 CHAPTER XII I come now to a part of my narrative, which would have been deemed altogether incredible in those closing years of the nineteenth century that witnessed the first steps towards the solution of the deepest mysteries of the ether, although men even then held in their hands without knowing it, powers which, after they had been mastered and before use had made them familiar, seemed no less than Godlike. For six months after Hall's departure for San Francisco, I heard nothing from him. Notwithstanding my intense desire to know what he was doing, I did not seek to disturb him in his retirement. In the meantime things ran on as usual in the world, only a ripple being caused by renewed discoveries of small nuggets of Artemisium on the Tetons, a fact which recalled to my mind the remark of my friend when he dislodged a flake of the metal from a crevice during our ascent of the peak. At last one day I received his telegram at my office in New York. San Francisco, May 16, 1940. Come at once, the mystery is solved, signed Hall. As soon as I could pack a grip, I was flying westward one hundred miles an hour, un-reaching San Francisco, which had made enormous strides since the opening of the twentieth century, owing to the extension of our oriental possessions, and which already ranked with New York and Chicago among the financial capitals of the world, I hastened to Hall's laboratory. He was there expecting me, and after a hearty greeting during which his elation over his success was manifest, he said, I am compelled to ask you to make a little journey. I found it impossible to secure the necessary privacy here, and before opening my experiments I selected a site for a new laboratory in an unfrequented spot among the mountains this side of Lake Tahoe. You will be the first man, with the exception of my two devoted assistants, to see my apparatus, and you shall share the sensation of the critical experiment. Then you have not yet completed your solution of the secret? Yes, I have, for I am as certain of the result as if I had seen it, but I thought you were entitled to be in with me at the death. From the nearest railway station we took horses to the laboratory, which occupied a secluded but most beautiful site at an elevation of about six thousand feet above sea level. With considerable surprise I noticed a building surmounted with a dome, recalling what we had seen from the grand teetown on the roof of Dr. Six's mill. Hall, observing my look, smiled significantly, but said nothing. The laboratory proper occupied a smaller building adjoining the domed structure. All led the way into an apartment, having but a single door and illuminated by a skylight. This is my sanctum sanctorum, he said, and you are the first outsider to enter it. Seat yourself comfortably until I proceed to unveil a little corner of the Artemisium mystery. Near one end of the room, which was about thirty feet in length, was a table on which lay a glass tube about two inches in diameter and thirty inches long. On the farther end of the tube gleamed a lump of yellow metal, which I took to be gold. Hall and I were seated near another table about twenty feet distant from the tube, and on this table was an apparatus furnished with a concave mirror, whose optical axis was directed towards the tube. It occurred to me at once that this apparatus would be suitable for experimenting with electric waves. Wires ran from it to the floor, and in the cellar beneath was audible the beating of an engine. My companion made it adjustment or two, and then remarked, Now keep your eye on the lump of gold in the farther end of the tube yonder. The tube is exhausted of air, and I am about to concentrate upon the gold an intense electric influence, which will have the effect of making it a kind of cathode pole. I only use this term for the sake of illustration. You will recall that as long ago as the days of crooks it was known that a cathode in an exhausted tube would project particles or atoms of its substance away in straight lines. Now watch. I fixed my attention upon the gold, and presently saw it enveloped in a most beautiful violet light. This grew more intense, until at times it was blinding, while at the same moment the interior of the tube seemed to have become charged with a luminous vapor of a delicate pinkish hue. Watch, watch! said Hall, look at the nearer end of the tube. Why, it is becoming coated with gold, I exclaimed. He smiled, but made no reply. Still the strange process continued. The pink vapor became so dense that the lump of gold was no longer visible, although the eye of violet light glared piercingly through the colored fog. Every second the deposit of metal, shining like a mirror, increased, until suddenly there came a curious whistling sound. Hall, who had been adjusting the mirror, jerked away his hand and gave it a flip, as if hot water had spattered it, and then the light in the tube quickly died away. The vapor escaped, filling the room with a peculiar, stimulating odor, and I perceived that the end of