time to fly
if I would not be seen.

Nevertheless, I make one last attempt to awaken the sentiment of
patriotism within him.

"Thomas Roch," I say, "warships are in sight. They have come to
destroy this lair. Maybe one of them flies the French flag!"

He gazes at me. He was not aware that Back Cup is going to be
attacked, and I have just apprised him of the fact. His brow darkens
and his eyes flash.

"Thomas Roch, would you dare to fire upon your country's flag--the
tricolor flag?"

He raises his head, shakes it nervously, and with a disdainful
gesture:

"What do you mean by 'your country?' I no longer have any country,
Simon Hart. The inventor spurned no longer has a country. Where he
finds an asylum, there is his fatherland! They seek to take what is
mine. I will defend it, and woe, woe to those who dare to attack me!"

Then rushing to the door of the laboratory and throwing it violently
open he shouts so loudly that he must be heard at the Beehive:

"Go! Get you gone!"

I have not a second to lose, and I dash out.

CHAPTER XVII.

ONE AGAINST FIVE.

For a whole hour I wander about among Back Cup's dark vaults, amid the
stone trees, to the extreme limit of the cavern. It is here that I
have so often sought an issue, a crevice, a crack through which I
might squeeze to the shore of the island.

My search has been futile. In my present condition, a prey to
indefinable hallucinations it seems to me that these walls are thicker
than ever, that they are gradually closing in upon and will crush me.

How long this mental trouble lasts I cannot say. But I afterwards find
myself on the Beehive side, opposite the cell in which I cannot hope
for either repose or sleep. Sleep, when my brain is in a whirl
of excitement? Sleep, when I am near the end of a situation that
threatened to be prolonged for years and years?

What will the end be as far as I am personally concerned? What am I to
expect from the attack upon Back Cup, the success of which I have been
unable to assure by placing Thomas Roch beyond the possibility of
doing harm? His engines are ready to be launched, and as soon as the
vessels have reached the dangerous zone they will be blown to atoms.

However this may be, I am condemned to pass the remaining hours of the
night in my cell. The time has come for me to go in. At daybreak I
shall see what is best for me to do. Meanwhile, for aught I know I
may hear the thunder of Roch's fulgurator as