you. Her motive was high and fine!"

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

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

Then came the philosophical reflection:

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XV

THE BATTLE OF VIBRATIONS

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