_Nissr's_ altitude was now very great, ranging between 17,500 and
21,000 feet, so as to take advantage of the steady eastward setting
wind in the higher air-lanes. A hard, frozen moonlight, from the
steely disk sinking down the western sky, had slashed ink-black
shadows of struts and stanchions across the gallery, and had flung
_Nissr's_ larger shadow down the hungering abysses of the sky that
yawned beneath.

That shadow had danced and quivered at fantastic speed across dazzling
moonlit fields of cloud, ever keeping pace with the Sky Eagle, now
leaping across immense and silent drifts of white, now plunging,
vanishing into black abysses that showed the ocean spinning backward,
ever backward toward the west.

With the coming of dawn, the shadow had faded, and the watchers' eyes
had been turned ahead for some first sight of the out-riders of
the attacking fleets. Bohannan, a little nervous in spite of his
well-seasoned fighting-blood, had smoked a couple of cigars in the
sheltered gallery, pacing up and down with coat-collar about his ears
and with hands thrust deep in pockets. The Master, likewise muffled,
had refused all proffers of tobacco and had contented himself with a
few khat leaves.

Silence had, for the most part, reigned between them. Up here in the
gallery, conversation was not easy. The hurricane of _Nissr's_ flight
shrieked at times with shrill stridor and with whistlings as of a
million witches bound for some infernal Sabbath on the Matterhorn. A
good deal of vibration and of shuddering whipped the wing-tip, too;
all was different, here, from the calm warmth, comfort, and security
of the fuselage.

The men seemed standing on the very pinion-feathers of some fabled
roc, sweeping through space. Above, below, complete and overwhelming
vacancy clutched for them. The human is not yet born who can stand
thus upon the tip of such a plane, and feel himself wholly at ease.

As darkness faded, however, and as approaching dawn began to burn
its slow way up the stupendous vaults of space above the eastern
cloud-battlements--battlements flicked with dull crimson, blood-tinged
blotches, golden streaks and a whole phantasmagoria of shifting
hues--something of the oppression of night fell from the two men.

"Well, we're still carrying on. Things are still going pretty much
O.K., sir," proffered the major, squinting into the East--the cold,
red East, infinitely vast, empty, ripe with possibilities. "A good
start! Close to a thousand miles we've made; engines running to a
hair; men all fitting into the jobs like clockwork. Everything all
right to a dot, eh?"

The Master nodded silently, keeping dark eyes fixed on the horizon of
cloud-rack. Above, the last faint prickings of stars were fading. The
moon had paled to a ghostly circle. Shuddering, _Nissr_ fled, with
vapory horizons seemingly on her own level so that she appeared at the
bottom of an infinite bowl. Bohannan, feeling need of speech, tried to
be casual as he added:

"I don't feel sleepy. Do you? Seems like I'd never want to sleep
again. Faith, this _is_ living! You've got us all enthused. And your
idea of putting every man-jack in uniform was bully! Nothing like
uniforms--even a jumble of different kinds, like ours--to cement men
together and give them the _esprit de corps._ If we go through as
we've begun--"

The Master interrupted him with a cold glance of annoyance. The Celt's
exuberance jarred on his soul. Since the affair with "Captain Alden,"
the Master's nerves had gone a little raw.

Bohannan rallied bravely.

"Of course," he went on, "it was unfortunate about that New Zealand
chap going West. He looked like a right good fellow. But, well--_c'est
la guerre!_ And I know he wouldn't have chosen a finer grave than the
bottom of the Atlantic, where he's sleeping now.

"By the way, how did Alden come out? Much hurt, was he? I know, of
course, he didn't go back to the sick-bay. So he couldn't have been
badly wounded, or he would be--"

"The Arabs have a saying, my dear fellow," dryly answered the Master,
"that one ear is worth ten thousand tongues. Ponder it well!"

The major's look of astonishment annoyed the Master, even while it
hurt him. He took scant pleasure in rebuffing this old friend; but
certainly "Captain Alden" would not bear discussing. Feeling himself
in a kind of _impasse_ regarding Alden, and fearing some telltale
expression in his eyes, the Master swung up his binoculars and once
more swept the cloud-horizons from northeast to southeast.

"We ought to be sighting some of the attackers, before long," judged
he. "I'm rather curious to see them--to see flies attacking an eagle.
I haven't had a real chance of testing out the neutralizers. Their
operation, in actual practice, ought to be interesting."

