 CHAPTER XII But by what magic had this wondrous jewel-group of domes and spires and minarets grown up on the platform within these few alterations of sun and dark? From my own experience of bastioning the shore I was able to understand the rapidity with which the foundations had been laid. My wonder grew all the more at the marvellous piece of art that now stood upon them. Every detail was so complete and so beautiful. The giant forest isle of Cologne Cathedral, the mosaic splendor that had over-odd me within St. Peter's, the statute-frostwork of Milan, seemed to me tawdry beside the colossal domes with their jeweled magnificence and the infinite variety and simplicity of the labyrinth of arcades and galleries and arches. Yet those were the fruits of a thousand years' faith and work. This was the product of a few days. The more I thought of it, the more bewildered I was. Thyriel devined my thoughts and saved me from my perplexity. You have never seen the Ulouran, she exclaimed. I asked her what it was. I could see that the word might be translated as Son Architect. Her description of it, though lucid as usual, did not convey to my slow thoughts a full idea of the instrument, and we got permission to visit Ulourifa, or the Hall of Architecture, the following day. In the multiplicity of wonders throughout Lymonora I had failed to notice this great edifice, although it stood on a level, symmetrically cut plateau, commanding all the region in which were gathered most of the exceptionally great and magnificent structures of the island, and was but one of a series of gleaming palaces, which crowned the points of the rocky spurs of Lila Roma. In each palace was concentrated some one of the services that the new civilization had to offer to the progress of the race. I had visited a few of them, and it was part of the program of my education to make me spend such space and time in each as the desire or the necessity arose in my life, but it had never struck me to inquire how the marvellous buildings had arisen. Nor, though I had noticed the frequent change of outward shape and ornamentation of parts of the mansion of my pro-parents, had I ever had leisure or curiosity to find out the reason or source of the transformations. It was delightful to see the growth of the building and to remove into the new parts, and as silently and invisibly the sections we had left vanished. I had never time to grow tired of one chamber or set of chambers before another was ready for me. It was like the growth of a palace of dreams, but I soon accepted it as one of the magic habits of the island, a natural feature of my life. Never rousing query and seldom awakening even thought. So much of new and striking was crowded into the days and months and years that large portions of the civilization had to pass uncommanded on and ultimately unnoticed. With the same wonder with which in later life we begin to watch the marvellous workings of the functions of our bodies I entered on my new investigation. As we approached Olorifa it seemed to me that we had made a mistake and come to the wrong building, for it rang with the most entrancing music and I thought that it must be the cathedral of the island. It had one vast central dome surrounded by countless cupolas, and as we skirted the edifice I heard underneath each of these smaller roofs, sweet melodies sounding too low to be heard beyond its partition walls and almost drowned in the thunderous diapison of the central dome. These I took for chapels and fangs subsidiary to the Great Temple, round which they clustered. We entered and I was amazed to find under what I had thought to be the Temple of the Island, a great mansion, but dwarfed by the height and size of the temple roof. The fence enclosing it had just been shaken to dust by their new electric process for the atomizing of a rillium. What was to be done with the new structure? It was walled in by the giant cupola, and could not possibly be removed. The thought was beating about in my mind but ceased before a sudden crash. I looked up and there one complete and evenly cut quadrant of the dome had vanished, and the bright sun shone in, undimmed by any medium. I again noticed something going on around us. Great flanks like the sides of a ship were fitted to the bottom of the new building, and along them underneath were adjusted huge floats. Wings were then attached to either side, and a strong wing engine was placed in the body and two rudder engines in the after part of the raft. They were rapidly charged with electricity. The floats were exhausted of their heavier air, and up rose the whole structure through the huge aperture in the dome, and I could see its pilots guided this way and that through the air to fit the unequal and varying wind that blew, till at last it disappeared round a shoulder of Lila Roma. I had run out of Ulorifa to watch the flight of the great mansion on its aerial raft, and when it went out of sight I returned, reflecting with a sigh of relief that this explained the magic growth of the house in which I lived. The additions had arrived and been fixed and adapted to the purposes of human habitation while I was sleeping, or absent on my daily pursuits. I was startled when I got back to find the dome complete again and preparation being made for the construction of some other Irelinium shell. The fence work had been raised. By its wall stood the keyboard of a gigantic organ-like musical instrument, the other half of which was so arranged within the new framework that the whole volume of its sound should bear upon whatever the fence enclosed. A huge bell-mouth opened out into the chamber, and I soon saw that out of this issued a snowstorm of Irelinium particles which floated lightly in the air. A peel of music rang out from the instrument, and I saw the dust-moats settle rapidly into a symmetrical figure, that minute by minute grew into a gigantic, nautilus shell. The musician who sat at the keyboard watched the snow whirl within and the magical rise of the walls. I perceived that the bar of music was repeated again and again, with gradual engrafting a variation as the shell-like walls bent over. At a certain point where the whirl began to incur backwards, the string completely changed and reminded me of a fugue. Back and forth it shot its monotonous shuttle of sound. I was spellbound by the cragling melody and the sinuous flexure of the vast conch. The completion of the process and the cessation of the music broke the spell, and I pressed near to ask explanations and to see the result. Some enchanter's power must surely have drawn in the floating particles to the thin curves of the structure and held them there, for the molds continued to float unattracted, but in sparser and sparser cloud, and at last they ceased to move, and settled on the fence, dimming its translucence. I felt the metal floor grow first hotter and hotter, and then cooler and cooler till it was ice cold. Within a fraction of an hour the whole process was complete. The fencing walls were shaken to dust, and there stood the gigantic nautilus perfect in its grace, clear as crystal but for the frostwork of nautilus patterns all over its surface. It was a new experiment in form for a winged ship of the air, and as I stood the wings were added and the engines put on board. The navigators embarked. A smaller quadrant of the dome crashed aside, and out of the aperture floated this huge air bubble rainbow-lustrous in the sun. Thyriel led me to the vacant space once the airship had been launched, and there I was shown how powerful magnets made the snowstorm sweep so rapidly downwards and held the aeryllium dust in position, once it had taken shape. Then the alternate floors were exhibited to me, one emanating heat which melted the new structure into permanency, and another that reduced the temperature below freezing point and completed the architectural process by chilling the metal. There were other floors easy of substitution by means of leverage and the application of great force, as one was withdrawn, another was run into its place. One was suited for one chemical process, another for another. A second set were for applying to the walls of the new structure different forms or grades of electricity. A third set could infuse into them various kinds of concreting fluids to make them cohere when the heating and chilling process was likely to fail. This was the great Ularen that I had come to see, and only the most skilled musician and architect was allowed to sit down at the keyboard. In order to show me the part that music took in this swift architecture, I was led round the circle of sub-chappels that I had seen surrounding the Great Dome. In these were employed the various draftsmen of Ularefa. In the first we entered the experimenter was engaged in seeking the most beautiful form of a new mansion which was to be placed up amongst the snows of Lila Roma. It would have to withstand great gusts of wind and at times heavy drifts of snow. It would also have to bear a variety of high temperatures within in order to protect the dwellers from the bitterness of the night. The building was meant for those who had to watch the storm-cone and keep it in perfect working order. The draftsmen was using a miniature Ularen and deftly sounding various musical notes and sometimes songs into its a rillium-dust whirlwind, but there was always one predominating note meant to introduce into each experiment a feature that had been before tested and found suitable. He fixed his experiments by means of his small movable floors and then placed the resulting forms in order along a shelf, attaching to each the score of music which had produced it. It was like a collection of toy observatories. Within a neighboring compartment of like transparent walls another artisan submitted each of the models to the influences of stress and strain, of heat and cold, of snow pressure and tornado violence that the ultimate and full-sized mansion would have to undergo. Once it come to the heat, another to the severe cold, a third to an avalanche from above, a fourth to a gust of wind. He marked the flaw in each and the influence that had brought it out and handed the model back to the draftsmen, who at once corrected the note or notes in the score of music which symbolized the flaw. When the result of the experimentation was complete the score of the music and the miniature fabric were sent to the central dome and in less than an hour the huge mansion was on its wing-draft speeding towards its destination far up the great mountain slope. I was led through the whole series of experimenting chapels. In each was there a miniature, sewn architect producing test-forms for special purposes under the skilled hands of creative workmen and their pupils. In most of them new designs were being produced for private houses, for of these was needed the greatest variety, as each islander had his home renewed so frequently. I could not have conceived that so many different forms could be created for the same purpose. Indeed, the number seemed to be limited only by the possible combinations of notes of music and the need of adapting each design to habitation and the habits of the dwellers. The skill of the artist lay in the selection of the proper forms out of the multitude he daily evolved and in their adaptation to the necessities of limonorn life. It was in these designs that the younger members of the architect families were engaged, thus they learned their art and developed their creative instincts. Under some cupolas which we visited we found experiments on new designs for the large public buildings, and to these the wisest members of the families were applying their sentry-tried skill. As we approached any such chapel we could hear the most elaborate and entrancing music, for the design in such cases was labyrinthine, and needed the