Alden's foot narrowly missed the body of a sleeping robin. An owl, lodged in the fork of a tree, moved not as the men pa.s.sed. It, too, was whelmed in deep, temporary Nirvana.

The party's next find arrested them, with a thrill of genuine emotion, a triumph that could not be denied some few half-whispered exclamations of exultation from the Master's three companions. He himself was the only one who spoke no word. But, like the others, he had stopped and was pointing the beam of his light on the figure lying inert among broken bushes.

With his toe he touched this figure. His light picked up the man's face from the gloom. That face was looking at him with wide-open eyes.

The eyes saw nothing; but a kind of overwhelming astonishment still seemed mirrored there, caught in the last moment of consciousness as the man had fallen.

The effect was startling, of that sleeping face, those open eyes, that lax mouth. The man was breathing easily, peacefully as a tired child.

The Master's brows contracted a little. His lips tightened. Then he nodded, and smiled the ghost of a smile.

"Lord!" exclaimed Bohannan, half awed by the weirdness of the apparition. "Staring at us, that way--and all! Is he asleep?"

"Try him in any way your ingenuity may suggest," answered the Master, while Alden blinked strangely through his eyeholes, and Rrisa in Arabic affirmed that there is no G.o.d but Allah. "Try to force some sense-impression to his brain. It is sleep, but it is more than that.

The best experiment for any doubting Thomas to employ is just to waken this guard--if possible."

Bohannan shook his head.

"No," he answered, "I'm not going to make a fool of myself. There's no going against any of your statements. I'm beginning to find that out, definitely. Let's be on our way!"

The Master spoke a few quick words of Arabic to his orderly. Rrisa knelt by the prostrate man. Then, while the Master kept the light-beam on him, Rrisa unbuckled the guard's belt, with cartridges and holster containing an ugly snouted gun. This belt the Arab slung round his own body. He arose. In silence, leaving the unconscious man just as he had fallen, they once more pushed onward.

Lights were beginning to gleam ahead, now, in what appeared to be a long, high line. The trees half hid them, but moment by moment they appeared more distinctly. Meantime, too, the glow over the stockade was getting stronger. Presently the trees ceased; and there before them the men saw a wide, cleared s.p.a.ce, a hundred feet of empty land between the woods and a tall, stout fence topped with live wires and with numerous incandescents.

"Nice place to tackle, if anybody were left to defend it!" commented Bohannan. None of the others answered. The Master started diagonally across the cleared s.p.a.ce, toward a cl.u.s.ter of little buildings and stout gate-posts.

Hardly had they emerged from the woods, when, all up and down the line, till it was broken by the woods at both ends where the stockade joined its eastern and western wall, other men began appearing. And all, alike, converged toward the gate.

But to these, the little party of four gave no heed. Other men absorbed their interest--sleeping men, now more and more thickly scattered all along the stockade. Save for a slight, saline tang to the air--an odor by no means unpleasant--nothing remained of the lethal gas.

But its victims still lay there, p.r.o.ne, in every possible att.i.tude of complete and overpowering abandonment. And all, as the party of four pa.s.sed, were quickly disarmed. Up and down the open s.p.a.ce, other Legionaries were at the same work.

The Master and his companions reached the gate-house first of any in the party. The gate was ma.s.sive, of stout oaken planks heavily strapped with iron. About it, and the gate-house, a good many guards were lying. All showed evidence of having dropped asleep with irresistible suddenness.

Some were gaping, others foolishly grinning as if their last sensation had been agreeable--as indeed it had been--while others stared disconcertingly. The chin of one showed an ugly burn where his Turkish cigarette had sagged, and had smoldered to extinction on the flesh.

One had a watch in his hand, while another gripped a newspaper. In the gate-house, two had fallen face downward on the table that occupied the center of the rough room; checker-pieces lay scattered from the game they had been playing. Several men sprawled just outside the little house, on the platform. Under the incandescents, the effect grew weird.

Bohannan shuddered, as he glanced from one to another, then up at some of the approaching men of the expedition. Rrisa affirmed that Mohammed was indeed the prophet of Allah, and that the ways of the _Nasara_ were most strange.

"Good!" exclaimed the Master, with his first word of approval. Even his aplomb was a little shaken by the complete success of the attack.

"It's all working like a clock."

"How about disarming these men, sir?" queried Captain Alden.

"No. They fall under the orders of another group."