the glass tube had been melted through, and the molten gold was slowly dripping from it. I carried it a little too far, said Hall, ruefully rubbing the back of his hand, and when the glass gave way under the atomic bombardment a few atoms of gold visited my bones. But there is no harm done. You observed that the instant the air reached the cathode, as I, for convenience, called the electrified mass of gold, the action ceased. But your anode, to continue your simile, I said, is constantly exposed to the air. True, he replied, but in the first place, of course, this is not really an anode, just as the other is not really a cathode. As science advances we are compelled for a time to use old terms in a new sense, until a fresh nomenclature can be invented. But we are now dealing with a form of electric action more subtle in its effects than any at present described in the textbooks and the transactions of learned societies. I have not yet even attempted to work out the theory of it. I am only concerned with its facts. But wonderful as the exhibition you have given is, I do not see, I said, how it concerns Dr. Six and his Artemisium. Listen, replied Hall, settling back in his chair after disconnecting his apparatus. You no doubt have been told how one night the Six engine was heard working for a few minutes, the first and only night work it was ever known to have done, and how, hardly had it started up when a fire broke out in the mill, and the engine was instantly stopped. Now there is a very remarkable story connected with that, and it will show you how I got my first clue to the mystery. Although it was rather a mere suspicion than a clue, for at first I could make nothing of it. The alleged fire occurred about a fortnight after our discovery of the double tunnel. My mind was then full of suspicions concerning Six, because I thought that a man who would fool people with one hand was not likely to deal fairly with the other. It was a glorious night, with a full moon whose face was so clear in the limpid air that having found a snug place at the foot of a yellow pine tree where the ground was carpeted with odoriferous needles, I lay on my back and renewed my early acquaintance with the romantically named mountains and seas of the gloom or globe. With my binocular I could trace those long white streaks which radiate from the crater ring called Tycho, and run hundreds of miles in all directions over the moon. As I gazed at these singular objects I recalled the various theories which astronomers, puzzled by their enigmatic aspect, have offered to a more or less confiding public concerning them. In the midst of my meditation and moon-gazing I was startled by hearing the engine in the Six works suddenly begin to run. Immediately a queer light shaped like the beam of a ship's search light, but reddish in color, rose high in the moonlit heavens above the mill. It did not last more than a minute or two, for almost instantly the engine was stopped, and with its stoppage the light faded and soon disappeared. The next day Dr. Six gave it out that on starting up his engine in the night something had caught fire which compelled him immediately to shut down again. The few who had seen the light, with the exception of your humble servant, accepted the doctor's explanation without a question. But I knew there had been no fire, and Six's anxiety to spread the lie led me to believe that he had narrowly escaped giving away a vital secret. I said nothing about my suspicions, but upon inquiry I found out that an extra and pressing order for metal had arrived from the Austrian government the very day of the pretended fire, and I drew the inference that Six, in his haste to fill the order, his supply having been drawn low, had started to work contrary to his custom at night, and had immediately found reason to repent his rashness. Of course I connected the strange light with this sudden change of mind. My suspicion having been thus stimulated, and having been directed in a certain way, I began from that moment to notice closely the hours during which the engine labored. At night it was always quiet, except on that one brief occasion. Sometimes it began early in the morning and stopped about noon. At other times the work was done entirely in the afternoon, beginning sometimes as late as three or four o'clock, and ceasing invariably at sundown. Then again it would start at sunrise and continue the whole day through. For a long time I was unable to account for these eccentricities, and the problem was not rendered much clearer, although a startling suggestiveness was added to it when at length I noticed that the periods of activity of the engine had a definite relation to the age of the moon. Then I discovered, with the aid of an almanac, that I could predict the hours when the engine would be busy. At the time of new moon it worked all day. At full moon it was idle. Between full moon and last quarter it labored in the afternoon, the length of its working hours increasing as the quarter was approached. Between