he freighter were turned over to
scientists for experimentation and research. It was thought that they
might be able to discover the cause of the Gray Death, and with a
knowledge of its cause, create something with which to free the
Atlantic from its scourge.

The scientists' investigations only served to mystify the world to a
greater degree. The only thing that came to light was the cause of the
bodies' bonelike rigidity. In some inexplicable way the bones in the
seamen had dissolved, and according to appearances, while the bodies
were plastic, had flattened out. And then, strange and unnatural
though it seemed, the calcium from the dissolved bones had gathered at
the surface of each body, and combining with the flesh and skin, had
formed the hard, bony shell that gave them their ghastly grayness, and
their appearance of petrification. Aside from this, the scientists
learned nothing; the cause of this amazing phenomenon was a complete
mystery to them.

Slowly, methodically, step by step, the unusual had been taking place.
From the time of the landing of the first strange meteor, up to the
discovery of the _Charleston_, there had been a gradual increase in
the significance of each succeeding event.

Then finally came the climax: the Gray Plague itself. All that
preceded it faded into significance before the horror of the dread
pestilence that seized the world with its destroying talons.

* * * * *

A short time after the discovery of the _Charleston_, the Plague made
its first appearance on land. Slowly, pitilessly, inexorably, it
began, taking its toll all along the Atlantic coast. From Newfoundland
to Brazil; from the British Isles to Egypt, wherever people lived near
the ocean, thousands were stricken with the dread malady.

The old and infirm were the most quickly affected; their weakened
bodies could not withstand the ravage of the Plague as could those of
younger people. An old man, walking along a large thoroughfare in
Savannah, Georgia, suddenly uttered a fearful shriek and sank to the
pavement. While the pedestrians watched with bulging eyes, he seemed
to shrink, to flatten, to flow liquidly, turning a ghastly gray.
Within an hour he was as hard as the men of the _Charleston_. Of all
the millions, perhaps he was the first.

Others followed in the wake of the first victim, young as well as old;
three hours after the death in Savannah, every channel of
communication was ch