He tried to speak coldly, impersonally; but he well realized a certain
strained quality in his voice. Even now, in the hour of impending
attack, his thoughts could not remain wholly fixed on the enemy
which--so the wireless informed him--lay only a little beyond the
haze-enshrouded, burning rim of cloudland.

Despite every effort of the will, he kept mentally reverting to
the midships port stateroom containing the woman. He could not keep
himself from wondering how she was getting on. Her wound, he hoped--he
felt confident--could not be serious.

Had it been, of course, the woman would have asked some further aid.
And since the moment when he had left her, no word had come to him.
More than once, temptation had whispered: "Go to her! She has deceived
you, and you are master here. But, above all, you are a man!"

Twice he had all but yielded to this inner voice. But he had not
yielded. Another and a sterner voice had said: "She is an interloper.
She has no rights. Why give her another thought?"

This voice had prevailed. The Master had told himself only a few hours
more remained, at all events, before the woman should be cast off and
abandoned in whatever strange land might befall--probably Morocco, or
it might be the Spanish colony of Rio de Oro on the western fringes
of the Sahara. After that, what responsibility for her safety or her
welfare would be his? Why, he had none, even now!

"But, man," the small voice insinuated, "she came to you on an errand
of mercy, to nurse and care for such as might fall ill or be wounded.
It was not wholly the desire for adventure that led her to deceive
you. Her motive was high and fine!"

"A curse on all women!" retorted the other voice. "Away with her!" And
this sterner voice again prevailed. Still, at thought that sometime
during the day now close at hand he was to see the last of this woman
who had stood there before him in his cabin, with dark eyes looking
into his, with eager, oval face upturned to his, with all that glory
of lustrous hair a flood about her shoulders, something unknown,
unwonted, fingered at the latchets of his heart.

He realized that he felt strange, uneasy, uprooted from his sober
aplomb. Unknown irritations possessed him. Under his breath he
muttered an Arabic cynicism about woman, from the fourth chapter of
the Koran: "Men shall have the preeminence above women, because Allah
hath caused the one of them to excel the other!"

Then came the philosophical reflection:

"Man, you were seeking new sensations, new experiences, to stir your
pulses. This woman has given you many. She has served her purpose. Now
let her go!"

Thus, seeming to have reached a certain finality of decision, he
dismissed her again from his mind--for perhaps the twentieth time--and
with new care once more began studying the gold-edged, shining clouds
where now a dull, broad arc of molten metal had burned its way out of
the mists.

The Master slid colored ray-filters over his binoculars, to shield
his eyes from the direct dazzle of the rising sun, and swept that
incandescent arc. Suddenly he drew a sharp intake of breath.

"Sighted something, eh?" demanded the major, already recovered from
the snub administered.

"See for yourself, Major, what you make of it! Right in the sun's eye,
and off to southward--all along that fantastic, crimson cloud-castle."

Bohannan's gaze narrowed through his own glasses. Bracing his powerful
legs against the quivering jar of the aileron, he brushed the horizon
into his eager vision. The glasses steadied. There, of a truth, black
midges had appeared, coming up over the world's rim like a startled
covey of quail.




CHAPTER XV


THE BATTLE OF VIBRATIONS

Two, five, a dozen, now a score of tiny specks dotted the mist,
some moving right across the broadening face of the sun itself. As
_Nissr's_ flight stormed eastward, and these gnats drove to the west,
their total rate of approach must have been tremendous; for even as
the men watched, they seemed to find the attackers growing in bulk.
And now more and ever more appeared, transpiring from the bleeding
vapors of dawn.

"Looks like business, sir!" exclaimed the Celt, his jaw hard.

"Business, yes."

"Bad business for us, eh?"

"It might be, if we had only the usual means of defense. Under
ordinary circumstances, our only game would be to turn tail and run
for it, or cut away far to the south--or else break out a white flag
and surrender. But--"

"That must be the Azores air-fleet," judged Bohannan. "The others
couldn't have made so much westing, in this time. Faith, what a
buzzing swarm of mosquitoes! I had no idea there were that many planes
on the Azores International Air Board station!"

"There are many things you have no idea of, Major," replied the
Master, sharply. "That, however, is immaterial. Yes, here come the
fringes of attack, all right enough. I estimate forty or fifty in
sight, already; and there must be a few hundred back of those, between
here and land, north and south. Technically, we're pirates, you know."

"Pirates?" demanded the major, lowering his glass.

The Master nodded.

"Yes," he answered. "That's what the wireless tells us. We'll get
short shrift if--my apparatus fails."