last quarter and new moon the hours of work lengthened, until, as I have said, at new moon they lasted all day. Between new moon and the first quarter work began later and later in the forenoon as the quarter was approached, and between first quarter and full moon the laboring hours rapidly shortened, being confined to the latter part of the afternoon, until at full moon complete silence reigned in the mill. Well, well, I broke in, greatly astonished by Hall's singular recital. You must have thought Dr. Six was a cross between an alchemist and an astrologer. Note this, said Hall, disregarding my interruption. The hours when the engine worked were invariably the hours during which the moon was above the horizon. What did you infer from that? Of course I inferred that the moon was directly concerned in the mystery, but how? That bothered me for a long time, but a little light broke into my mind when I picked up, on the mountain side, a dead bird, whose scorched feathers were bronzed with Artemisium, and some time later another similar victim of a mysterious form of death. Then came the attack on the mine, and its tragic finish. I have already told you what I observed on that occasion, but instead of helping to clear up the mystery it rather complicated it for a time. At length, however, I reasoned my way partly out of the difficulty. Certain things which I had noticed in the Six mill convinced me that there was a part of the building whose existence no visitor suspected, and putting one thing with another I inferred that the roof must be open above that secret part of the structure, and that if I could get upon a sufficiently elevated place I could see something of what was hidden there. Now at last I began to perceive the real truth, but it was so wildly incredible, so infinitely remote from all human experience that I hardly ventured to formulate it, even in my own secret mind, but I was bound to see the thing through to the end. It occurred to me that I could prove the accuracy of my theory with the aid of a kite. You were kind enough to lend your assistance in that experiment, and it gave me irrefragable evidence of the existence of a shaft of flying atoms extending in a direct line between Dr. Six's pretended mine and the moon. Hall, I explained, you are mad! My friend smiled good-naturedly and went on with his story. The instant the kite shriveled and disappeared I understood why the works were idle when the moon was not above the horizon. Why birds flying across the fatal beam fell dead upon the rocks, and whence the terrible master of that mysterious mill derived the power of destruction that could wither an army as the Assyrian host in Byron's poem melted like snow in the glance of the Lord. But how did Dr. Six turn the flying atoms against his enemies? I asked. In a very simple manner he had a mirror mounted so that it could be turned in any direction and would shunt the stream of metallic atoms heated by their friction with the air towards any desired point. When the attack came he raised his machine above the level of the roof and swept the mob to illustrious, if expensive, death. And the light at night was the shining of the heated atoms, not luminous enough to be visible in broad day, for which reason the engine never worked at night, and the stream of volatized Artemisium was never set flowing at full moon when the lunar globe is above the horizon only during the hours of darkness. I see, I said, whence came the nuggets on the mountain. Some of the atoms owing to the resistance of the air fell short and settled in the form of impelpable dust until the winds and rains collected and compacted them in the cracks and crevices of the rocks. That was it, of course. And now, I added, my amazement at the success of Hall's experiments and the accuracy of his deductions increasing every moment. Do you say that you have also discovered the means employed by Dr. Six to obtain Artemisium from the moon? Not only that, replied my friend, but within the next few minutes I shall have the pleasure of presenting to you a button of moon-metal fresh from the veins of Artemis himself. End of CHAPTER XIII. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Led by Betsy Bush in Marquette, Michigan, June 2007. The Moon-Metal by Garrett P. Service. CHAPTER XIII. THE LOOTING OF THE MOON. I shall spare the reader a recital of the tireless efforts continuing through many almost sleepless weeks whereby Andrew Hall obtained his clue to Dr. Six's method. It was manifest from the beginning that the agent concerned must be some form of etheric, or so-called electric energy. But how to set it in operation was the problem. Finally he hit upon the apparatus for his initial experiments, which I have already described. Recurring to what had been done more than half a century ago by Hertz, when he concentrated electric waves upon a focal point by means of a concave mirror, said Hall, I saw that the key I wanted lay in an extension of these experiments. At last I found that I could transform the energy