The Human Zero. The Science Fiction Stories of Erle Stanley Gardner

Chapter 1 Flood!

Phil Bregg was a stranger in the city, and felt the fact to the very utmost. He was heart-heavy and homesick, and he was sick of the rain. It had started the night before. On the Western cattle ranges he had seen occasional cloudbursts; never such a rain, however, as was sheeting down in the city. Being a stranger, he failed to realize that the rain was a phenomenal downpour. He took it much for granted, even when he had found the street curb-full.

Now, swaying in the subway as the train lurched over the rails, he studied those opposite him — the steaming garments, the soggy feet. It was early, too early for the rush hour. He shuddered.

Life in the big city was all right for those who wanted it, not for him. He idly noticed the headlines of a newspaper in the hands of a reader opposite him. “Unprecedented Flood Conditions Sweep Country.”

Phil Bregg yawned. Then his eye caught a subheadline. “Arizona Drenched!”

An involuntary exclamation came from Phil’s lips. The man who held the newspaper looked up, caught Phil’s eye on the sheet, and fastened him with a look of cold disapproval. He was the type of man, Phil noticed, who was particularly good at eying people with disapproval. Phil, with the ready friendliness of the open spaces, sought to explain matters.

“Arizona’s my state,” he said. “I seen it was raining there, and that’s sure some news.”

In his own state the remark would have brought forth a smile, a greeting, perhaps a handshake. On the New York subway it merely caused people to stare at him with cold, impersonal curiosity. The man who held the paper folded it so Phil couldn’t see the headlines. No one said anything.

Phil felt a red flush mounting under the bronzed skin. His big hands felt awkward and ill at ease. He seemed all hands and feet, felt ashamed, yet realized bitterly that it was these others who should feel ashamed.

A hand touched his sleeve. He looked down and to one side. A girl was smiling up at him.

“I spent a winter in Arizona,” she said, “and I know just how you must feel. It’s funny it’s raining there. Why, down in Tucson—”

Nothing in his life had ever felt quite so good to Phil as the touch of that hand, the sound of the words, the friendliness in her eyes. And yet he realized she was violating the customs of the city simply to make him feel a little less hurt, that she had realized and understood.

“Tucson, ma’am! You know the place? Why—”

And the car suddenly, abruptly lurched to a dead stop.

Phil looked at the black walls of the subway and forgot the words that were on his tongue. He felt very much buried alive. His wet garments were clammy. There was the dank drip of death in the air.

“Ugh!” he said.

The girl’s form was tense, she was staring at the windows.

There was a red light ahead, between the rails. Now a man came running forward. The motorman lowered a glass. There was a jumble of words. Out of the darkness ahead came the tail end of another subway train, backing up.

Their own car lurched into motion, started backing.

The girl gave an exclamation.

“Trouble ahead. I’ll be late at the office!”

But the car continued its reverse, gathering speed. And the train ahead was also reversing.

“What’s the trouble?” yelled a man in the back of the car, but the question was unanswered.

An air whistle screamed a warning signal at intermittent intervals. There came a burst of light, and the car stopped.

A guard bellowed orders.

“Everybody’ll have to get off here and go to the surface. Take surface transportation to your destination. There’s trouble ahead in the subway!”

There was a muttered chorus of protest. Some man was demanding the return of his fare. Others were clamoring for explanations.

“Hurry!” bawled the guard. “There’s water in the subway!”

Phil Bregg didn’t know cities, but he knew men, and he knew emergencies. He recognized an undertone of something that was akin to panic in the tones of the guard’s voice.

“Hurry,” he said. “It sounds serious.” And he gripped the arm of the young lady who had been in Tucson.

She let him make a way for her through the crowd, swirled up the stairs in the midst of a confused boiling mass of jabbering people.

They emerged into a drab, wet daylight, and were greeted by water. The street was filled from curb to curb. Taxicabs were grinding forward slowly. Here and there cars were stalled. People were standing open-mouthed, up to their ankles in water, watching the street. Here and there one more determined than the rest was wading knee deep across from curb to curb.

The rain was sheeting down from a leaden sky without interruption or cessation.

Phil grinned.