"How do they make us out pirates?" Bohannan ejaculated. It was not
fear that looked from his blue eyes, but a vast astonishment. His
ruddy face, amazed under the now strengthening light of day, brought a
smile to the Master's lips.

"What else are we, my dear fellow?" the Master queried. "To seize a
ship--a water-ship or one of the air matters nothing--and to overpower
the crew, kill or wound a few, throw them outboard and sail away,
comes pretty near constituting piracy. Of course the air-rules and
laws aren't wholly settled yet; but we're in a fair way of giving the
big-wigs a whacking precedent to govern the future. I fancy a good
many cases will be judged as _per_ the outcome of this expedition.

"We're pirates all right--if they catch us. And they _will_ catch
us if they get within gunshot. The next few minutes will settle that
question of whether they're going to, or not!"

"Nice, comforting prospect!" muttered the Celt. "What do they do
with pirates, anyhow, these days? They can't hang us at the yard-arm,
because airships don't have 'em. Of course they might stage a
hanging-bee with this Legion dangling from the wings, but that would
be pretty hard to manage. It'll be shooting, eh?"

"Probably, if my neutralizer fails."

"You're cheerful about it! The neutralizer may be all right, in its
way, but personally I'm rather strong for these!" He laid a hand on
the breech of the Lewis machine-gun mounted in the gallery, its grim
muzzle pointed out through a slit in the colloid screen. "The six guns
we've got aboard, in strategic positions, look like good medicine
to _me_! Wouldn't it be the correct thing to call the gun-crews and
limber up a little? These chaps aren't going to be all day in getting
here, and when they do--"

"I admire your spirit, Major," interrupted the other, with undertones
of mockery, "but it's of the quality that, after all, can't accomplish
anything. It's the kind that goes against artillery with rifles.
Six guns against perhaps six hundred--and we're not built for rapid
maneuvering. That swarm could sting us a thousand times while we were
giving them the first round. No, no, there's nothing for it now, but
the neutralizer!"

"My will is made, anyhow," growled Bohannan. "Faith, I'm glad it is!"

The Master gave no reply, but took from the rail the little phone that
hung there, and pressed a button, four times. He cupped the receiver
at his ear.

"You, Enemark?" asked he, of the man at the neutralizer far down in
the penetralia of the giant air-liner. "Throw in the first control.
Half-voltage, for three minutes. Then three-quarters, for two; and
then full, with all controls. Understand?"

"Yes, sir!" came the crisp voice of Enemark. "Perfectly!"

The Master hung up the receiver, and for a moment stood brooding.
An intruding thought had once more forced itself into his brain--a
thought of "Captain Alden." In case of capture or destruction, what
of the woman? Something very like a pang of human emotion pierced
his heart. Impatiently he thrust the thought aside, and turned with a
quiet smile to Bohannan.

The major, red with excitement and impatience, still had a hand on the
machine-gun. He was patting it slightly, his face eloquent of longing
and regret.

"Still pinning your faith to steel-jacketed streams of bullets,
are you, as against ion-jacketed streams of vibrations?" the Master
rallied him. "We shall see, immediately, whether you're right or _I_
am! Bullets are all well enough in their place, Major, but electrons
are sometimes necessary. Vibrations, Major--I pin my faith to
vibrations."

"Vibrate all you want to!" exclaimed the Celt, irefully, his eyes on
the thickening swarm of flyers, some of them now plainly visible in
detail against the aching smears of color flung across the eastern
reaches of cloudland. "Vibrate away; but give me _this_!" He fondled
the gleaming gun as if it had been a pet. "I tell you frankly, if
I were in charge here, I'd let the vibrations go to Hell and begin
pumping lead. I'd have all gun-crews at stations, and the second we
got in range I'd open with all six Lewises!"

"Yes, and Nissr would go crumpling down, a minute later, a blazing
sieve fore-and-aft--wings, tanks, fuselage, everything riddled
with thousands of bullets. Vibration is the trick, I tell you. It's
everything.

"All life is vibration. When it ceases, that is death--and even dead
matter vibrates. All our senses depend on vibration. Everything we
feel, see, hear, taste, comes to our knowledge through vibrations.
And the receptive force in us is vibration, too. The brain is just one
great, central ganglion for the taking in of vibrations.

"The secret of life, of the universe itself, is vibration. If we
understood all about that, the cosmos would have no secrets from us.
So now--ah, see there, will you? See, Major, and be convinced!"