of an engine into undulations of the ether, which, when they had been concentrated upon a metallic object, like a chunk of gold, imparted to it an intense charge of an apparently electric nature. Upon this charging a metallic body enclosed in a vacuum, I observed that the energy imparted to it possessed the remarkable power of disrupting its atoms and projecting them off in straight lines. Very much as occurs with a cathode in a crook's tube. But this was of supreme importance. I found that the line of projection was directly towards the apparatus from which the impulse producing the charge had come. In other words I could produce two poles between which a marvelous interaction occurred. My transformer, with its concentrating mirror, acted as one pole from which energy was transferred to the other pole, and that other pole immediately flung off atoms of its own substance in the direction of the transformer. But these atoms were stopped by the glass wall of the vacuum tube. And when I tried the experiment with the metal removed from the vacuum and surrounded with air, it failed utterly. This at first completely discouraged me, until I suddenly remembered that the moon is in a vacuum, the great vacuum of interplanetary space, and that it possesses no perceptible atmosphere of its own. At this a great light broke around me and I shouted Eureka. Without hesitation I constructed a transformer of great power, furnished with a large parabolic mirror to transmit the waves in parallel lines, erected the machinery in building here, and when all was ready for the final experiment I telegraphed for you. Desperate by these explanations I was all on fire to see the thing tried. Hall was no less eager, and calling in his two faithful assistants to make the final adjustments, he led the way into what he facetiously named the lunar chamber. If we fail, he remarked with a smile that had an element of worryment in it, it will become the lunatic chamber. But no danger of that. You observe this polished silver knob, supported by a metallic rod, curved over at the top like a crane. That constitutes the pole from which I proposed to transmit the energy to the moon, and upon which I expect the storm of atoms to be centered by reflection from the mirror at which focus it is placed. One moment I said, am I to understand that you think that the moon is a solid mass of Artemisium? And that no matter where your radiant force strikes it, a cathode pole will be formed there from which atoms will be projected to the earth? No, said Hall, I must carefully choose the point on the lunar surface where to operate. But that will present no difficulty. I made up my mind as soon as I had penetrated Six's secret that he obtained the metal from those mystic white streaks which radiate from Tycho, and which have puzzled the astronomers ever since the invention of telescopes. I now believe those streaks to be composed of immense veins of the metal that Six has most appropriately named Artemisium, which you, of course, recognize as being derived from the name of the Greek goddess of the moon, Artemis, whom the Romans called Diana. But now to work. It was less than a day past the time of new moon, and the earth's satellite was too near the sun to be visible in broad daylight. Accordingly, the mirror had to be directed by means of knowledge of the moon's place in the sky. Driven by accurate clockwork, it could be depended upon to retain the proper distance when once set. With breathless interest I watched the proceedings of my friend and his assistance. The strain upon the nerves of all of us was such as could not have been born for many hours at a stretch. When everything had been adjusted to his satisfaction, Hall stepped back, not without betraying his excitement in flushed cheeks and flashing eyes, and pressed a lever. The powerful engine underneath the floor instantly responded. The experiment was begun. I have set it upon a point about a hundred miles north of Tycho, where the Yerks' photographs show a great abundance of the white substance, said Hall. When we waited a minute elapsed, a bird fluttering in the opening above for a second or two wrenched our strained nerves, Hall's face turned pale. They had better keep away from here, he whispered with a ghastly smile. Two minutes I could hear the beating of my heart. The engine shook the floor. Three minutes. Hall's face was wet with perspiration. The bird blundered in and startled us again. Four minutes. We were like statues, with all eyes fixed on the polished ball of silver, which shone in the brilliant light concentrated upon it by the mirror. Five minutes. The shining ball had become a confused blue, and I violently winked to clear my vision. At last! Thank God! Look! There it is! It was Hall who spoke, trembling like an aspen. The silver knob had changed color. What seemed a miniature rainbow surrounded it, with concentric circles of blinding brilliance. Then something dropped flashing upon an earthen dish set beneath the ball. Another glittering drop followed, and