noblest artistic faculties to select and develop it. The executive musical talent displayed and the talent of extemporaneous composition and modification would have been called genius in European communities. But this people had no word corresponding to the quicksand of meaning this word covers in Christendom. They knew the origin and growth of each faculty, even when exceptionally developed, too well to attribute it to an indefinable something which nature had somehow conferred upon a chance-chosen individual. They knew as exactly the causes that produced given effects in the human system as they could calculate the forces of the inanimate world, and had no belief in the power of nature to give to human work by some caprice more value than it deserved, and that deranged all calculation. This criticism I brought down on me from my guide when I expressed amazement at the beauty of the music and the resulting design in one chapel, and attempted to translate the word genius into Lymanoran. Such expressions, he persuaded me, are but the half-articulate escape-valves of wide-mouthed ignorance. They mean no more than a confession of blindness and incapacity, and should be rapidly rejected by every progressive civilization. The musical and designing power of this particular Lymanoran belonged to most in his family of his own age, and was merely the stage of art of sonatecture that had reached in its development on the island. Whenever nature especially adapted to the double-art was found, it was imported into the family to reinforce it. In spite of the dissertation, I could not but listen. Entranced by the intricate splendor of the music, and my eyes were riveted on the groin design within the receiver of the Ularan. Yet when finished and tested it was found inadequate to the artist's new conception of the utilities of the ultimate edifice. It was shaken again into dust before I left the workmen, and its faults were noted and corrected in the score of music which he had before him. He had been years on this single design, which he had been molding and improving every day, and he hoped soon to find a form that would be strikingly new and in every feature adapted to the purpose of the building. I could well understand now that the new Umulifa was no work of magic, but I was still unable to see how its vast proportions could have been shifted from its place of fabrication to its ultimate sight. Thyriel led me to a new structure which had just issued from the central sonarchitect, and the master workmen bade me lean upon it, huge though it was, it shifted before my weight and I fell. It was as light as if made of silk, and we too could lift it from the floor. This explained the ease of rafting the great edifices through the air, but how did they resist the winds that blew, or the impact of wave and storm? I was led to a wall of Ularan Umulifa itself, and I was bitten to raise one low parapet of it, not the application of my greatest strength could move it. My guide then waved what seemed to be a magnet above it, and bade me try again. It rose in my hands and my muscular effort landed me on my back. He showed me how the foundations of their buildings were powerful magnets, and how the fabric could be torn to pieces before it could be hoisted off them unless equally powerful magnet was applied in other direction. I now understood the strength of their structures before winds and the rapid disappearance of Umulifa after the earthquake. But I had seen only one department of Ularifa, that which consumed the work of the rest. One branch of the sonarchitect families was specially charged with experimentation on the materials for building. Irrelinium was the general name for the metallic combination of elements best suited to the state of civilization they had reached, but there were innumerable modifications and grades of it, and there were more being discovered every day. We entered one magnificent building, and there found a dozen or more workmen, each isolated in a transparent chamber and busy with some combination of Irrelinium and one or other of the stellar metals. Every star or series of stars had its own predominant and characteristic element or amalgam of elements, and it was a main duty of one of the chemical families of the island to examine every star for its new element and to find something corresponding to it in terrain matter. This section of the people studied with the most anxious care the products and the results of the Leo Moran's. They visited, almost hourly, the mouths of the lava wells and watched the spectroscopic recorders of the fumes that rose out of them, for they seldom failed to find at one time or another some constituent of the interior of the earth corresponding to any new stellar element or metal recently discovered. Whenever it was found in any Leo Moran, a chamber for its disposition was constructed and the Cleroan was specially adapted to the preservation of all of it that issued out of the bowels of the earth. These new metallic constituents were called by the name of the stars in which they predominated, and were at once put into the hands of the sonarchitech families to be tested for structural utilities. It was thus Irrelinium had been discovered, and thus they hoped to find materials still more plastic to their purposes. Already they had so modified their new metal by amalgamation with other stellar metals that they fitted it to functions no metal had served before. It could be made flexible or tough, light or heavy, transparent or opaque, malleable or brittle, soluble before heat or water or electricity, or resistant to any or all of them. It was difficult to say what quality they could not impart to it, and here I could see the workmen testing new combinations in order to find new qualities or new grades of equality already found. I stood and watched one who was trying an amalgam of a new stellar metal called Vanelyum with gold. He had already attempted to combine it with iron, silver, copper, irrelium, and found it in either case either impossible or useless. But the reactions had pointed him to gold as its natural ally. And now, having found the two combined with ease, he was exhausting the various possibilities of combination in different proportions, and after submitting the new amalgam to his tests was recording the results. It gave a marvelous toughness and elasticity to gold, so that, when beaten thin enough for a breath to raise it in the air, it could not be torn except by sudden and great mechanical force. Another workman near him was testing the effect of electricity on the various grades of the new amalgam and recording the results minutely. In each of the crystal chambers there were at hand supplies of all forms of energy that might be needed, such as heat, cold, pressure, electricity. Each workman was isolated in order that the elements he used might not interfere with the experiments of his neighbor, but his workshop was transparent, that he might beckon for help at any moment, or exhibit to his fellows the result of any experiment without modifying the conditions or breaking the continuity. A third branch of these families dealt with the adaptation of the new amalgams to the various structural necessities of the community. They found out which form or grade would resist the disintegrating influence or the power of water or of electric force. They tested what shape would best suit each grade, solid or hollow, cylindrical or sphero, cubic or rectangular, thick or thin, curved or rectilinear. Another branch devoted itself to the means of making the various metals or amalgams cohere either temporarily or permanently. A fifth studied the adaptation of the new discoveries to tools and machines, and to the invention of new mechanical forms that would bring out their greatest utilities. To go through all the departments of this vast architectural workshop would need a week's rehearsal. To my first view it seemed bewildering in its complexity of specialization, but after close acquaintance it became simplicity itself, in fact the only plan that nature itself could have pointed out. END OF CHAPTER XII CHAPTER XIII of Lymonora, THE ISLAND OF PROGRESS by Godfrey Sweven. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. THE LIELORAN Having finished our survey of Ulurifa, my mind returned to the observatory of Lila Roma, which I had seen growing in miniature under the modeler's hand in music. It seemed to me a strange romance that citizens of this beautiful island lived amid everlasting snow and ice, tens of thousands of feet above their fellows. How could those who were accustomed to the conditions and privileges I saw around me bring themselves to surrender it all and live the lives of hermits, amid and arty-crigors? Thyriel reminded me of the glacial cold of the southern land from which their ancestry had come. But this did not wholly satisfy me. The long centuries of life in a new zone had changed their powers and tastes, and it must be a great sacrifice to live in a climate so different as the glacier region of a mountain. My curiosity was roused, and I resolved to observe and know for myself at the earliest opportunity. I could see the observatory now perched on the gleaming shoulder of the mountain above the circle of the storm-cone, and every day I turned my eyes upwards I grew more eager to inquire into the conditions of life in so different a temperature. It happened that the next department of the civilization of the island that had to be studied by me in our educational department was Lailari, or the Science of Island Security. We were handed over to one who belonged to the Lailomo, or families especially absorbed in this section of practical knowledge, and were told to choose our mode of ascent, car-flight or wing-flight, or either of the two instantaneous methods of transit. We preferred one of the two last, so he decided on the wire-line or aerial method for our first ascent. We were enclosed in a casing, shaped like a shuttle and rounded and sharpened to a point at each end. It lay slightly inclined on a close web of wires, which sloped up to the mountaintop. The door was closed and made secure, but as our shuttle car was made of transparent aerolinium, we could see on all sides. It was then drawn slightly upwards into a complete enclosure of wires, each of which touched at some point. When our guide saw that we were all ready, he pressed a button and we shot up at incredible speed. The whole sky and earth and sea fell from us in an instant. I closed my eyes in alarm. No sooner had I done so than the whizzing sound which accompanied our flight ceased and in a moment we were at our destination, close to the peak of Lailoma. Our shuttle car slid into another groove and rested. The door opened and I stood amid the eternal snows. I could see the great buildings of Vremla and Omelifa and Olarifa, like minute soap bubbles gleaming in the sun far below. We had traveled these tens of thousands of feet with the ease and swiftness of lightning, for it had indeed been lightning that had borne us up. Along this cylinder of wire so great an electric power could be sent that it seemed to undo the force of gravitation. Distance was almost annihilated by this mode of transit. It out-distance sound, if not light, too, in its magic motion. As soon as I began to reflect I was astounded to find the cold not merely bearable but deprived of its bitter penetrativeness. My heart bounded with exhilaration. Every tissue of my body seemed elastic and full of spring. I could account for these sensations by the atmosphere of these heights. But how was I to explain the mild temperature of this snow region? When puzzling over the problem I began to notice a haze of half glowing light like a shimmer of heat over the surface of the earth at blazing noon. It seemed at first to be an optical illusion coming. I thought, from the