impossible, to understand. Their meaning did not fully sink in until
an instant after he had finished speaking.

"Shiro!" I said sharply. "Help me take this man inside. He's ill."

"Yes, sir!" The guard leaped to obey the order, and together we led
him into the _Ertak_, and to my own stateroom. There was some mystery
here, and I was eager to get at the root of it. The man with the
ancient costume and the strange accent had not come to the spot where
we had seen him by any means with which I was familiar; he had
materialized out of the thin air. There was no other way to account
for his presence.

* * * * *

We propped the stranger in my most comfortable chair, and I turned to
the sentry. He was staring at our weird visitor with wondering,
fearful eyes, and when I spoke he started as though stung by an
electric shock.

"Very well," I said briskly. "That will be all. Resume your post
immediately. And--Shiro!"

"Yes, sir?"

"It will not be necessary for you to make a report of this incident. I
will attend to that. Understand?"

"Yes, sir!" And I think it is to the man's everlasting credit, and to
the credit of the Service which had trained him, that he executed a
snappy salute, did an about-face, and left the room without another
glance at the man slumped down in my big easy chair.

With a feeling of cold, nervous apprehension such as I have seldom
experienced in a rather varied and active life, I turned then to my
visitor.

He had not moved, save to lift his head. He was staring at me, his
eyes fixed in his chalky white face. They were dark, long
eyes--abnormally long--and they glittered with a strange, uncanny
light.

"You are feeling better?" I asked.

His thin, bloodless lips moved, but for a moment no sound came from
them. He tried again.

"Water," he said.

I drew him a glass from the tank in the wall of my room. He downed it
at a gulp, and passed the empty glass back to me.

"More," he whispered. He drank the second glass more slowly, his eyes
darting swiftly, curiously, around the room. Then his brilliant,
piercing glance fell upon my face.

"Tell me," he commanded sharply, "what year is this?"

* * * * *

I stared at him. It occurred to me that my friends might have
conceived and executed an elaborate hoax--and then I dismissed the
idea, instantly. There were no scientists among them who could make a
man materialize out of noth