He pointed eastward, into the blazing sunrise. The out-fling of his
arm betrayed more human emotion than he had yet shown. Exultation
leaped to his usually impassive eyes. Surely, had not this
expedition--which he had hoped would give surcease from ennui and stir
the pulses--had it not already yielded dividends? Had it not already
very richly repaid him?

"See there, now!" he cried again, and gripped the rail with nervous
hands.

"Lord above!" ejaculated the major, squinting through his binoculars.


"Astonished, eh?" demanded the Master, smiling with malice. "Didn't
think it would work, did you? Well, which do you choose now,
Major--bullets or vibrations?"

"This--this is extraordinary!" exclaimed Bohannan. His glasses
traveled to and fro, sweeping the fringelike fan of the attackers,
still five or six miles away. "Faith, but this is--"

The binoculars lowered slowly, as Bohannan watched a falling plane.
Everywhere ahead there in the brazier of the dawn, as the two men
stood watching from the wind-lashed gallery of the on-roaring liner,
attackers were dropping. All along the line they had begun to fall,
like ripe fruit in a hurricane.

Not in bursts of flame did they go plunging down the depths, gyrating
like mad comets with long smoke-trailers and redly licking manes of
fire. Not in shattered fragments did they burst and plumb the abyss.
No; quite intact, unharmed, but utterly powerless they fell.

Some spiraled down, like dead leaves twirling in autumnal breezes,
with drunken yaws and pitches. Others in long slants volplaned toward
the hidden sea, miles below the cloud-plain. A few pitched over and
over, or slid away in nose-dives and tail-spins. But one and all, as
they crossed what seemed an invisible line drawn out there ahead of
the onrushing Eagle of the Sky, bowed to some mysterious force.

It seemed almost as if _Nissr_ were the center of a vast sphere that
moved with her--a sphere through which no enemy could pass--a sphere
against the intangible surface of which even the most powerful engines
of the air dashed themselves in vain.

And still, as others and still others came charging up to the attack
like knights in joust, they fell. One by one the white wool cushions
of the cloud, gold-broidered by the magic needles of the sun, received
them. One by one they faded, vanished, were no more.

So, all disappeared. Between a hundred and a hundred and twenty-five
planes were silently, swiftly, resistlessly sent down in no more
than twenty minutes, while the watchers stood there in the gallery,
fascinated by the wondrous precision and power of this new and
far-outflung globe of protection.

And again the blood-red morning sky grew clear of attackers. Again,
between high heaven's black vault and the fantastic continent of cloud
below, nothing remained but free vacancy. The Master smiled.

"Vibrations, my dear Major!" said he. "Neutralize the currents
delivered by the magnetos of hostile planes to their spark-plugs, and
you transform the most powerful engines into inert matter. Not all the
finely adjusted mechanism in the world, nor the best of petrol, nor
yet the most perfect skill is worth _that_," with a snap of the strong
fingers, "when the spark dies.

"My device is the absolute ruler of whatever spark I direct it
against. Our own ignition is screened; but all others within the
critical radius become impotent. So you recognize, do you not, the
uselessness of machine-guns? The groundlessness of any fears about the
Air Patrol's forces?"

"Lord, but this is wonderful!" Bohannan ejaculated. "If we'd only had
this in the Great War, the Hun would have been wiped out in a month!"

"Yes, but we didn't have it," the Master smiled. "I've just finished
perfecting it. Put the last touches on it hardly twenty-four hours
ago. If there's ever another war, though--ah, see there, now! Here
comes one lone, last attacker!"

He pointed. Far at the edge of empty cloudland, now less blood-stained
and becoming a ruddy pink under the risen sun, a solitary aerial
jouster had grown visible.

The last attacker appeared a feeble gnat to dance thus alone in the
eye of morning. That one plane should, unaided, drive on at _Nissr's_
huge, rushing bulk, seemed as preposterous as a mosquito trying
to lance a rhinoceros. The major directed a careful lens at this
survivor.

"He has his nerve right in his baggage with him," announced the Celt.
"Sure, he's 'there.' There can be no doubt he's seen the others fall.
Yet--what now? He's turning tail, eh? He's on the run?"

"Not a bit of it! He's driving straight ahead. That was only a dip and
turn, for better air. Ah, but he's good, that fellow! There's a man
after my own heart, Major. Maybe there's more than one, aboard that
plane. But there's one, anyhow, that's a real man!"

The Master pondered a moment, then again picked up the phone.

"Enemark?" he called. "That you?"