suddenness of my transference from the plane to such a height. But its unsteady gleam moved so uniformly that I soon saw it was outside of me. Yet it did not intercept my view of the snow and eyes around. They fascinated me by their splendor of whiteness. But there was a warmth, a pallid glow over them that was quite unwanted. Our guide felt my mental interrogation, and pointed out that we had stepped from the shuttle-car onto a movable platform, which would soon bring us to the observatory. Over this platform was an electric covering that protected us from the outer air and radiated heat in all directions. He showed us the snow melting on all sides of our platform in form corresponding to it, and, as it moved along the steep, the dark honeycomb square of snow moved with us. There was above and on every side of us an electric field produced by unseen circuits of wires, and these fields gave out heat falling short of light. This is how they modified the climate up in these glacial regions and made it even sweeter and healthier than the purified atmosphere of the Lymanoran Plateau below. They had done so much for the climate of the lower levels. By daily casting their electric shuttles through the atmosphere, they brought its impurities to the earth, its particles of dust and minute living organisms, but as more of these crowded in again from the outline regions of air, the electric shuttles would have to ply ceaselessly in all directions in order to keep the lower strata pure. In those mountain altitudes the air was naturally sterilized to a large extent. Few organisms could persist in soquina medium, and the constant use of electric walls and roof for modifying the bitterness of the cold swept every trace of bacterial life into the snow, as the purity of the air we breathed up there and the buoyancy of the soul. The bodies seemed no clog upon the spiritual functions, and the magnetism that came from the heavenly bodies uniting with that of the earth had free play upon our minds, stimulating them to lofty flight. I no longer wondered why the liamo had no adversion to life at this altitude. They passionately loved it. It was indeed, being drunk without wine, without self-abandonment, without waste of tissue. They kept strict rain on this intoxication. Ethereal though it was, for like all their race they had severe practical issues before them. Daily each of them returned to the less volatile and less pure air of the lower levels in order to check excess buoyancy and to reinforce the graver purpose of life by consultation with the elders and wise men. They had in their hands an important phase of the well-being and continuance of their race. They had all the foals of human life, as it existed amongst the limanorans to fight off, whether seen or unseen. The tornadoes that swept across these subtropical regions, the climactic strata that drifted from other lands or realms of space, the bacterial swarms bringing their plague in their train, the lower planned human life which might swoop down on their shores from the archipelago around them. All these had to be watched and directed past limanora. Only one of these evils mined in a few hours or days, sweep out the civilization that had taken long centuries to develop and leave them all their steps to retrace. Itense vigilance was needed to watch for any sign of their approach, and the keenest invention to prevent their advance when observed. I had not long to wait for evidences of the great services Leamo did to their country. Thayeriel and I were led by our guide into the various divisions of the observatory. We inspected the innumerable testing and controlling machines without fully understanding their intricate and often subtle arrangements. Had we not been acquainted with Remla, and Humelifa, and Ulurifa, we should have been bewildered or even awestruck. As it was, we were amazed at the refinement of purpose in the apparatus, approaching almost to human intelligence. But we saw that a mere novice would have deranged most of it, so nice were the adjustments. Our attention had been especially arrested by the Electric Indicator, or Trimolan. It contained a complete chart of the electric variations of every point of the island throughout every day in the year. This had been compiled and drawn up from the observations of several centuries, and marked the differences between periodical and temporary, regional and narrowly local, terrestrial and planetary variations. Every day the instrument was set like a clock to all the electric changes which they expected to occur periodically on that day. Each of these indicated at every point of the map, represented an electrically uniform locality of the island with which it was connected. The superintendent of the Trimolan, for any section of the day, specially studied all the unclassified variations which had occurred at the corresponding hour of the same day and period of time. He knew every change in the position of the earth or in the movements of the stars that might affect the electricity of the atmosphere at any moment during his watch. Along with him there was a sky-watcher, who used one of their marvelous reducers of distance and magnifiers to scan the sky and the whole horizon, and reported every new appearance which broke the uniformity of the skyline. In an adjoining chamber with transparent partitions a third observer was stationed with his ear at a macromacrackost, or vermellan, that gathered in the slightest sounds at the distance of even hundreds of miles and magnified them for the listening sense applied to it. It also indicated approximately the distance of the source of the sound by an automatic calculator. This was a kind of eavesdropper that could pick up whispers on the orb of the earth. Just as their astronomical instruments could catch the faintest gleam in space, myriads of miles beyond the scope of the eye. In another crystal-walled apartment stood a fourth-watcher, who used an instrument that was to his electric sense what the telescope is to the eye, and their vermellan was to their ear. With this eyedroland he swept the sky for new and unclassified electric impulses, and the faintest and most distant indication, that unrecognizable by his unaided sense, was magnified ten thousand fold. At the same time the distance of the source was roughly measured and indicated. This was by far the most attractive group of chambers for us. Not only could we test the wonderful instruments for ourselves, but we could examine by aid of magnifiers the graphic results of their observations automatically recorded as if by photography. We could minutely study the flight of seabirds not visible to the naked eye. The babel of sounds that went on in the cities of the Arch of Pelago quite beneath the horizon, we could hear like a great roar beside us, when we placed the sonoscryps in the sound magnifier, and with the aid of its analyst we could unravel the sounds by repeating them slowly. Though I had not my electric sense sufficiently developed to feel the differences in the starry impulses when the electrographs were placed in the electromagnifier, I could distinguish their differing degrees of force, and I could see how much Thairiel appreciated the finer shades of variety in the impulses. We were engaged in testing the electric records, when we could see the observer of the tremolin bustling from table to table and map to map, whilst his pupil watched the indicator. His excitement spread to the adjoining chambers, and their occupants, leaving their instruments to assistance, came to his aid. There was an inexplicable electric disturbance on the northeast shore of the island. The field in that direction was agitated. They ran to the idorolan, and turned it to the northeast. At once they knew that some seven or eight hundred miles off there was advancing at a rapid rate, a great wave of electric disturbance. We all recognized a growing sultriness of heat in the profound calm of the atmosphere even at those icy heights. No time was to be lost. All the members of the liamo were called up, and in a few minutes were assembled in the observatory. It was resolved to turn the whole force available in the island into the storm cone, and especially into that part of it which would shoot masses and streamers of electric energy out to great distances in the atmosphere. Other indications of an approaching tornado soon appeared. The great telescope discovered a vast cloud of birds on the horizon, and the sea greatly agitated by shoals of fish beneath them. The veimalan analyzed the sounds made by the birds and revealed that they were not all of one species. Sea birds small and great were predominant, but there was no lack of island birds, insect-eaters chiefly, and a few great flesh-eaters, vultures, hawks, and falcons. The liamo knew in a moment what this meant. Myriads of microbes were afloat in the air in front of the storm, and the sky in the van of the clouds of birds was obscured by the mass of insect life batoning on the unseen plague. The fish had gathered to eat the clotted life that dropped into the ocean, and the sea birds had assembled in pursuit of the fish. It was a striking sight, this great moving, inter-scene slaughter and feast. Seated at a cleav-a-mole, or combination of telescope and macro-coust, we were present at the scene, though hundreds of miles off. We could see the swoop of the vultures down on the land-birds, too busy with their banquet of insects to foresee their own fate, the water boiling with the leap of the fish, and the dive of the sea-birds, and the air turbid with the flesh and glimmer of wings. At the same time we could hear the roar of jubilance and dismay, the wild cry of foretasting appetite, and the still wilder death shriek, and round and through the clanger, like an atmosphere, moved the doll-hom of happy-cluttered insect life. It sickened us, and we had to cover our eyes and ears to shut out the carnage. We had forgotten that we had been using the cleav-a-mole, and were glad to find that we could leave it and return to the ordinary powers of our senses. There was a speck on the horizon, which might be a boat at sea for anything our eyes could make out. While still our hearing there was the profoundest calm. Everything was ready for concentration of our millions of horsepower in the direction of the northeast, when a new but by no means unexpected phase of the phenomenon occurred. Word came up from the northeast sure that a plague had broken out amongst the dwellers in the district, and that the medical wise men had been summoned to their help. The lilamo had already given warning that something of this kind might be expected in that quarter, and the physicians were by this time removing all the limanorans in the northeast to Omelefa. So dense a cloud of insects was not there without the attraction of superfluous bacterial life. Not always was a tornado thus heralded and vanguarded by a winged army, but when it was, it meant the migration under magnetic impulse of chlirolanic plague swarms from some favorite breeding area. As soon as it was thus known that the bacterial couriers of the storm had reached the shores of limanora, the electric forces of the lalaran were brought into play, and we could see lightning belch forth which seemed to make the northeast atmosphere and ocean glow. Swiftly the shoals of fish were gathered close to the bastions of the coast, for the masses of insects were falling every moment into the water. Soon we could see our lightnings reach as far as the insect darkness and the bird cloud. The air cleared and the surface of the sea was covered with death. Away to the west screened and shrieked the survivors of the winged army. Then could we see the pinchy midnight of the coming tempest moving stethely towards us, and its heralds howled and shrieked through every crevice of our mansion. It was bearing