wire. I began to understand.

Overarching everything was a great dome of heaving cloud.

"_Smirn-ow!_"

The long line snapped into immobility.

"By the left flank, march!"

We were moving, marching. Then my ruse had succeeded. I had chosen the
right cave number. I breathed a sigh of relief.

* * * * *

The command for route order was given, and at once a buzz of talk
broke out around me. "Damn them, they're sending us right off to work!
We missed our mess, hunting for that damned spy. But that don't mean
anything. It's back to the tunnel for ours."

"Oh, quit your bellyaching, Andreyeff. Another week, and we'll be in
New York. Just think of it, the richest city in the world to loot! And
women! Why, they tell me the American women are to the Frenchies and
the cold English-women as the sun is to the stars. What's a meal more
or less when you think of that?"

An obscene laugh swept through the ranks. Guttural voices boasted of
past exploits--black deeds and sadistic cruelties that had marked the
trail of the hordes sweeping over Europe from the windy Asiatic
steppes.

As we marched, I noticed a peculiarity of the rocky floor. There were
no sharp edges, no sudden cleavages in the uneven terrain. It looked,
for all the world, as though the stone had been melted, then frozen
again in a moment. An unbelievable pattern was forming itself in my
mind. If what I thought were true--!

The command came to halt.

We had reached the blazing disk I had seen from afar. It was a
tremendous shaft, dropping straight into the very bowels of the earth.
Two hundred feet across, a blinding glare streamed up from the pit.
From far beneath came shoutings, the clank of machinery, a growling
roar.

Other companies marched up and halted at the pit edge. My outfit were
whites--Russians, French, Germans. But the others were black, brown,
yellow--all the motley aggregation of races that formed the Red
cohorts, the backbone of the Great Uprising. As the "At ease" order
snapped out a babel of tongues rose on the air. Every language of
Earth was there save English. The Anglo-Saxons had chosen tortured
death rather than submission to the commands of their conquerors.

A huge platform rose slowly up in the shaft and came to a stop at the
ground level. It was solidly packed with another throng of soldiers in
the gray-green of the enemy. They marched off and we took their place.

* * *