"Hello! Yes, sir! What orders, sir?"

"Cut off the ray! Quick, there!"

"Yes, sir!" And through the phone the Master heard the _snick_ of a
switch being hastily thrown.

"What's the idea, now?" demanded the major, astonished. "Going to let
that plane close in on us, and maybe riddle us?"

The Master smiled, as he made answer:

"I'll chance the bullets, this time. There's a _man_ on board that
plane. A _man_! And we--need men!"

The Master smiled, as he made answer:

"I'll chance the bullets, this time. There's a man on board that
plane. A man! And we--need men!"




CHAPTER XVI


LECLAIR, ACE OF FRANCE

Swooping, rising, falling like a falcon in swift search of quarry, the
last plane of the Azores squadron swept in toward the on-rushing Eagle
of the Sky.

Undismayed by the swift, inexplicable fall of all its companions, it
still thrust on for the attack. In a few minutes it had come off the
port bows of the giant air-liner, no more than half a mile distant.
Now the watchers saw it, slipping through some tenuous higher
cloud-banks that had begun to gather, a lean, swift, wasplike
speedster: one of the Air Control Board's--the A.C.B.'s--most rapid
aerial police planes. The binoculars of the Master and Bohannan drew
the machine almost to fingers' touch.

"Only one man aboard her, with a machine-gun," commented the Master,
eyes at glass, as he watched the flick of sunlight on the attacker's
fuselage, the dip and glitter of her varnished wings, the blur of her
propellers. Already the roaring of her exhaust gusted down to them.

"Ah, see? She's turning, now. Banking around! We may catch a burst of
machine-gun fire, in a minute. Or, no--she's coming up on our tail,
Major. I think she's going to try and board us!"

"You going to let her?" protestingly demanded Bohannan. His hand
twitched against the butt of the Lewis. "In two seconds I could sight
an aft gun, sir, and blow that machine Hell-for-leather!"

"No, no--let that fellow come aboard, if he wants," the Master
commanded. And with eager curiosity in his dark eyes, with vast wonder
what manner of human this might be who--all alone after having seen
more than a hundred comrades plunge--still ventured closing to grips,
the Master watched.

The air-wasp was already swerving, making a spiral glide, coming up
astern with obvious intentions. As the two men watched--and as a score
of other eyes, from other galleries and ports likewise observed--the
lean wasp carried out her driver's plan. With a sudden, plunging
swoop, she dived at the Eagle of the Sky for all the world like a hawk
stooping at quarry.

A moment she kept pace with the air-liner's whirring rush. She
hovered, dropped with a wondrous precision that proved her rider's
consummate skill, made a perfect landing on the long take-off that
stretched from rudders to wing observation galleries, atop the liner.

Forward on _Nissr_ the wasp ran on her small, cushioned wheels. She
stopped, with jammed-on brakes, and came to rest not forty feet abaft
the Eagle's beak.

Quite at once, without delay, the little door of the pilot-pit in the
wasp's head swung wide, and a heavily-swaddled figure clambered out.
This figure stood a moment, peering about through goggles. Then with a
free, quick stride, he started forward toward the gallery where he had
seen Bohannan and the Master.

The two awaited him. Confidently he came into the wind-shielded
gallery on top of _Nissr's_ port plane. He advanced to within
about six feet, stopped, gave the military salute--which they both
returned--and in a throaty French that marked him as from Paris,
demanded:

"Which of you gentlemen is in command, here?"

"_Moi, monsieur!_" answered the Master, also speaking French. "And
what is your errand?"

"I have come to inform you, in the name of the A.C.B.'s law,
recognized as binding by all air-traffic, that you and your entire
crew are under arrest."

"Indeed? And then--"

"I am to take charge of this machine at once, and proceed with it as
per further instructions from International Aerial headquarters at
Washington."

"Very interesting news, no doubt," replied the Master, unmoved. "But I
cannot examine your credentials, nor can we negotiate matters of such
importance in so off-hand a manner. This gallery will not serve. Pray
accompany me to my cabin?"

"_Parfaitement, monsieur!_ I await your pleasure!"

The stranger's gesture, his bow, proclaimed the Parisian as well as
his speech. The Master nodded. All three proceeded in silence to
the hooded companion-way at the forward end of the take-off, that
sheltered the ladder. This they descended, to the main corridor.

There they paused, a moment.

"Major," said the Master, "pardon me, but I wish to speak to
our--guest, alone. You understand."

