onderful than to put an
end, once for all, to this waste of life and treasure, which is eating
at the heart of the world? Could anything be more wonderful than to turn
all these armies of useless men back into honest and useful labour? Then
no longer would you see women gathering the harvest, or struggling under
cruel burdens, or cleaning the streets, or spreading manure over the
fields! No, nor walking the pavements of the cities! Would you not say
that the man who brought all this about was a wonderful man?"

"Wonderful!" echoed Dan. "Why, wonderful would be no name for it! But it
is something that no man can ever do."

"It will be done, believe me," she said, solemnly, "and by my father."

Dan could only stare at her. It seemed absurd to suppose that she could
be in earnest; but certainly her face was earnest to solemnity. It shone
with consecration.

"But I don't understand," he stammered. "It's too big for me. How is it
to be accomplished? How can one man bring it about? I can see how the
Czar or Kaiser might set to work, but even they could not hope to
succeed. The Czar did try something of the sort, didn't he?"

"Yes; but he was not in earnest, and the other nations laughed. At my
father they will not laugh, for he is in deadly earnest. As to how this
is to be done, I may not tell you, not yet--some day, perhaps. But one
thing I may tell you, and it is this--my father holds the nations of the
world in the hollow of his hand!"

For a moment there was silence between them. The moon had risen as they
talked, and the dark sea was illumined by a broad path of silver. The
boat-deck was almost deserted; the snapping of the wireless had ceased.
Miss Vard looked about her with a little start.

"It must be very late," she said. "I must be going."

As Dan followed her across the deck, he noticed a dark figure on the
bench next to the one where he and Miss Vard had sat. And as they
passed, the stranger struck a match and lighted a cigarette. By the
glare of the flame, Dan saw that it was his roommate, Chevrial.

CHAPTER XIII

IN THE WIRELESS HOUSE

Fritz Ludwig, the tall, blond young man who earned his eighty marks per
month as wireless man on the _Ottilie_, having eaten his dinner with the
passengers of the second-cabin and smoked a meditative pipe at the door
of the little coop on the after boat-deck which served him as office and
bedroom, knocked out the ashes and entered his citadel to prepare for
th