other side in
perpendicular cliffs, estimated by Bennie to be about eight hundred or a
thousand feet in height. Although the entanglement was by no means
impassable, it was a distinct obstacle and one they preferred to tackle
by daylight. Moreover, it indicated that their company was undesired.
They were in the presence of an unknown quantity, the master of the
Flying Ring. Whether he was a malign or a benevolent influence, this
Father of the Marionettes, they could not tell.

With his back propped against a small spruce Bennie focused his glasses
upon dim shapes barely discernible in the midst of the valley. He was
thrilled by a deep excitement, a strange fear. What would he see? What
mysteries would those vague forms disclose? The shadows cast by the
cliffs and a light mist gathering in the low ground made it difficult to
see; and then, even as he looked, the moon rose higher and shone through
something in the middle of the valley that looked like a tall, grisly
skeleton. It seemed to have legs and arms, an odd mushroom-shaped head,
and endless ribs. Below and at its feet were other and vaguer
shapes--flat domes or cupolas, bombproofs perhaps, buildings of some
sort--Pax's home beyond peradventure.

As he looked through the glasses at the skeleton-like tower Bennie had
an extraordinary feeling of having seen it all before somewhere. As in a
long-forgotten dream he remembered Tesla's tower near Smithtown, on Long
Island. And this was Tesla's tower, naught else! It is a strange thing,
how at great crises of our lives come feelings of anticipatory
knowledge. There is, indeed, nothing new under the sun; else had Bennie
been more afraid. As it was, he saw only Tesla's Smithtown tower with
its head like a young mushroom. And at the same time there flashed into
his memory: "Childe Harold to the Dark Tower Came." Over and over he
repeated it mechanically, feeling that he might be one of those of whom
the poet had sung. Yet he had not read the lines for years:

_Burningly it came on me all at once,
This was the place!...
What in the midst lay but the Tower itself?_

His eyes searched the shadows round the base of the tower, for his ears
had already caught a faint, almost inaudible throbbing that seemed to
grow from moment to moment. There certainly was a dull vibration in the
air, a vibration like the distant hum of machinery. Suddenly old Edouard
touched Bennie upon the shoulder.

"_Regardez!_" he whispered