert among broken bushes.

With his toe he touched this figure. His light picked up the man's
face from the gloom. That face was looking at him with wide-open eyes.
The eyes saw nothing; but a kind of overwhelming astonishment still
seemed mirrored there, caught in the last moment of consciousness as
the man had fallen.

The effect was startling, of that sleeping face, those open eyes, that
lax mouth. The man was breathing easily, peacefully as a tired child.
The Master's brows contracted a little. His lips tightened. Then he
nodded, and smiled the ghost of a smile.

"Lord!" exclaimed Bohannan, half awed by the weirdness of the
apparition. "Staring at us, that way--and all! Is he asleep?"

"Try him in any way your ingenuity may suggest," answered the Master,
while Alden blinked strangely through his eyeholes, and Rrisa in
Arabic affirmed that there is no God but Allah. "Try to force some
sense-impression to his brain. It is sleep, but it is more than that.
The best experiment for any doubting Thomas to employ is just to waken
this guard--if possible."

Bohannan shook his head.

"No," he answered, "I'm not going to make a fool of myself. There's no
going against any of your statements. I'm beginning to find that out,
definitely. Let's be on our way!"

The Master spoke a few quick words of Arabic to his orderly. Rrisa
knelt by the prostrate man. Then, while the Master kept the light-beam
on him, Rrisa unbuckled the guard's belt, with cartridges and holster
containing an ugly snouted gun. This belt the Arab slung round his own
body. He arose. In silence, leaving the unconscious man just as he had
fallen, they once more pushed onward.

Lights were beginning to gleam ahead, now, in what appeared to be a
long, high line. The trees half hid them, but moment by moment they
appeared more distinctly. Meantime, too, the glow over the stockade
was getting stronger. Presently the trees ceased; and there before
them the men saw a wide, cleared space, a hundred feet of empty land
between the woods and a tall, stout fence topped with live wires and
with numerous incandescents.

"Nice place to tackle, if anybody were left to defend it!" commented
Bohannan. None of the others answered. The Master started diagonally
across the cleared space, toward a cluster of little buildings and
stout gate-posts.

Hardly had they emerged from the woods, when, all up and down the
line, till it was broken by the woods at both ends where the stockade
joined its eastern and western wall, other men began appearing. And
all, alike, converged toward the gate.

But to these, the little party of four gave no heed. Other men
absorbed their interest--sleeping men, now more and more thickly
scattered all along the stockade. Save for a slight, saline tang
to the air--an odor by no means unpleasant--nothing remained of the
lethal gas.

But its victims still lay there, prone, in every possible attitude of
complete and overpowering abandonment. And all, as the party of four
passed, were quickly disarmed. Up and down the open space, other
Legionaries were at the same work.

The Master and his companions reached the gate-house first of any
in the party. The gate was massive, of stout oaken planks heavily
strapped with iron. About it, and the gate-house, a good many
guards were lying. All showed evidence of having dropped asleep with
irresistible suddenness.

Some were gaping, others foolishly grinning as if their last sensation
had been agreeable--as indeed it had been--while others stared
disconcertingly. The chin of one showed an ugly burn where his Turkish
cigarette had sagged, and had smoldered to extinction on the flesh.

One had a watch in his hand, while another gripped a newspaper. In the
gate-house, two had fallen face downward on the table that occupied
the center of the rough room; checker-pieces lay scattered from the
game they had been playing. Several men sprawled just outside the
little house, on the platform. Under the incandescents, the effect
grew weird.

Bohannan shuddered, as he glanced from one to another, then up at some
of the approaching men of the expedition. Rrisa affirmed that Mohammed
was indeed the prophet of Allah, and that the ways of the _Nasara_
were most strange.

"Good!" exclaimed the Master, with his first word of approval. Even
his aplomb was a little shaken by the complete success of the attack.
"It's all working like a clock."

"How about disarming these men, sir?" queried Captain Alden.

"No. They fall under the orders of another group."

"The way is clear, then--"

"Absolutely! These men will sleep almost precisely thirty minutes. The
way is clear ahead of us. Forward into the Palisade!"




CHAPTER VII


THE NEST OF THE GREAT BIRD

As the little group of four penetrated into the enclosure which but a
few moments before had been guarded all round its perimeter by a small
army of determined men, more and more of the Legionaries began to
concentrate toward the entrance.

Silently they came, with almost the precision of automata in some
complex mechanical process. All were obeying the Master's will,
because obedience was sweet to them; because it spelled adventure,
freedom, life.

Now and then one stopped, bent, arose with some added burden taken
from a fallen guard. Not one guard was to be injured in any manner.
Human life was not to be taken. But nothing in the way of armament was
to be left, by way of possible danger to the Legion. And already the
telephone-wires had been effectively cut.

All the approaching Legionaries wore rucksacks, and all were in their
respective uniforms, though every man still wore a long coat that
concealed it. A few groups of two appeared, bearing rather heavy
burdens.

The Master smiled again, and nodded, as he paused a moment at the
gate to peer down, along the line of the clearing between stockade and
forest.

"Here come some of the machine-guns," said he. "I shall be vastly
surprised if one man or one single bit of equipment fails to appear on
schedule time. Nothing like system, Bohannan--that, and knowing how to
choose your men!"

He turned, and the other three followed him into the enclosure.
Outside, all was developing according to plans and specifications.
They four were to be pioneers into the jealously guarded space
that for so long had been the mystery of the continent, yes, of the
civilized world.

The whole enclosure was well lighted with a profusion of electric
lamps. At first view, quite a bewildering mass of small buildings
appeared; but second glance showed order in them all. Streets had been
laid out, as in a town; and along these streets stood drafting-sheds,
workshops, storehouses, commissary offices, dwellings for the workers,
guards, and bosses. A well-built cottage on the main, forward-going
road that led from the gate to an inner stockade, was probably
headquarters for the chief engineers.

Not one sign of conscious life appeared. Men were lying here, there,