at a shorter interval another. Almost before a word could be uttered, the drops had coalesced and came a tiny stream, which, as it fell, twisted itself into a bright spiral, gleaming with a hundred shifting hues, and forming on the bottom of the dish a glowing interlacing maze of viscid rings and circlets, which turned and twined about, and over one another, until they had blended and settled into a button-shaped mass of hot metallic jelly. Hall snatched the dish away and placed another in its stead. This will be about right for a watch charm when it cools, he said, with the return of his customary self-command. I promised you the first specimen. I'll catch another for myself. But can it be possible that we are not dreaming? I exclaimed. Do you really believe that this comes from the moon? Just as surely as rain comes from the clouds, cried Hall, with all his old impatience. Haven't I just showed you the whole process? Then I congratulate you. You will be as rich as Dr. Six. Perhaps, was the unperturbed reply, but not until I have enlarged my apparatus. At present I shall hardly do more than supply mementos to my friends. But since the principle is established, the rest is mere detail. Just weeks later the financial centers of the earth were shaken by the news that a new supply of Artemisium was being marketed from a mill which had been secretly opened in the Sierras of California. For a time there was almost a panic. If Hall had chosen to do so he might have precipitated serious trouble, but he immediately entered into negotiations with government representatives and the inevitable result was that, to preserve the monetary system of the world from upheaval, Dr. Six had to consent that Hall's mill should share equally with his in the production of Artemisium. During the negotiations the doctor paid a visit to Hall's establishment. The meeting between them was most dramatic. Six tried to blast his rival with a glance, but knowledge is power, and my friend faced his mysterious antagonist whose deepest secrets he had penetrated with an unflinching eye. It was remarked that Dr. Six became a changed man from that moment. His masterful air seemed to have deserted him, and it was with something resembling humility that he assented to the arrangement which required him to share his enormous gains with his conqueror. Of course Hall's success led to an immediate recudescence of the efforts to extract Artemisium from the Six-Or, and equally, of course, every such attempt failed. Hall, while keeping his own secret, did all he could to discourage the experiments, but they naturally believed that he must have made the very discovery which was the subject of their dreams, and he could not, without betraying himself and upsetting the finances of the planet, directly un-deceive them. The consequence was that fortunes were wasted in hopeless experimentation, and with Hall's achievement dazzling their eyes the deluded fortune-seekers kept on in the face of endless disappointments and disaster. And presently there came another tragedy. The Six-Mill was blown up. The accident, although many people refuse to regard it as an accident, and asserted that the doctor himself in his chagrin had applied the match. The explosion then occurred about sundown, and its effects were awful. The great works, with everything pertaining to them and every rail that they contained, were blown to atoms. They disappeared as if they had never existed. Even the twin tunnels were involved in the ruin, a vast cavity being left in the mountain side where Six's ten acres had been. The force of the explosion was so great that the shattered rock was reduced to dust. To this fact was owing the escape of the troops camped near. While the mountain was shaken to its core, the enormous parapets of living rock were hurled down the precipices of the teetan. No missiles of appreciable size traversed the air, and not a man in the camp was injured. And Jackson's hole, filled with red dust, looked for days afterwards like the mouth of a tremendous volcano just after interruption. Doctor Six had been seen entering the mill a few minutes before the catastrophe by a sentinel who was stationed about a quarter of a mile away, and who, although he had felt like an ox by the shock, and had his eyes, ears, and nostrils filled with flying dust miraculously escaped with his life. After this a new arrangement was made whereby Andrew Hall became the sole producer of Artemisium, and his wealth began to mount by leaps of millions towards the starry heights of the billions. About a year after the explosion of the Six Mill, a strange rumor got about. It came first from Budapest in Hungary, where it was a verb several persons of credibility had seen Doctor Max Six. Dr. Six had been familiar with his face and his personal peculiarities through actually meeting him, as well as through photographs and descriptions, and unless there was an intention to deceive, it did not seem possible that a mistake could be made in identification. There surely never was