“I’ve seen cloudbursts in Arizona,” he said, “and a fellow’s saddle can get awfully wet at times, but I don’t think I’ve ever been wetter in my life.”

The girl’s face was puckered with concern.

“This is serious,” she said, “and the water seems to be rising. There’s quite a current you can feel.”

Phil pointed to some of the towering skyscrapers that stretched upward until their towers were lost in the moisture.

“Well there seems to be lots of room to climb!”

She nodded.

“Let’s get inside. I want to telephone the office. But I guess this is one day I can be late without any one calling me on the carpet about it. I’m due there at a little before eight.”

They climbed marble stairs, pushing their way through a crowd of people who were taking refuge there from the water, people who were staring, silent, wet, looking very much like sheep huddled on a small island in the midst of a rising river.

There was a narrow lane left for occupants of the building to push their way up through the huddled figures, and Phil Bregg’s broad shoulders pushed a way for the girl through this lane.

They entered a foyer which looked very normal and workaday. A cigar stand was in one corner. A uniformed elevator starter was starting the elevators. A long board of colored lights marked the progress of the cages as they shot up and down.

“Sorry,” said a voice; “no loitering in the foyer. If you’ve got business, go on up.”

“I want a telephone,” said the girl.

The man in uniform made a motion with a gloved hand.

“Sorry, but there’s an emergency. No loitering in the foyer. Those are orders.”

He turned away to speak to a frightened-faced woman who was holding a whimpering child in her arms.

“Sorry, but you can’t stay here...”

And the words were lost in the noise that was made by two dozen people storming into the entrance at once. For the water, in place of streaming silently past the building in a rising sheet, had suddenly reared the crest of a miniature wave, and rose a good eighteen inches at once.

Phil pushed the girl toward an elevator.

“You can get a telephone in an office upstairs,” he said. “There’s going to be a riot here.”

The girl allowed herself to be pushed into the elevator. The door clanged, and the cage shot upward.

“There must be a broken dam somewhere,” explained the girl. “There couldn’t be this much water collected from the rain. And the drains are probably clogged. Heavens, I hate to think of the people that must be crowded in the subway! I hope the water doesn’t get any higher!”

The elevator was whisking upward.

“Express to the thirtieth floor,” said the operator.

“Thirtieth,” said the girl.

The cage swung to a sickening stop, a door opened, and, abruptly, the lights went out. The elevator operator worked the handle of the door, swung the elevator control from side to side.

“Lucky you called,” he grinned. “Power’s off.”

Phil Bregg instinctively took the arm of the girl with the manner of a protector. “Let’s get to a telephone,” he said. “Maybe your office won’t keep open, after all.”

The girl looked around her at the marble corridor, lined with doors.

“Here’s an insurance office,” she said in a tone that strove to be cheerful and matter of fact. “They’ll have a telephone.”

She tried the door, it was locked...

They walked down the corridor, trying doors. Here and there a man ran past them. From the street below sounded a vague rumbling, rushing noise. It was so like the roar of traffic that neither one paid any attention to it for a while.

They finally found an open office. The place was deserted. The girl went to the telephone, tried it, muttered an exclamation.

“The line’s dead,” she explained.

Through the windows the sound of the roar became louder. There was a shrill note underlying it, a wailing ululation of sound that was like a composite scream.

“Let’s look out,” she said. “It sounds like traffic has resumed. I can get a cab.”

She walked to one of the front windows of the deserted office, peered out, gave a little scream and jumped back, hand to her throat.

“What is it? You’re not hurt?” said Phil Bregg.

She motioned toward the window.

“Look!”

He pressed his face to the glass, looked down.

The buildings formed a concrete canon, irregular in its skyline, broken here and there by much lower buildings. Phil, unaccustomed to these canons of steel and concrete, could see nothing wrong for a second or two until his eyes focused through the dampened surface of the window upon the street below, a threadlike thoroughfare along which black objects were moving.

At first he thought traffic had started again. Then he saw it was sweeping in one direction, and in one direction alone. Next he observed that traffic wasn’t moving of its own accord. A sullen, roaring stream of water was rushing in a black torrent through the street, sweeping automobiles along, sending black specks which were people swirling and spinning, sweeping them onward.