right on Lilaroma. How could that battering ram of heaven's fury be turned aside or abated? It seemed to me that nothing but death and destruction were before us. I had already seen a tropical cyclone level a gigantic forest clean as a moor would clear his swath in his breast-high corn. What could man do in presence of so terrible a force but hide in holes of the rocks? The thought of those noble buildings leveled with the dust mingled sadness with my fear, and shook all cowardice from it. It was the emulation of animal existence which I had just witnessed compared to the destruction of all this people had done. I felt as if the torch of the world's salvation were about to be extinguished. There was no sadness or languid inaction of despair about the other inmates of the observatory. All was bustle and joyous effort for a time, as in veterans quivering with a passion of battle. Every man had his duty in place, and every woman was there, too, in the ranks of the champions. We could now see the nucleus of the storm just above the horizon, a mass raven black. At once the whole power of the island was concentrated in the electric charge at the Lilaron, and a long tongue of flame shot straight for the dense cloud. As if by magic, the whole atmosphere was in a moment ablaze with lightnings. The sea was cloven into billows of raging foam, and it seemed itself to aid in the hellish pyrotechnie. It shot forth great tongues of purple flame, yet fled with reared crests from the strokes of the storm flail. Slowly the Lilaron moved its lightning thrust away to the east. Then half the island power was put into the blast of the storm-cone, and we could see the war of elements and the thunderous scowl of the tempest shift round the circle of the horizon, instead of bearing down on us. For hours the roar of the Lilaron went on. The edge of the tornado struck us, and the building shook and swayed. Hail pelted its sides, rain and snow blinded our outlook. We could see not one inch outside for gloom. Yet within, all was radiant and calm. They knew that the center of the tornado had passed many miles to the east, and that its trailing scourge could do no harm to anything in the island. Even if it had come straight on Lilaroma, they had given a vent to its fury so many leagues out to sea that its force would have been largely spent before it reached the shore. It was a yearly occurrence, this throttling of a tornado from the tropics. For these great electric disturbances made straight for the loftiest peak within their reach, drawn by their polar complement, the masses of electric energy which played within the heart of Lilaroma. One of the ordinary duties of the Lailamo was to milk the great mountain of its electricity, in order that it should offer less attraction to cloud and storm. Every night, especially during the season of tempests, I could hear the roar of the energy out of the earth. And, if I looked up to the shoulders of the mountain, I could see at a hundred points the purple streamers flicker in the wind like living, moving flame-throars growing out of the soil. When needed, this escaping energy was collected and sent down to Remla for storage, and was another of the numerous sources of power that that treasury of force drew upon. When the tornado had passed and left its huge contribution to the snows of the peak, the Lailaran was stopped and the electric energy used in it was rapidly run over the white slopes that now obliterated every trace of the great groove and railway on which the storm-cone moved. In a few minutes the outline appeared, and soon the whole-circlet was cleared of its encumbering snows. So the weight that pressed on the roofs of the observatory and the drifts that kept the light from its walls melted before the electric snowplow. The storm had not vanished an hour before all on the peak of Lailaroma was as it had been when we arrived, except for the greater purity of the snow on its shoulders. Beneath, the brush of the tempest had swept out all traces of the plague that the physicians had not got rid of, and the atmosphere was clear and more exhilarating. So calmly and fearlessly had the whole danger been met that there had even been leisure in the midst of turmoil to discuss this great waste of natural power. It took them as many days as the tornado lasted hours to generate and store in Rimbla all this energy which was now falling useless, or rather mischievous, upon the face of the ocean. Could they not yoke the cyclone as they had yoked the billows and the winds, the rivers and the snows, the lightnings and the central fires of the earth? There was nothing impossible to a people who had tamed the raging of the volcano and the earthquake. The difficulty was the very greatness of the force. Any machinery they might erect would be trampled to pieces by the brute power of the giant they yoked. Here was a problem worthy of their most imaginative men, of their most inventive faculties. Not a year had passed before a trial was made, and within a decade the machinery was complete for storing the energy of the tempests. An immense cave was hollowed out in the rocks of Lytle Roma, and its mouth was extended out into the ocean for miles by means of lavabastions. In it was placed enough of the alloy called Labramor, or Electricity Sponge, to take in trillions of horsepower of electric force. At first cables containing millions of wires were floated out towards the coming tornado and electric fields were raised in the air to tap the energy of the blackness. This was continued afterwards to some extent, but it was found that, if only the clouds were electrically tapped, most of the current transmitted itself to the receivers in the cave by means of the water of the ocean. It was thus unnecessary to float out towards the storm, more than one cable, so binding to the shore a great raft which held up many labralins or electricity milkers towards the blackening sky. They acknowledged that they lost by this water transmission much of the energy emitted from the clouds, for the ocean bore it away in all directions, but they got as much of it as they needed to fill their storehouse, and they killed the cloud monster. At least it floated away across the horizon, blowing a mere gale that could do no havoc except upon the careless and unforethinking. One of the most singular effects of this new contrivance was to rid the sea in the neighborhood of the island of its teeming life, and to precipitate to the bottom the matter that floated in the water. For weeks after, we could see the rocks or streaming weeds in the depths as clearly as if they were an ocean of air. Its emerald or azure had vanished, and white light poured down into the hitherto unfathomed hollows and valleys. There we could see the dead deacons sway idly with the forests of marine vegetation, and here and there the bulk of some monster lay tangled in the herbage. Only by degrees and after some months did the color and opacity return to the waves and the myriad life stream from other regions into the void. The currents that swept past the coast bore down the suspended particles from other seas, and with them came new fish and their parasites. Until these came, a new danger to the health of Lymanora threatened. A few days after the tornado, the precipitated organisms began to rise to the surface of the water, and underneath the hot sun to form breeding grounds for the dangerous microbes of the air. Up against the bashings of rock beat the stench of the living death. A plague threatened for a brief time, but they were not a people to remain passive in presence of such a danger, even though they could easily prevent its worst results by remedial measures. They sank the dead organic masses again by means of a charge of electricity, and then the deeper currents that brushed their shores swept the corruption into the great valleys of the ocean bed, there to be embalmed for geological ages hence. They regretted that they should be the instruments of this great waste of life before it had fulfilled the purpose of its stage of development. But their regret was tempered by the thought that it was a low and feeble stage, that an infinity of such existence would not weigh in the balance with one day's advance of a single Lymanoran, and that the energy set free by this wholesale dissolution of organisms was still ready for other embodiments in the universe. The worst effect they feared was upon their own natures. To destroy life or deal with it frivously was one of the worst offenses against their humanity, for it introduced into the mind a brutalizing element. Respect for life in all its forms was one of the truest tests of a civilization they held. And the lilamo were, almost as much as the physicians, imdued with reverence for human life, and with the sense of the importance of preserving it and giving it the longest opportunity in the individual to gain its highest possibility. They had to protect their race from all external foes. They had therefore to study climatic changes and watch the sanitary conditions of the island. Sanitation meant primarily the expulsion of all hostile chlorolanic life and the prevention of all conditions that would attract it or form its breeding ground. They were especially interested in the magnetic and electric peculiarities of Lymanora, and of the section of the globe in which they lived. For these affected not only the health and spirits of the people, but the amount of minute life that harbored in the earth or floated in the atmosphere. They could, by an increase of these elements, rid an unwholesome district of its unhealthy conditions. And yet the inhabitants of it could not remain whilts the process of purification was going on. Too much magnetism or electricity in the earth or air would endanger the nervous balance of the human frame. The test instruments in the lava wells were frequently examined to find the electric state of any section of the island, and one central electrometer was constantly recording the electric state of the atmosphere, in all parts of it. Thus they were able to recharge by means of their apparatus whatever localities were found effective, and tap those that had a superfluity, and over the country at night the flame-like streamers lit up the darkness here and there. But this occurred at rarer intervals, for it was only in certain conditions of the sun that the earth sponged up more electricity than was good for the highest life upon its surface. The storm cone as a rule was enough for sanitation. By its wind force it could drift all dangerous clouds of moisture or bacterial life past Lymanora. By its electric darting powers the heart could be squeezed out of storms before they struck the shores. It regulated the rainfall, depositing the contents of clouds by day far out upon the sea, and by night upon the thirsting land. Sultry blacknesses that would otherwise float past with only stifling effect were trapped, first for their electricity and then for their rain. Storms of dust that now and again darkened over the circle of fog could be precipitated into the ocean, partly by electricity, partly by the blasts of the storm cone. The atmosphere was kept singularly pure and free from deleterious germs or particles, and few nights passed without a drenching shower cleansing the whole portion of the island. The peak of Lyla Roma drew to it like a magnet all the masses of moisture that collected within many hundred miles of it, and a little manipulation would break these up into refreshing night showers that swept its slopes and the plateau and levels below. And, in order to prevent the destructive floods that this might produce in the rivers, the shoulders of the mountain and its deep valleys bristled with great forests which sponged up the falling moisture and let it down gently from hour to hour into the bastion channels. Climate was