The major's glance conveyed a world of indignant protest, but he
obeyed in silence. When he had withdrawn into the smoke-room, where
a brooding pipe would ill divert his mind from various wild
speculations, the Master slid open his own cabin door, and extended a
hand of welcome toward it.

"_Après vous, monsieur!_" said he.

The A.C.B. officer entered, his vigorous, compact figure alive with
energy, intelligence. The Master followed, slid the door shut and
motioned to a chair beside the desk. This chair, of metal, was itself
placed upon a metal plate. The plate was new. At our last sight of the
cabin, it had not been there.

Taking off goggles and gauntlets, and throwing open his sheepskin
jacket, the Frenchman sat down. The Master also plate was new. At our
last sight of the cabin, it had not been there.

Taking off goggles and gauntlets, and throwing open his sheepskin
jacket, the Frenchman sat down. The Master also sat down at the desk.
A brief silence, more pregnant than any speech, followed. Each man
narrowly appraised the other. Then said the newcomer, still in that
admirable French of his:

"You understand, of course, _n'est-ce pas?_ that it is useless to
offer any resistance to the authority of the A.C.B."

"May I take the liberty of inquiring what your credentials may be, and
with whom I have the great pleasure of speaking?" returned the Master.
His eyes, mirroring admiration, peered with some curiosity at the
dark, lean face of the Frenchman.

"I," answered the other, "am Lieutenant André Leclair, formerly of
the French flying forces, now a commander in the International Air
Police."

"Leclair?" demanded the Master quickly, his face lighting with a
glad surprise. "Leclair, of the Mesopotamian campaign? Leclair, the
world-famous ace?"

"Leclair, nothing else. I deprecate the adjectives."

The Master's hand went out. The other took it. For a moment their grip
held, there under the bright white illumination of the cabin--for,
though daylight had begun fingering round the drawn curtains, the
glow-lamps still were burning.

The hand-clasp broke. Leclair began:

"As for you, monsieur, I already know you, of course. You are--"

The Master raised a palm of protest.

"Who I am does not matter," said he. "I am not a man, but an idea. My
personality does not count. All that counts is the program, the plan I
stand for.

"Many here do not even know my name. No man speaks it. I am quite
anonymous; quite so. Therefore I pray you, keep silent on that matter.
What, after all, is the significance of a name? You are an ace, an
officer. So am I."

"True, very true. Therefore I more keenly regret the fact that I must
place you under arrest, and that charges of piracy in the high air
must be lodged against you."

"Thank you for the regret, indeed," answered the Master dryly. Save
for the fact that this strange man never laughed and seldom smiled,
one would have thought the odd twinkle in his eye prefaced merriment.
"Well, what now?"

The Frenchman produced a silver cigarette-case, opened it and extended
it toward the man now technically his prisoner. As yet he had said no
word concerning the tremendous execution done the air police forces.
His offer of the cigarettes was as calm, as courteous as if they two
had met under circumstances of the most casual amity. The Master waved
the cigarettes away.

"Thank you, no," said he. "I never smoke. But you will perhaps pardon
me if I nibble two or three of these khat leaves. You yourself, from
your experience in Oriental countries, know the value of khat."

"I do, indeed," said the other, his eyes lighting up.

"And may I offer you a few leaves?"

"_Merci_! I thank you, but tobacco still satisfies." The Frenchman
lighted his cigarette, blew thin smoke, and cast intelligent, keen
eyes about the cabin. Said he:

"You will not, of course, offer any resistance. I realize that I am
here among a large crew of men. I am all alone, it is true. You could
easily overpower me, throw me into the sea, and _voilà_--I die. But
that would not be of any avail to you.

"Already perhaps a hundred and fifty air police have fallen this
morning. It is strange. I do not understand, but such is the fact.
Nevertheless, I am here, myself. I have survived--survived, to convey
organized society's message of arrest. Individuals do not count.
They are only representatives of the mass-power of society. _N'est-ce
pas?_"

"Quite correct. And then--"

"Sooner or later you must land somewhere for petrol, you know. For
_essence_, eh? Just as sea-pirates were wiped out by the coming of
steam-power, which they had to adopt and which forced them to call
at ports for coal, so air-pirates will perish because they must have
essence. That is entirely obvious. Have I the honor of your signed
surrender, my dear sir, including that of all your men?"

"Just one question, please!"

"A thousand, if you like," smiled the Parisian, inhaling smoke. His
courtesy was perfect, but the glint of his eye made one think of a
tiger that purrs, with claws ready to strike.