Here and there a man was swimming, trying vainly to stem the tide. A man clutched at an open window in one of the buildings as he was swept by, tried to crawl in. He was painfully slow and deliberate about it. He seemed to be hardly moving. Phil wanted to shout at him to wake up.

Then he saw that it was the power of the current which was pulling the man back into the stream. The muscles fought against the grip of the torrent, and the man dragged himself in the window.

Another man caught the side of the same window, tried to pull himself in. The water dragged him back, broke loose his handhold, sucked him into the current once more and whisked him off.

Phil located the source of the roaring sound. The water was rushing against the corners of the buildings, piling up in frothy masses of tumbled foam, just as water rushes over a submerged rock in a mountain torrent.

Phil turned back to the girl, grinned.

“Well,” he said, “it’s a long ways below us. Let’s walk up to the top floor and look over the city. Maybe we can see where the water’s coming from.”

“It’s fifteen stories up,” said the girl.

Phil grinned.

“It’ll be good exercise. Let’s try it.”

She nodded, white-faced, tense. They started climbing. Somewhere, in the big office building, a girl was having hysterics, and the sound of her screams echoed from the mahogany doors and the marble facings of the hall. Every once in a while some one would run down a corridor shouting.

They stopped twice to rest, then dragged themselves up to the last floor.

“There’s a tower,” said the girl. “Let’s see if it’s open.”

They found a winding staircase, continued to climb, came to a door that was open. Rain was whipping through the oblong of the opening, and water was trickling down the stairs, forming in little pools.

“Looks like somebody’s left the door open,” grinned Phil. “Raised in a barn, maybe.”

He took her elbow, and they fought their way through the doorway. As they did so, the big skyscraper shivered a little, as though a restless tremor had run through the steel framework. The tower seemed to swing slightly, oscillate.

“Must be moving in the wind,” said Phil.

They pushed against the wind to the edge of the building. The rain stung their faces, then, as the wind let up for a moment, ceased to beat against them.

They looked down.

The water was hissing along the street now. There were no more automobiles being swept along on the crest of the tide. Phil had an idea the stream was now too deep for automobiles.

But there were innumerable black dots that were being swirled past, and those black dots were screaming, shouting, twisting, turning, vanishing from sight. The street corner was a vast whirlpool into the vortex of which men were being drawn like straws.

The rain ceased abruptly.

Drifting cloud scud overhead broke for an instant, and there was just a glimpse of sunshine.

“It’s clearing up!” called Phil.

And the rain seemed to have ceased over some considerable area. The patch of blue sky widened. The warm rays of the sun shone reassuringly.

A man came rushing from a little penthouse on the top of the building. In his hand he carried an instrument that looked like a ship captain’s sextant. He stood at the side of the building, raised the instrument to his eyes.

For a moment he stood so, the sunshine gilding him, a morsel of a man standing outlined against the rim of the lofty building. Then he lowered the instrument, took the magnifying glass on the reading arm to his eye, whipped a watch from his pocket, and apparently saw Phil and the girl standing there for the first time.

He stared at them with eyes that were wide, seemed a little glassy.

“Over five degrees out of the proper position in the plane of the ecliptic!” he shouted. “Do you hear me? Over five degrees!”

Phil Bregg glanced at the woman, then stepped forward, interposing his bulk between her and the man.

“That’s all right, brother,” he said in a soothing tone. “There’s been a dam broke somewhere, and the water’s coming up, but it’ll go down in a little while.”

The man made an impatient gesture.

“Fools!” he said. “Don’t you see what’s happening? The water won’t go down. It’ll come up and up. It’s the destruction of a race!”

And he turned on his heel, strode rapidly toward the penthouse.

“I’ve seen ’em get the same way when there’s been a stampede,” said Phil, smiling reassuringly at the girl. “It’s clearing up now. The water’ll be going down in a few minutes. These busted dams make the water come up fast, but it goes down just as fast.”

Yet there was a vague disquiet in his soul which manifested itself in his voice.

The girl nodded bravely, but there was a pallor about her lips.

“Let’s go talk to that bird,” said Phil, suddenly. “I’m wondering what he was staring at the sun for with that sextant. I was on a hunting trip with a chap once that could look at the sun every noon and point out right where we were on the map, and he’d never been anywheres near the country we were hunting in before.”