to this people as much a matter of management as food and its production. They could modify it to fit any change in the conditions or necessities or purposes of life. To be at the mercy of the forces of nature was a state of existence in what they now considered their barbarous past. It was only the unforeseen that had them at any disadvantage, and the unforeseen was to them now only the cosmic. As the planetary system shifted through space, it had to encounter conditions and modes and degrees of energy and life that nothing short of omniscience could anticipate, but they were beginning to master the secret of many of those unexpected changes of condition. The astral-sciental families had been classifying for centuries the symptoms that accompanied these in the appearance of the Sun or of one or other of the planets. There are innumerable delicate instruments for recording and analyzing the electric, magnetic, luminous, and heat vapour state of distant space. They could see afar off the beginnings of cosmic disturbances and anticipate their ultimate direction. And, in many cases, they could guard limonora against the more patent and destructive effects of magnetic and electric storms and of great waves of heat or light. Yet there was much to master in the new cosmic conditions that from time to time beset the earth or the planetary system. Some seemed to arise so suddenly that no observation could have anticipated them. Especially was this the case with living drift, into shoals of which the universe struck, the spawn of undeveloped worlds. Hence came new diseases so widespread as to be plagues. These generally evaded the fine instruments of the astral-scientist till they had reached the very atmosphere of the earth, for in the interstellar spaces they led so meager a life and were spread so thinly and widely that they scarcely intercepted the light or other forms of energy from the sun or other systems. Yet the imaginative families and the inventors were struggling towards some more delicate instrument, which would observe and record the presence of interstellar material life. CHOCK TRUE The Lailamo were unusually occupied in these sanitary duties, but at times the other section of their defense of Lailamo claimed their attention. I had had good reason to know the force of the Laila Ran, or Starmcone, in my attempt to arrive in the island. Had it not been decided to permit our entrance, our perseverance would have failed the attainment of our object. I was soon to witness a marvellous display of the defensive and repulsive powers of the Starmcone. For some years after the first period of my noviate and my partial admission to privileges as a citizen, with which this period ended, there had been observed throughout the Archipelago, a movement which spread with considerable rapidity. It was one of the amusements of the Lymanorans to watch the comedy of life upon the other islands through the Adrova Milan, or instrument for distant scene and hearing, which they had fixed high upon the mountain. On a floating strip of Aurelium that could be projected far into the sky, scenes beneath the horizon could be mirrored and watched through this instrument, and through other instruments for reducing distance. The sounds too, that rose from the scene, re-echoed from the under-surface of the floating mirror, and could be magnified by the Macraucoustic part of the Adrova Milan into their original volume. A rarer and more difficult instrument was one which combined this power of scene and hearing at a great distance, that of noting the magnetism working in a community even under the horizon. Recently they had found that they could dispense with the floating mirror and reflector. The aether was their transmitter of all they wished to see or hear at a distance. Through it passed electric waves from even immeasurable distances, whilst the sky itself formed a sufficiently complete mirror for reflecting whatever was occurring under the horizon. By recent discoveries and inventions they were enabled to transform electric impulses into the scene or sound that gave them out into the surrounding air. Their new instruments would tap the occurrences at any point on any given line or in any given direction. They were now independent of any artificial medium for their knowledge of the outside world. The receivers of their new Adrova Milan were every moment recording and analyzing whatsoever occurred along the line in which it was directed, and its transformers were constantly translating the electric records into the forms or sounds which originally sent out the impulses. It was so constructed as to prevent the confusion of waves that came from different points on the route, for it moved with the swiftness of light, or if required, with that of electricity. These new modifications gave them hope that they would soon be able to see and hear much of what goes on in the universe which, though invisible, yet transmit luminous and electric waves sufficiently strong to affect their telescopic instruments, and that the straggling rays of light or electricity might be transformed into the scenes and sounds which gave them birth. As it was, the limanorns were able to watch all that was going on in the islands around them. During their leisure hours, when it was their duty as well as their pleasure to relax the mind, they would sit and observe the life of what they called their menagerie. To them, indeed the whirling eddy of existence with its ambitions and crimes, its luxury and misery, in the archipelago around seemed little more than the antics of monkeys, or the internecine appetites of wild beasts. The scenes were generally amusing in the ape-like vanities and mimicries they exhibited. Sometimes they were offensive and even repulsive in their filth or brutalities. How beings formed like themselves could endure the grossness of their luxuries and the falsity and hollowness of their most admired social displays was to them a bewildering problem. Even the best of these islanders were as far behind the limanorns in true human qualities as they thought themselves in advance of apes. The daily observation of these creatures so humanly endowed, and yet so foul and blind in act, was often too much to bear for any length of time. The most repulsive scenes were those of what was considered high life, of courts and courtly circles, of rulers and leaders of act and thought. Who can bear the horror of their intrigues and hypocrisies, their cruel trampling of the fawn, their hideous fawning on the successful, their insolent pride and intolerance of the weak? I often heard explanations like this from the lips of the watchers as they turned away from the Hydrovimalan with a shutter. The combination of ape and bully, of reptile and vapor, was, in the thoughts of this people, the lowest death to which human nature could fall. And it was the usual and most envied form in the high social life of most of these islands. The barbarism and ignorance of the poor and downtrodden marked a less retrograde phase of humanity. The sight of the posturings and scrapings, the insolence and spaniel manners of the higher classes, served every day to deepen the horror of exile, and to frighten every limanor and from anything that would lead to even the slightest retrogression. Had it not been for this wholesome effect upon their minds, they would have long ago abandoned the custom of watching this beast's spectacle of retrograde and showy civilization, so much pain mingled with their amusement at it. They knew that their pity was vain, for it would take unremitting effort for thousands of years to raise these peoples to the limanor and level, if the limanor and missionaries had not, in the meantime, been dragged down to the lower level, and these thousands of years could be better spent in attaining higher and higher ideals in their own life. The task, they knew, was as hopeless as if these descendants of their degenerate exiles should attempt to drag the lower animals up to their stage of human development, and this irremediable nature of their state added to the pain of the observers. At the habit of watching the comedy of their menagerie been given up, the lilamo would still have had to observe the enactment of history in the surrounding islands. It was part of their duty of defense to anticipate all armaments against limanora, and they had discovered that there was unusual excitement amongst the various peoples since the arrival of the day dream in their waters. It was evident that this formed an epic in the history of the Archipelago. The lilamo reported the movements of the portentous smoke-pennan chip, which sailed in the teeth of all winds like their own ships of the air. What was to prevent it approaching limanora in spite of the force of the storm cone? The thought brought the first trace of fear into the breasts of this people. For once a foreign element had been able to force its way into their midst. How could they prevent moral contamination and swift retrogression? Their advance would crumble away in a few centuries. Nothing but their material progress being likely to survive the incursion of barbarism. It was imperative that new measures of defense be adopted. It was then that the forces of remla had been enormously increased, thus making it possible for most of its energy to take the electric form in the storm cone. With this they would be able to repel the new monster with so much metal in its bosom they would play with it as with a toy on the water. All my wanderings had been narrowly watched, my landing in alleophane, my escape from it, my sojourn to Tyrellia, and my ascent to Climerole, my companionship with Sneak-Ape and my scorn of him, my sympathy with the refugees in Nuku, and my friendship with Nula. Nothing escaped their attention, and my character was analyzed in the most minute way by deductions from the details of my conduct. It was decided that, if I showed eagerness and persistence enough, I should be allowed to land with Nula, but that my fireship and my men should be blown off from the coast. Since the affairs of the Archipelago had been observed as narrowly as before, and especially the wanderings and history of the daydream. As I expected, it passed finally into the possession of Brulee, and the new ideas and methods it brought into the warfare of this isolated zone of the world made an era in its history. A great military organizer had arisen, and he had, by the potency of his will, molded Brulee into a unity which, with the help of new fireships built on the model of my yacht, had brought the other islands into subjection. Even the aristocratic and refined alleophane with his subtle government and all powerful central institutions had to bow its neck to the yoke. This strange romance had been enacting for more than a decade, and the Lymanorans had been watching it, at first with amusement, and afterwards with resolution and clear purpose. They knew the whole of this subjective process was based on hypocrisy and injustice and bloodshed, but it was not worse than the methods of political existence it displaced. It only meant the substitution of one vicious ideal for others as vicious. There would be more movement and activity for a time, but as soon as the masterful will had vanished, there would be a quick return to the old lazy luxury in the few and lazy misery in the many. It had cost multitudes of lives, and would cost many more before the military mania had burned itself out. But of what worth were most of those lives to themselves or to the world? They succeeded, where they did succeed, only in sustaining themselves wretchedly and perpetuating a strain of existence that was, if changed at all, tending downwards. The new spectacle was more sanguinary, but not one whit more decimal than the ones the Lymanorans had witnessed for many generations. The misery was