thunder
rolled and echoed through the night.

The terrace, however, was brightly illuminated and every detail of the
scene around him was visible to Dirk.

He saw Stanton, on another part of the terrace, standing among some
Lodorians he had not seen before. Stanton, apparently, was not being
treated as a prisoner and Dirk wondered, rather vaguely, why this was.

"What happened?" Dirk asked Fragoni quietly.

"According to what I have heard," the latter replied, "Zitlan murdered
his father in a fit of rage, and has taken over the command of the ship.
Many of the Lodorians are his adherents and even those who do not favor
him are so terrified that they will be obedient to his wishes."

"And Inga?" questioned Dirk.

"She is inside the apartment," said Fragoni, a note of desperation in
his voice. "Zitlan surprised us completely and he and his men had us
covered before we realized that Teuxical was not among them."

* * * * *

Zitlan, in the meantime, had entered the suite of Fragoni and he now
came out, Inga walking before him.

She was silent and proudly erect but there was a pallor in her face that
indicated her realization of the danger that she was threatened with.

When Dirk saw her she gave him a brave smile, which he answered with a
glance of reassurance.

He could see the great clock in the Metropole Tower, and he noticed,
with a feeling of grave apprehension, that it was twenty minutes to four
o'clock.

There were only a few minutes more in which to make a desperate and
apparently a hopeless effort to save Inga, his friends and himself from
a catastrophe which he had been instrumental in contriving.

Then Zitlan stood before him, haughty and arrogant, his lowering
countenance ugly with hatred.

"So, dog," he said, "you who dared to defy Zitlan now stand before him a
captive!"

Neither Dirk nor any one of the three others who were guarded with him
replied to the utterance.

"You and that woman of yours," continued the Lodorian insolently, "both
are my prisoners to do with as I please. Your fate," he continued, "I
already have planned for you and I assure you that it will not be as
pleasurable as the one to which she is destined. You will find that
Tigana, on which you and those with you will be cast, is a world of
terror such as you never could dream of. Even the monsters which crawl
through the deliriums of the mind are not as horrible as those which
infest the ma