another man who looked just like Dr. Six, and besides, was it not demonstrable that he must have perished in the awful destruction of his mill? Soon after came a report that Dr. Six had been seen again, this time at a catering-burg in the earls. Next he was said to have paid a visit to Batang in the mountainous district of southwestern China, and finally, according to rumor, he was seen in Sicily at Nicolossae among the volcanic pimples on the southern slope of Mount Etna. Next followed something of more curious and more startling interest. A chemist at Budapest, where the first rumors of Six's reappearance had placed the mysterious Doctor, announced that he could produce Artemisium and proved it, although he kept his process secret. Hardly had the sensation caused by this news partially subsided when a similar report arrived from a catering-burg, another from Batang, after that a fourth from Nicolossae. He could fail to notice the coincidence, wherever the Doctor, or was it his Ghost, appeared there shortly afterwards somebody discovered the much sought secret. After this, Six's apparitions rapidly increased in frequency, followed in each instance by the announcement of another productive Artemisium mill. He appeared in Germany, Italy, France, England, and finally at many places in the United States. It is the old Doctor's revenge, said Hall to me one day, trying to smile, although the matter was too serious to be taken humorously. Yes, it is his revenge, and I must admit that it is complete. The price of Artemisium has fallen one-half within six months. All the efforts we have made to hold back the flood have proved useless. The secret itself is becoming public property. We shall inevitably be overwhelmed with Artemisium, just as we were with gold, and the last condition of the financial world will be worse than the first. My friends' gloomy prognostications came near being fulfilled to the letter. Ten thousand Artemisium mills shot their etheric rays upon the moon, and our unfortunate satellite's metal ribs were stripped by atomic force. Some of the great white rays that had been one of the telescopic wonders of the lunar landscapes disappeared, and the face of the moon, which had remained unchanged before the eyes of the children of Adam from the beginning of their race, now looked as if the blast of a furnace had swept it. At night, on the moonward side, the earth was studded with brilliant spikes, all pointed at the heart of its child in the sky. But the looting of the moon brought disaster to the robber planet. So mad were the efforts to get the precious metal that the surface of our globe was fairly showered with it. What kind of fields were, in some cases, almost smothered under a metallic coating? The air was filled with shining dust, until finally famine and pestilence joined hands with financial disaster to punish the grasping world. Then at last the various governments took effective measures to protect themselves and their people. Another combined effort resulted in an international agreement whereby the production of the precious moon-metal was once more rigidly controlled. But the existence of a monopoly, such as Dr. Six had so long enjoyed, and in the enjoyment of which Andrew Hall had for a brief period succeeded him, was henceforth rendered impossible. Chapter 14 The Last of Dr. Six Many years after the events last recorded, I sat at the close of a brilliant autumn day side by side with my old friend Andrew Hall on a broad, vine-shaded piazza which faced the east where the full moon was just rising above the rim of the Sierra, and replacing the rosy counter-glow of sunset with its silvery radiance. The sight was calculated to carry the minds of both back to the events of former years, but I noticed that Hall quickly changed the position of his chair and sat down again with his back to the rising moon. He had managed to save some millions from the wreck of his vast fortune when Artemisium started to go to the dogs, and I was now paying him one of my annual visits at his palatial home in California. "'Did I ever tell you of my last trip to the Teton?' he asked, as I continued to gaze contemplatively at the broad lunar disk which slowly detached itself from the horizon and began to swim in the clear evening sky. "'No,' I replied, but I should like to hear about it. Or of my last sight of Dr. Six. "'Indeed, I did not suppose that you ever saw him after that conference in your mill when he had to surrender half of the world to you. Once only I saw him again,' said Hall with a peculiar intonation. "'Pray, go ahead and tell me the whole story.' My friend lighted a fresh cigar, tipped his chair into a more comfortable position, and began. It was about seven years ago. I had long felt an incongruable desire to have another look at the Teton and the scenes amid which so many strange events in my life had occurred. I thought of sending for you to go with me, but I knew you were abroad much of your time, and I could not be certain of catching you. Finally, I decided to go