irremediable. The standard of existence was so low. To fence it off like a plague was all that could be done. When I sat down to the Adrova Milan I soon discovered the master of this transformation scene. I heard in Brule from all the entrenched camps and the towns loud hoses and cries of, long live, chock true. Turning the line of sight to the capital, the conflagration of cries which swept the crowded streets soon led my eye to the center of the far-reaching magnetic thrill, the square of the Imperial Palace. There I saw step out on the balcony and bow to the enthusiastic populace, a little, firm-set figure that seemed to awaken memories in me. I strengthened the power of vision in order to examine the face more keenly, and as a great burst of long live our Emperor, long live, chock true, kindled and blazed to thwart the city, the identity of the little conquer broke upon my consciousness. It was my cabin boy, chock drew, whom I had rescued from a life of degradation, if not ultimate infamy in his native village. His father, the local chimney sweep, a man of vigorous but small physique, had succumbed to the fate of so many of his trade, and swept his throat hourly with the fiercest of whisky. His mother, a brave, strong pleasant girl, had died early of the effort to master this thirsty piece of humanity that had been tied to her and his vice. The boy had the maternal lines in his nature, strong will, great courage, and fiery passion. It stirred my pity to see him struggle with such a mean destiny, doubtless to sink hopelessly into the ditch. He had been shielding himself from the temptation that his drunken father set before him, by living in a world of penny romance. His imagination was strong to its highest pitch by the gory pages of his hard-won treasures. When he heard of my proposed expedition to the other side of the world, he came and pleaded for even the most menial position on board the daydream. I was only too eager to rescue him from the hideous fate before him, and engaged him as cabin-boy. After he came on board, some of the men were inclined to patronize him, and, when he resisted their approaches and grew sulky, to apply a rope's end to him. I had to stand between him and them, even though I saw that in the end he would have the best of the quarrel. For he was a strong build and violent intemper, and only controlled himself, I could see, that he might have the sure and more complete revenge. He was a solitary, musing boy, and I thought to draw him from his solitude by interesting him in scientific and philosophical books, but he returned with the greater gusto to his penny series of lives of the great pirates, robbers, warriors, and conquerors. The only section of the daydream's library which could seduce him from his loved studies was that containing history and adventures. The crew, as was natural, held the studious little recluse too cheap, and occasionally they felt the sting of his tongue when they bantered him. But his melodramatic manners and attitude, copied from the colored representations of his heroes in his favorite series, laid him open again to their laughter and scorn. His mind was unwholesome with brooding over gory achievements and tremendous ambitions. He often uttered absurd boasts and gave himself heirs that were incongruous with his minute figure and menial position, and Jock Drew ceased to be the butt of the ship only when I was present, but he never ceased to read and meditate. The laughter of his shipmates drove him more and more into his books and into himself. Later on in the voyage he extended his reading to books on naval architecture and the management of the steam engine, and at last would spend hours assisting the engineer below. He came to know every part of the machinery and every secret of its construction and management. Indeed, the chief engineer acknowledged that in case of his illness he had an able successor on board. The guns and all the ironwork of the ship drew his attention next, and he came to be respected for his practical knowledge of every part. When anything needed mending, it was he who was ultimately called in to give advice or aid. Slowly he rose to be the real master of the day-dream, even though he continued to be left at for his hero-mimic heirs and occasional boasts. He had, by his reading and studies, made himself essential to every man on board, and his strong will exacted outward respect, if not obedience to him in return. It was strange to see the revolution in the ship's crew during their voyaging about the archipelago. When I came on board again, I saw that, though they continued, a semblance of their old bantering, they had in their hearts begun to bow before the boy of twenty. The very gall of their scorn and his menial position had driven him into this slow but striking revolt. And here I saw the result. His boyhood, neglected and beaten, had given the cunning and worldly wisdom and concentration of power that belonged in most to late maturity. The strength that had lain dormant for so many centuries in his mother's peasant race had gathered in him like a torrent. The hard conditions of his youth had reigned in the wildness and aminality which had run riot in his father's debauchery. Hundreds of such masterful natures, finding no sphere in their native locality to give scope to the long-dammed-up powers of their race, waste themselves in chafing against their petty surroundings and dye with the reputation of miniature devils. The focused energy of two long-suppressed races had, in this case, found its career in scope, and a diabolic conflagration was the consequence in this isolated region of the world. The race of Jock Drew had never before blossomed. Now that it had found the fit soil, it had flowered portentiously. The misfortune was his ill-molded youth and his favorite reading had left him naked of morality. He was not in this respect much worse than the people whom he misled into war or than those whom he subjugated. He had only more concentrated will and energy and a keener appreciation of the means that would best satisfy his appetite for power. The complete suppression of the desire through thousands of years of his peasant ancestry made its ultimate manifestation on fighting freedom of action all the more tremendous. It grew with growing self-confidence, and confidence grew with success. His bearing wholly altered during the wanderings of the daydream before I had abandoned her. He had grown erect and threw his great chest out, and held his large head up till he overawed his persecutors. Seeing him only in a sitting position or only looking at his bust, one would have gassed him to be a lofty stature. Yet like his father and mother he never rose above five feet in height, and as his face filled up with good fare and the knowledge of his own powers, it grew handsome and calm, seldom showing the fierce brute slumbering underneath. His wonderful self-control and reserve held him silent in circumstances where speech or action would have revealed his innate folly or animality, and he learned the power of such reserve, allied with sudden and derisive action over the wills of others. He saw that it throws an air of mystery round the individuality. So he refrained from action till he had complete control of the circumstances, and had gathered such resources into his hands as would astonish his rivals or enemies. Silently, unscrupulously, he got to know the cars they held in their hands, whilst he concealed his own underseeming in action. Then with a sudden and unnerving move he threw all his forces upon them and demoralized them. I had watched the method in the little intrigues and conspiracies on ship-board, and knew when I observed him through the Hedrovah Milan that he was the same Jack Drew, only more developed by his astonishing successes. He had found his opportunity when the day dream finally anchored in the chief harbor of Brûlée. There was much need of government after the plague. The monarch and his family had fled, and finally perished, and the two rivals for the position were almost equally matched. There was prospect of a long civil war. The wiser and stronger councillors set up a republic, but this was only a feeble stop-gap. The flames of civil war burst out in spite of it. Jock arrived at this stage of their history, and joined the staff of the competitor for the throne who held the capital and the key of the public treasury. He rapidly became prime advisor in the camp, and as soon as he had attracted confidence in himself and his character he set his method to work. He led an army out to attack the enemy, and completely routed them by the suddenness of his action. He had led one half of his troops straight out to meet the forces opposed to him, but he had sent the others round by a secret path into their rear, and they burst simultaneously upon the enemy. The surprise broke the spirit of the attack, and they fled in route. With wily stratagem he incited other officers to rival him, and took care that they went out under disadvantageous conditions. They failed, and their failures led to loud demands for Jock True, as he came to be called. He now got command of the whole of the resources of the state, and used them for the making of guns and other surprises for the enemy. Meanwhile he allowed the enemy to think that his party was wholly demoralized by defeats, and they crept up towards the walls of the city in their excess of confidence. He knew by his spies in their camp how vanglorious they had become, but he allowed their bravado to rise to the pitch of foolhardiness, and then his preparations being made, he opened fire upon them from all sides. So complete was the rout that the enemy disappeared from the country around, and took refuge in distant castles and forts. His name grew into a power of itself, rousing enthusiasm whenever he appeared, and greatly terrifying his opponents. It was then that there began the most striking part of his career. All the brave and able generals who during the Civil War had come up from the ranks were completely in his power. He sent them out to master castles or detachments of the enemy, but with such imperfect forces or supplies as would render them inactive. Their individual talents snatched occasional small victories, but as a rule they only prepared for ultimate victory by raising entrenchments and scouring the country around. Whenever he discovered that in any part a general was about to be successful in spite of his disadvantages, he hurried thither and led the troops to victory. If the feebleness of an officer anywhere seemed about to ensure defeat, he marched reinforcements to his aid and turned it into success. Whenever he suffered a defeat himself, he always managed to represent it as a brilliant success, marred by the incompetence of some other general. At last he grew weary of the guerrilla warfare and resolved that it should end. So he withdrew his troops from siege work and allowed the rebels to gather confidence and to mass again. He sent several generals against them with small armies. Their defeats gave the enemy still greater boldness. They ventured near to the capital, and when they were defiling through a pass, he appeared on the heights with his guns. The two sections of his army closed the mouths of the pass, and the finest array the rebels had ever shown was shattered. The castles and forts soon surrendered. With one acclaim Choktru was elected emperor, and the candidate whom he was supposed to be helping vanished from the scene. His boyish reading had made him as much of an actor as he was by nature an organizer. Before long the whole people of Brulee were adoring him as a god. Their passion was glory, and in him they had found the incarnation of glory. No piece of work in the state so minute but, if successful, he claimed his own, even should it have been centuries old. No act of his own