"The way is clear, then--"

"Absolutely! These men will sleep almost precisely thirty minutes. The way is clear ahead of us. Forward into the Palisade!"

CHAPTER VII

THE NEST OF THE GREAT BIRD

As the little group of four penetrated into the enclosure which but a few moments before had been guarded all round its perimeter by a small army of determined men, more and more of the Legionaries began to concentrate toward the entrance.

Silently they came, with almost the precision of automata in some complex mechanical process. All were obeying the Master's will, because obedience was sweet to them; because it spelled adventure, freedom, life.

Now and then one stopped, bent, arose with some added burden taken from a fallen guard. Not one guard was to be injured in any manner.

Human life was not to be taken. But nothing in the way of armament was to be left, by way of possible danger to the Legion. And already the telephone-wires had been effectively cut.

All the approaching Legionaries wore rucksacks, and all were in their respective uniforms, though every man still wore a long coat that concealed it. A few groups of two appeared, bearing rather heavy burdens.

The Master smiled again, and nodded, as he paused a moment at the gate to peer down, along the line of the clearing between stockade and forest.

"Here come some of the machine-guns," said he. "I shall be vastly surprised if one man or one single bit of equipment fails to appear on schedule time. Nothing like system, Bohannan--that, and knowing how to choose your men!"

He turned, and the other three followed him into the enclosure.

Outside, all was developing according to plans and specifications.

They four were to be pioneers into the jealously guarded s.p.a.ce that for so long had been the mystery of the continent, yes, of the civilized world.

The whole enclosure was well lighted with a profusion of electric lamps. At first view, quite a bewildering ma.s.s of small buildings appeared; but second glance showed order in them all. Streets had been laid out, as in a town; and along these streets stood drafting-sheds, workshops, storehouses, commissary offices, dwellings for the workers, guards, and bosses. A well-built cottage on the main, forward-going road that led from the gate to an inner stockade, was probably headquarters for the chief engineers.

Not one sign of conscious life appeared. Men were lying here, there, in the roadways, in the porches, in the shadow of the power-plant where dynamos were still merrily singing. Few were armed. Most of them here were workers, judging by their garb and by the tools still in some hands.

The four pioneers gave them no heed, but pushed steadily on. In the road lay a couple of pigeons, farther on a sparrow, and still farther a sleeping dog, showed how complete had been the effect of the lethal pellets.

The inner stockade was now close. It stood about twice as high as the outer, was also topped with live wires and lights, and was loopholed for defense. This formidable barrier was pierced by a small gate, flanked by two machine-guns. On the gate-post was affixed an elaborate set of rules regarding those who might and might not enter. The Master smiled dryly, and opened the gate.

Even from without, the loom of the monstrous airship had been visible.

The eye could hardly at first glance take in the vastness of this stupendous thing, that overshadowed all the central portion of the huge enclosure. It gave a sense of power, of swift potentialities, of speed unlimited. It stood there, tense, ready, waiting, with a hum of engines audible in its vast heart, a thing almost of life, man's creation but how illimitably greater than man!

For a moment, as this tremendous winged fabric came to the Master's view, he halted, and a look of exultation, pride, and joy came over his face. But only for a moment. Quite at once his dark eyes veiled themselves with their habitual impa.s.sivity. Once more he strode forward, the others following him.

Now that they were inside the second barrier--where sleeping men were scattered more thickly than ever--they stood under the very wings of the most stupendous hydroplane ever conceived by the brain of man or executed by the cunning of his hand.

That this hydroplane had been almost on the moment of departure for its trial trip, was proved by the sleepers. Two were on the gangplank leading up to the entrance door in the fuselage. A number who had been knocking out the last holding-pins of the last shackles that bound it to its cradle, had fallen to earth, their sledge-hammers near at hand.

In the pilot-house, a figure had collapsed across the sill of an observation window. And the engines, purring softly, told that all had been in readiness for the throwing-in of the clutches that would have set the vast propellers spinning with roaring speed.

"Yes, they were certainly just on the dot of getting away," said the Master, nodding as he glanced at his watch. "This couldn't be better.

Gas, oil, stores, everything ready. What more proof do you require, my dear Bohannan, of the value of exact coordination?"

The major could only answer: "Yes, yes--" He seemed quite amazed by this extraordinary mechanism--gigantic, weird, unreal in the garish electric lights. Rrisa was frankly staring, for once shaken out of his fatalistic Mussulman tranquillity.