alone. I traveled on horseback by way of the Snake River Canyon, and arrived early one morning in Jackson's Hole. I can tell you it was a gloomy place, as barren and deserted as some of those Arabian weighties that you have been describing to me. The railroad had long ago been abandoned, and the sight of the military camp could scarcely be recognized. An immense cavity with ragged walls showed where Dr. Six's mill used to send up its plume of black smoke. As I stared up at the gaunt form of the Teton whose beatling precipices had been smashed and split by the great explosion, I was seized with a resistless impulse to climb it. I thought I should like to peer off again from that pinnacle which had once formed so fateful a watchtower for me. Turning my horse loose to graze in the grassy river-bottom and carrying my rope tether along as a possible aid in climbing, I sat out for the ascent. I knew I could not get up the precipices on the eastern side, which we were able to master with the aid of our balloon, and so I bore around when I reached the steepest cliffs until I was on the southwestern side of the peak where the climbing was easier. But it took me a long time, and I did not reach the rift in the summit until just before sundown, knowing that it would be impossible for me to descend at night. I bethought me of the enclosure of rocks supposed to have been made by Indians on the western pinnacle, and decided that I would pass the night there. The perpendicular buttress forming the easternmost and highest point of the Teton's head would have baffled me but for the fact that I found a long crack, probably an effect of the tremendous explosion extending from bottom to top of the rock. Driving my toes and fingers into this rift, I managed with a good deal of trouble and no little peril to reach the top. As I lifted myself over the edge and rose to my feet, imagined my amazement at seeing Dr. Six standing within arm's length of me. My breath seemed pent in my lungs, and I could not even utter the exclamation that rose to my lips. It was like meeting a ghost. Notwithstanding the many reports of his having been seen in various parts of the world, it had always been my conviction that he had perished in the explosion. Yet there he stood in the twilight, for the sun was hidden by the time I reached the summit. His tall form erected and his black eyes gleaming under the heavy brows as he fixed them sternly upon my face. You know I never was given to losing my nerve, but I am afraid I lost it on that occasion. Again and again I strove to speak, but it was impossible to move my tongue. So powerless seemed my lungs that I wondered how I could continue breathing. The doctor remained silent, but his curious smile, which as you know was a thing of terror to most people, overspread his black rimmed face, and was broad enough to reveal the gleam of his teeth. I felt that he was looking me through and through. The sensation was as if he had transfixed me with an ice-cold blade. There was a gleam of devilish pleasure in his eyes as though my evident suffering was a delight to him and a gratification of his vengeance. At length I succeeded in overcoming the feeling which oppressed me and making a step forward I shouted in a strained voice, You black Satan! I cannot clearly explain the psychological process which led me to utter those words. I had never entertained any enmity towards Dr. Six, although I had always regarded him as a heartless person, who had purposely led thousands to their ruin for his selfish gain, but I knew that he could not help hating me, and I felt now that in some inexplicable manner a struggle, not physical but spiritual, was taking place between us, and my exclamation uttered with surprising intensity, produced upon me and apparently upon him the effect of a desperate sword thrust which attains its mark. Immediately the doctor's form seemed to recede as if he had passed the verge of the precipice behind him. At the same time it became dim and then dimmer until only the dark outlines and particularly the jet-black eyes glaring fiercely remained visible. And still he receded as though floating in the air, which was now silvered with the evening light, until he appeared to cross the immense atmospheric gulf over Jackson Hole and paused on the rim of the horizon in the east. Then suddenly I became aware that the full moon had risen at the very place on the distant mountain brow where the spectre rested, and as I continued to gaze, as if entranced, the face and figure of the doctor seemed slowly to frame themselves within the lunar disc, until at last he appeared to have quitted the air and the earth and to be frowning at me from the circle of the moon. While Hall was pronouncing his closing words I had begun to stare at the moon, with swiftly increasing interest, until as his voice stopped, I exclaimed, Why, there he is now! Funny, I never noticed it before! There's Dr. Six's face in the moon as plain as day! Yes, replied Hall, without turning round, and I never like to look at it.