but, if unsuccessful, he found a scapegoat for. He was mean enough to steal and eavesdrop in his own household. He was bold enough to outlie the foulest of his minions, to out-face the most manifest exposure of his crimes. He even dared to assume the role of divinity. He wringed himself round with mystery and ceremonial, and when he did appear in public made the appearance impressive by its display. He knew the effect of silence, and cheapened neither himself nor his words. He organized the state on military lines and made a center in his personality. He soon had exhausted the treasury and the resources of the country in the Civil War and in his public displays. Nor could he keep up his glory long in inaction, even though it was an inaction of mystery. He must soon go to war beyond the bounds of the island. There he could shine. There he could get all the supplies he needed. But he had to keep up the farce the nation had played for centuries of professing to keep the peace, for he had adopted the title of the Prince of Peace. He had to make it appear that his wars were forced on him by his neighbors, and for this invented an elaborate system of diplomacy, which enabled him to pick a quarrel and yet seemed to have a thrust upon him. His first quarry was Alliofein, for it was the wealthiest island in the Archipelago. For years he kept up a show of alliance with it, till he had his first fire-ships ready, built under his direction on the model of the day-dream. He racked his dominion to make guns and all kinds of firearms. When the expedition was complete, he made a demand of Alliofein that had show of reason and yet could not be complied with. It was refused, and his fleet was outside the capital before it could make preparation. He sent some of his ships to the other side of the island to land troops, and as these marched up by land he disembarked the rest under protection of his guns. The first battle decided the war. He overthrown the monarch of Alliofein and annexed the island to his dominions, setting up a viceroy with a strong force to support him. He drew new troops from the ranks of the people for service in other islands. He impoverished those nobles who refused to join his court or his staff. He broke the spirit of all who would not adore him, and he drained by taxation the resources of the country. With still larger armies and larger fleets he swept conquering over the whole archipelago, till every people bowed before him. Those who distinguished themselves in his wars or in his service, he elevated to new distinctions and titles. Those who died in his wars he beatified. With great ceremony he would raise all the dead on one of his battlefields to the rank of sub-divinities, till his seven was as crowded as his court. He did not obliterate the old religions, but he overshadowed them, and his policy kept subject to him the passion for glory in life and deification after death that lurks in every human bosom. The active and the romantic were strung up to enthusiasm by the magnetism of his name. Most thought it was his personality which set their blood throbbing, but it was only that his deeds and his hastronic power of magnifying them worked on their imaginations. How wild their fervor I could scarcely have realized had I not observed it with my own senses. He had to keep moving and victoriously moving if his magnetism were not to vanish. When his empire included all the islands in the archipelago, but the Isle of Devils in the center, there was nothing for it but to attempt its conquest. We heard him bluster out his favorite bombastic phrases, learn from his penny romances and biographies. Heaven is our ally, and who on earth can stand against us? Is it not our mission, the mission of a god, to chase all devils from the earth? Our last conquest shall be hell, and its deacons shall die by fire and sword. Utterances and proclamations like this fired the imaginations of his soldiers, and they would have laid their lives down at the moment for this fire-eater. What he had bolstered or threatened before, he had done, or had by astute fiction persuaded his followers that he had done. And what limit was there to his deeds? If he said that he could scale the heavens, they were certain he would do it. The thought fused them into a unity and chased out of their breast the panic which the mere mention of the central isle produced. He had not the traditional hereditary hog-fit to overcome in his blood, yet there was a new sinking of the heart when he thought of his task. He had to reassure himself by wild rotimentade, as he superintended the building and armament of an enormous fleet and the concentration of the largest army the archipelago had ever seen. He could not pick a diplomatic quarrel with his new victim, yet he must have at least the semblance of a cause in order to put heart into his followers. He announced that he had sent envoys to the Isle of Devils to open intercourse with it, but they were not allowed to approach. Again and again he tried this specific measure, but no heed had been given to him. Let vengeance be upon the heads of so churlish and unjust people. How could such platoons and men-haters be allowed to cumber the earth? I watched the great fleet put out from Brulie with his streamers of smoke. We could have heard the acclamations almost with the unaided ear. They rent the sky when Choctu went on board his own fire-ship, which was thrice the size of the largest of the others, and thrice more brilliantly comparison'd. He passed with his favorite silent and self-absorbed look on his face through the applauding crowds on to a raised platform in the stern, reserved for him and his staff. Arrived there he paced silently with his chin resting on his folded arms. He knew what an impression of godlikeness this made on the crowd. Small though he was in stature, he doubtless seemed to his followers and the people on the shore to take gigantic proportions. I was amazed to see so little perturbation amongst the Lymanorans. They seemed to watch the whole scene as if it were a comedy. On the fleet steamed, and yet there was perfect calm in the community, only the Lylomo were at their posts on the peak of Lyloroma. The rest were peacefully seated at the Hydrovalnolans or busy with their usual avocations. I knew the destructiveness of the great cannon that Choctu had prepared and the distance they would carry. On this point indeed I had been consulted some months before. I knew, too, how this people shrank from every act that would involve the loss of a human life. How were they to repel this great armament without whammying it in the ocean and drowning a large portion of those in ships? Thyriel could throw no light on the problem. We were both too young to be taken into the confidence of the wise men or to know their designs. I could do nothing but watch the fleet and then pass to my daily duties. A night passed and at dawn we could see the islands of smoke light black on the horizon. The ships themselves had not appeared. Choctru evidently knew that it was useless to conceal the expedition or its object from this far-seeing people under the darkness of night. It was too well known throughout the Archipelago how penetrative was their gaze. He meant to make his attack by day. Soon the funnels and the mass broke the skyline. Yet there was not a sound from the storm-cone. The slight wind had fallen. Everything favored the invader. He could see through the translucent air every feature of our island and almost every movement of its inhabitants as soon as we could discern the human beings on boarded ships with the naked eye. Were they getting drawn into some gigantic trap? This thought evidently occurred to the leader of the armament, as it occurred to me, for the fleet lessened speed. I could see Choctru had a loss what to do on his poop consulting with his officers, who could help him little. Still the storm-cone stood silent on the mountain peak. The bold step had to be taken. The order was given for advance. The smoke again streamed in the rear of the fleet, and I could see the gunners prepare for action and the sailors and soldiers set the boats ready for launching. What happened to the Lailamo? Were they asleep? Was the progress of the island at last to be trampled under the feet of this brutal soldier and his forces? The fire-ships were almost within cannon-shot of the shore. There puffed out the preliminary whiff from the side of Choctru's streamer, and the ball fell with a roar into the ocean between. Another five minutes in matters would be past remedy. Yet there was perfect calm among the Lymanorans. I controlled my excitement and watched the fleet. Everything was bustle on board, and when I sat down to the Hydrova Milan all sounds were jubilant and boasting. The Isle of Devils was at last to have her master. This proud isolation was at last to be broken. Such exclamations I could hear from the gunners as they loaded and ran out their guns. All was silence, for all was ready for the word of command. Choctru paced his poop in scarce controllable glee. His thoughts were doubtless stretching out beyond the fog-circle to the countries he had left behind him with his boyhood, other worlds for him to conquer. His arms were folded and his eye was turned inward. He knew that the whole expedition was awaiting his nod. Soon he stopped on silent and stiff, as if to give the decisive word. I waited the action, but he still stood moveless. I looked over the ship. There was his staff waiting his back as if petrified. Every man was at his post, but not a muscle moved. The eyes stared as if they belonged to the dead. My glance took in the other ships. All were as silent and still as the grave. The whole armament seemed turned to stone. Then there fluttered down upon the vessel's human figures that I recognized as of the liamo. In a moment a limanor and pilot stood at the helm of each fire-ship, and as if by nature the whole fleet turned majestically around and made for the shelving beach of a low uninhabited island underneath the horizon. On and on they sped straight for the shore, round whose margin not the least fringe of surf whitened. Through the Adrovamalan I could hear the grating keels as they struck the sand and pebbles at full speed. The crash seemed to awaken the crews and the soldiers, who rubbed their eyes as if roused from a dream. Before them the bowels of their ships were burrowing themselves into the blown sand of the beach, but already I could see the pilots winging their way through the sky back to limanora. There was silent power in the Lila Ran which I had not investigated. Its power of magnetism. This it could exercise several miles off, but it grew feebler with the distance. At this aspect then, the Lila Ran could not be used as a weapon of defense far from the shore of limanora. If, however, there was a mass of iron or like magnetizable metal in the ship that contained its victims, its power had been discovered to be as great far as near. It was only recently that they had so far developed their personal power of arresting the consciousness by sudden sleep petrification as to be able to exercise it at a distance. This they accomplished by material age to the magnetic faculty. The sudden flashing of brilliant objects before the eyes and the use of powerful magnets had been found to intensify the somnifractive power of the eye and magnetic sense. This led them to make experiments with the concentrated power of magnets all brilliant with the rillium jewels. The result was that they found the somnifractive power to reside even more in things than in persons. They tried it through the Lila Ran on limanorans of the most powerful will at the farthest corner of the island and found it to be the more effective, the more power they concentrated and the more iron or metals of similar quality were near the patient. This result