“Yes,” said the girl. “Sea captains use those instruments to check there... Oh, oh, look! Look! Look!”

Chapter 2 Beginning of the End

Far down the street the towers of one of the great skyscrapers loomed, topped by a central dominant tower, the whole structure dotted with windows which showed as regular black oblongs, small and dark, contrasting with the white of the building.

That tower which dominated the very sky itself was leaning over at a sharp angle. As the girl pointed the tower tilted again, checked itself, swayed, and then started to fall.

It was slow, majestic in its fall, like the descent of a mighty giant of the forest under the ax of the woodsman. The building swung over, moving faster and faster, yet seeming to take an eternity in its collapse.

When it had reached an angle where the central tower seemed to be almost at forty-five degrees, the top of the structure buckled. Masonry broke loose and crashed out as an independent shower of debris.

That was the beginning of a sudden disintegration of the skyscraper. The frame seemed to buckle in a dozen places. The speed of descent increased. The building vanished amongst the smaller edifices which surrounded it.

For an instant there was silence. The skyscraper had simply vanished. Then came a terrific cloud of fine rock dust, a great spray of water, and, after a second or two, a shivering roar that shook the consciousness, tore at the ear drums, seemed to reverberate alike through ground and air.

And, as though that roar had been a signal, the clouds swallowed up the sun again, and the sheeted rain whipped down in torrents.

The man came running out from the penthouse.

“What was it?” he asked, impatiently.

The girl’s white lips moved, but made no sound.

“One of the buildings fell,” said Phil, and his own voice was high-pitched with excitement, as well as a recognition of their own danger.

The man nodded.

“Foundations undermined by the rush of water, ground giving way,” he said. “There’ll be earthquakes, too.”

His own voice had lost its excitement, seemed calm and controlled now.

“Look here,” yelled Phil, “we’re in danger here. Let’s get out of this building. It’s swaying right now!”

And the building swayed, jarred, shivered, as though touched by an invisible giant hand.

“Danger!” the man said; “there is no danger. Our fate is assured. I had hoped this might be a spot of high ground when the compensated stresses of balance should get to work, but apparently they are retarded, or else my calculations were in error.”

“What do you mean?” asked Phil.

The man shrugged his shoulders.

“It’s the end. Look here. I’ve got my complete observatory up there on the tower. I’ve been able to predict this for years. Not as to the time — except within a few years. The newspapers gave me a lot of publicity three years ago, then every one forgot about me. I wasn’t even a joke any more.

“And now it’s happening, just as I said it would. Astronomically it’s been inevitable. Historically it’s authenticated. Yet man would never listen.”

“What,” asked Phil, “are you talking about?”

“The flood,” said the man. “Every savage tribe has an old legend of a great flood that swept over the earth. It rained and the waters rose. Everywhere we find geological evidences of such a flood. Yet the thing, as described, is obviously impossible. It couldn’t rain enough to raise the waters of the earth to the point described in the legends of the flood.

“But there’s another factor. The earth has changed its poles. There’s abundant evidence that our north pole, so-called, was once the abode of tropical life, and that the climate changed overnight.

“There are mastodons frozen into the solid ice. They’ve been there for thousands of years. Their stomachs are filled with bulbs and foliage which were tropical in character. Yet their flesh is sufficiently well preserved so that it can be cooked and eaten.

“What does that mean? It means, that in the morning they were roaming about, eating their meal of tropical fruits. It means that by night they were dead and frozen stiff and have been frozen for thousands of years.

“The earth changed its poles. That changed the tides, caused old continents to fall, new ones to arise, and water came rushing in from the ocean. It’s only logical that such a phenomenon was accompanied by terrific rains as the warmer air became condensed in the colder climates which were created. That led to the belief that the flood was caused by rain. It wasn’t. The rain was merely a factor.

“The so-called flood was caused by a changing of the poles of the earth. The Biblical account, in the main, is entirely correct. Except that man, trusting to his limited powers of observation and the inadequate knowledge of the time, attributed the rise of water to the rain.

