ul
death, that brooded silently, impenetrably, mysteriously and occultly
over a vast area once the garden of civilization, baffled all attempts
at explanation. Even birds were observed to vacate this tract. Only a
few sinister buzzards wheeled their flight, with straight, unflapping
wings, high above Russell, almost out of sight, as if they were the
embodied ghosts of Russell's unbaptized inhabitants.

What was that implacable power? Reporters and trackmen who steadily
scoffed at it were themselves attacked with violent heart-beats when
they crossed the invisible and fatal line. A convulsion of all the
members followed, as if in an epileptic fit,--insensibility and,
generally, death ensued. Many who were with difficulty rescued, and who
finally recovered, averred that they experienced an overcoming odor,
acid and penetrating, such as is peculiar to ozone when manufactured in
a chemical laboratory.

At the end of the fourth day of Russell's complete isolation a despair
settled upon the country. England was staggered by the uniqueness of
these phenomena. The French Academy of Sciences, after a prolonged
sitting, announced that they could suggest no solution. It is only too
well remembered that the newspaper bulletins were besieged in our own
cities, but these offered no further information or encouragement. Was
advanced civilization responsible for this disaster or not? That was the
burning question. Or was this a special visitation of God, a plague new
to the medical world, spontaneously generated, sporadic in its
appearance, and destined forever to be an _obscurum per obscurius_ or
perhaps to spread with further undetermined horrors?

Thousands were now on the ground. They encompassed that section about as
Joshua did the city of Jericho, as the settlers did the Territory of
Oklahoma on the day of its opening, as the rabble do a house when a
murder has been committed.

On the evening of the fourth day from the time when the messenger boy
brought the first despatch to the office of the _Daily Planet_, its
chief, obviously nervous for the first time in his public life, received
the following cipher telegram, which cheered him wonderfully:

"_On the spot. Situation desperate. Worse than described. Will
penetrate to Russell or die. Dead line still impassable. Trust
me._

"SWIFT"

III.

When Swift boarded the Western express he walked through, starting from
the last car, to see if any ri