had been reached about the time they had come to see that the invasion of their island by Choctru was inevitable without some other than the mere wind power of the Lila Ran. Step by step the Lailamo brought their new weapon to perfection. At any moment they could concentrate the forces of Rimla into this faculty of the Lila Ran. They experimented on limanorans in bolts out of sea and finally could tapulate the magnetic powers at various distances. This explained to me the flashings I had often seen on the horizon and had taken for an effect of the Idrova Milan, but they were too near the surface of the sea for that. This explained the perfect calm with which the limanorans watched the approach of Choctru's expedition and the thrilling keenness of the flashes that swept over his fire-ships. I watched for many days the effect of this great blow upon the nature and fortunes of my old cabin-boy. Over his immediate staff and army he was able to regain his full sway as soon as they recovered from the shock, but his power over the other islanders was completely shaken. Bodies of them launched the bolts from the steamers and made off for their own islands before the leaders were aware of their intentions. The moment Choctru realized the position he turned his still-uninjured guns in the direction of the sea and commanded all issue from the beach where his ships were buried. For wholesome example he sank several bolts which had almost got out of his reach. Then he set his army to dig canals around one of his fire-ships, but no sooner was she ready for floating than the whole force of the Lilaeran was turned in her direction. The waves rose and a single night's surf completely undid the labor of days. The ship was as deeply embedded as ever, and her sisters had almost disappeared beneath the sand dunes. The weight of metal in them shortened the process of burial. It was clear that nothing could be done to save the expedition or bring its material back to Brule. Before many days we saw the soldiers embark somewhat sadly in the bolts and find their way across the ocean to the adjacent islands. Peace-meal the whole army retraced its steps to Brule. It was not likely that Choctru would allow this slur to rest on his fame and eat into his power-like rust, for there was clear evidence that his influence over even the Bruleans had greatly suffered. By means of his advertising and his systronic abilities he had brought them to believe that he was invincible. They now began to feel that he had the same limitations as themselves. He was powerless against the magic of the Isle of Devils. All his wiles were needed to check the spread of panic and distrust. He first of all minimized the defeat in his proclamations, and before many months were over he had come to speak of it as a victory, marred by the invincible powers of nature. He had been quick to recognize the similarity of the phenomenon to that we experienced in the Daydream when running the gauntlet of the fog-circle, and he sent out party after party to explore the Ring of Mystery and to come back with tales of its magical powers of inducing sleep. Thus was he soon able to convince the Archipelago that the failure of his great expedition was due, not to the inhabitants of the Isle of Devils, but to the forces of nature. He had in his own eye and will great mesmeric power, and by practice was able to develop it into something that he could exercise at pleasure. Then he made public exhibition of his capacity in the various islands. He threw numbers into mesmeric sleep, nor would he or could he release them from its thrall. They became his willing slaves and lived only to please him. A milder form of mesmeric fascination he used in order to rivet his despotism on his armies. He would address sections of them with bombastic self-glorification of his deeds and powers, and with flatteries of them and their glorious courage. His personal magnetism worked upon them as they gazed at him, and by close of his speech he had them enthralled to his will. It was not long before he was feared as a magician by all who did not mesmerically worship him, and tens of thousands were eager to do the most wicked and shameful deeds, if only he bade them. Yet he dared not shrink from another fall with the inhabitants of the Isle of Devils, else even his preternatural fascination that he exercised might vanish. For years he racked the wealth of the islands and built an enormous fleet of still more powerful fireships, and armed it with still more powerful guns. To supply the funds for the expedition, those who were not trained fighting men became slaves, who toiled for him but their few hours of sleep. Rebellion against this galling and impoverishing despotism was slowly forming in the breasts of the people. Many of them were disappearing mysteriously. They had be taken themselves to unapproachable caverns like Nuku, and my dreamer, Swunari, was arming them with his plague pellets. A few more months and revolution would have broken out against the despot, and he at least would have perished, but the expedition sailed in all its pomp, again deeply impressed the imaginations of the islanders. This time he had taken precautions against the somnification of his army by means of a sleep-expelling drug. Every man was furnished with a dose of it to take as soon as they came near the dreaded Isle. The Lailamo had been busy for some time, I had seen. But the Lailamanorans were as unconcerned at this approach as at the former one. What new defense had they? I could see no more preparation than there had been on the previous occasion. The calm which prevailed reassured me, yet soon I grew restless with the fear that this fire-eating cabin-boy with the mystery in his eyes would sully the shores of Lailamanora with his vulgar ambitions. My fear became alarm as I saw on the horizon the smoke of the fleet, and heard through the Igrovamalan the shout of triumph fries from the army when the peak of Laila Roma had burst on their view. I could see each man drink his drug, and I thought that all was lost. Suddenly there came a roar from every ship, and I could see that it accompanied a plume of steam that escaped from the sides. The boiler of every fire-ship had evidently been punctured, and soon I could see that it cost those on board unceasing effort to keep afloat. The soldiers were about to take to the bolts when a deep-mouthed roar numbed every other sound. It was the Lailaran at work, and the whole fleet soon vanished over the horizon before its compulsive blast. The puncturing had been accomplished by submarine action. The Lailamo had sent through the waters their floating batteries, which by nicely adjusted weights lay beneath the surface right in the track of the fleet. The electric cables by which they were secured could shift them hither and thither, and through them immense force could be applied, sending a volley of keen darts up towards whatever iron there was above them. These darts had entered the hulls of the ships just beneath the waterline, and made their way into the iron of the engines. One or other told on the boilers and disabled the ships. The electric floats were unseen by the expedition, and the wounding of the fleet was as mysterious and magical as the sleep had been on the previous attempt. Panic seized on every soldier and sailor, and they thanked their gods when the blast of the Lailaran hurried them to the shelving beach of a low island, and they heard the keels great on shingle and sand. They scrambled on shore through the surf and found shelter from the wind behind the mounds that covered the former fleet or under their gaunt ribs or sides. But a new panic overcame them when they discovered that their leader was gone and could nowhere be found. Then it was remembered that in the worst of the storm which blew from Lailaroma a giant bird had swooped down towards his ship and rested for a moment on the platform where he stood in solitary meditation, and as suddenly soared up again. It was two passengers of the Lailamo who had been sent in one of their bird-shaped airships to make an end of these war-like expeditions. They had alighted beside Chaktru, and by the powerful means they commanded had sent him into deep sleep in spite of his drug. They tossed him into their airship, and in a few moments were high in the Nyazur, rushing before the blast of the Lailaran. Away they fled with him all day and all night across the belt of fog, and having reached the outer world they let him down still tranced on the shore of a lonely coral islet of the Pacific, close to a group inhabited by a savage and war-like tribe. Chaktru had their instincts and ambitions, let him master the savages when he awakened. A wild beast could do no harm amongst wild beasts. His memory and example haunted the archipelago like an evil dream for generations. Some thought he had been born aloft to heaven by a messenger of the gods, and worshipped him as divine. His cruelty and in wars goaded on his worshippers to wild fury of injustice and slaughter. Others who were keener of brain and had perceived the earthly character of their leader and his purposes were cited to like ambitions. The romance of his life was glorified in verse and prose by every new school of literature and fired the imaginations of boyhood to war-like exploits. War, piracy, plunder came to be the favorite forms of dishonesty in the archipelago. It was marvellous how much the peaceful and obscure suffered from the romance of this cabin boy's adventures. But no man of the islands dared again to approach the Isle of Devils. Even he whom so many of them reputed a god had been unable to break in, and the mishap to the last fleet had been more bewildering than that to the first. Magical powers were possessed by the inhabitants of this island without a doubt. There seemed to be no limit to their transcendence of the order of nature. Evil they were, and the fear of them their brilliance had to endure in patience. Nor did it grow less from generation to generation. Fancy never let the stories of the defeat of the great chock-true rest. They gathered to them features more and more terrible to contemplate. A halo of dread and mystery is far more effective as a fence against human intrusion than a halo of sanctity or even divinity. It cows the miscreant and the brute in the human breast. The duties of the lilamo in repelling the attacks of men would vanish for hundreds of generations. For chock-true, his fate was a romantic contrast to that of his fame. Reports were brought in by the Adrova Milan or by flying messengers who had ventured over the belt of fog. He was rescued by the neighboring tribe before he starved on the barren islet, only to be threatened with sacrifice to one of their gods. A missionary who had some influence over the heathen arrived at the moment of sacrifice and saved him. After learning their language he worked his way by intrigues and assassinations and what they thought magic up to the headship of the tribe. When he had made himself secure in his power over them he built a great fleet of war canoes, and, after mastering the groups of islands within range and enlisting their warriors and canoes in his service, he set sail southward for some land they knew not of. South and then east the fleet made way, his followers still unalarmed. At last appeared the circle of mystery on the horizon. He gave the word to roll forward into it, but, before the command had reached the outermost of the canoes, he was hurled from his platform into the sea, and as he rose to the surface he was promptly spared by his own immediate staff. Round swung the heads of canoes by one simultaneous impulse. Their chief had become a madman to think of entering that belt of mystery and a way they paddled for very life, nor did they cease their frantic efforts till the dark cloud had sunk beneath the horizon.