side of the _Stellar_.

"Lower the boats!" yelled Kleig. "Lower the boats! For God's sake lower
the boats!"

For Prester Kleig, in that casual turning, had seen what none aboard the
_Stellar_, even the lookout above, had seen. The airplane, which had
neither wheels nor pontoons, had risen, as Aphrodite is said to have
risen, out of the waves! He had seen the wings come out of the bulbous
body, snap backward into place, and the plane was in full flight the
instant it appeared.

Prester Kleig had no hope that his warning would be in time, but he
would always feel better for having given it. As the captain debated
with himself as to whether this lunatic should be confined as dangerous,
the strange airplane nosed over and dived down to the sea, a hundred
yards from the side of the _Stellar_. Just before it struck the water,
its wings snapped forward and became part of the bulbous body of the
thing, the whole of which shot like a bullet into the sea.

* * * * *

Prester Kleig stood at the rail, peering out at the spot where the plane
had plunged in with scarcely a splash, and his right hand was raised as
though he gave a final, despairing signal.

Of all aboard the _Stellar_, he only saw that black streak which, ten
feet under water, raced like a bolt of lightning from the nose of the
submerged but visible plane, straight as a die for the side of the
_Stellar_. Just a black streak, no bigger than a small man's arm, from
the nose of the plane to the side of the _Stellar_.

From the crow's-nest came the startled, terrific voice of the lookout,
in the beginning of a cry that must remain forever inarticulate.

The world, in that blinding moment, seemed to rock on its foundations;
to shatter itself to bits in a chaotic jumble of sound and of movement,
shot through and through with lurid flames. Kleig felt himself hurled
upward and outward, turned over and over endlessly....

He felt the storm-tossed waters close over him, and knew he had struck.
In the moment he knew--oblivion, deep, ebon and impenetrable, blotted
out knowledge.

CHAPTER II

_The Half-Dream_

A roaring, rushing river of chaotic sound, first. Jumbled sound to which
Prester Kleig could give no adequate name. But as he tried to analyze
its meanings, he was able to differentiate between sounds, and to
discover the identity of some.

The river of sound he decided to be the sound of a vibrational explosion
of some