“Its the same form of reasoning that made you seek to ascribe this beginning of the rise of waters to the breaking of a dam.”

The man ceased speaking, looked from face to face.

“But,” said the girl, “is this another flood? I thought there wouldn’t be any more...”

The scientist laughed.

“This isn’t a flood. It is merely a changing of the earth’s poles. You might as well be philosophic about it. Nature always progresses. She does that by a series of wave motions. She builds, she sustains, and she destroys, and she rebuilds upon the ruins of destruction. That is the law of progress.”

The building gave another shiver.

Phil took the girl’s arm.

“At least,” he said, “we can fight for our lives. We’ll go down to the level of the flood. Then when the building starts to fall we can jump into the water.”

The scientist laughed.

“And when you’re in the water, what then?”

Phil Bregg clamped his bronzed jaw.

“We’ll keep on fighting,” he said. “If Nature wants to destroy me she’s probably strong enough to win out in a fight, but nobody can ever say I was a quitter.”

He became aware that the scientist was contemplating him with dreamy eyes, eyes that were filmed with thought.

“Every time there’s been a destruction on a grand scale,” he said, “Nature has saved a few of the species. That’s the attitude that’s in harmony with evolution, young man, and I think I’ll just tag along with you, as long as I have the power to function on this plane of consciousness; it’ll be interesting to see just what Nature does to you.

“Wait just a minute until I get an emergency package I’ve had prepared for just such a contingency.”

And he jog-trotted into the penthouse.

The girl shuddered.

Phil Bregg looked at the girl, and grinned.

“It seems too cruel... too awful. Think of it, a whole city!”

Phil shook his head, solemnly.

“Not a whole city,” he said, “a whole world!”

Whatever else he might have said was checked by the arrival of the man, carrying a canvas sack, slung over his shoulder with a rope.

Phil Bregg looked at the man’s slight figure, at the bulging sack, and grinned.

“Pard,” he said, “you may be a shark on this scientific stuff but there’s a lot about packing things that you don’t know. Here, let me show you how we pack a bedroll on a shoulder pack when we’re out deer hunting, and have to leave the broncs and pack into a country where there ain’t any water.”

He took it from the man’s shoulder, made a few swift motions, slung the ropes into a sort of harness, slipped the sack to his own broad back.

“There you are,” he said. “See how she rides? Right close to the back. That keeps you from fighting balance all the time—”

His words were swallowed in a terrific roar. The air seemed filled with noise, and the skyscraper upon whose summit they stood swayed drunkenly, like a reed in a breeze.

They fought to keep their balance.

“Another skyscraper down,” said Phil grimly.

The scientist pointed.

“The skyline,” he said, “is changing!”

And it was obviously true. From where they stood they could see the older towers of the lofty buildings of the downtown section, and they were falling like trees before a giant gale. Here and there were buildings cocked over at a dangerous angle, yet apparently motionless. But even as they looked, their eyes beheld two buildings toppling over simultaneously.

“The ones down on the lower ground are going first. The ocean’s sweeping away the foundations,” said the scientist. “It is all as I predicted. And do you know, they actually held me under observation in the psychopathic ward because I had the temerity to make such a prediction.

“In the face of the unmistakable evidences that such a thing had happened in the past, the absolute assurance that it was bound to happen in the future, the indisputable evidence that Nature destroys the old before she starts to build the new, mere men, serene in their fancied security, contemplated imprisoning me because I dared to see the truth. They’d have done it, too, if they hadn’t finally decided I was ‘harmless,’ something to be laughed at.

“Laughed at! And because I dared to read aright the printed page of the book of nature that was spread out where all might see it!

“I talked to them of the procession of the equinoxes. I spoke to them of the gradual shifting of the poles, of the variation of Polaris. I spoke to them of changing stresses, of unstable equilibriums, and they laughed. Damn them, let them laugh now!”

Phil tapped him on the shoulder.

The man shook his shoulder free of Phil’s hand.

“I know what’s going to happen. I’ll stay here and die contented, at least being privileged to watch a part of the destruction I predicted!”

The girl spoke then.

“No, we can’t leave you here, and my friend has all your emergency equipment. You’d better follow.”

That clinched the argument. He came at their heels without further comment.

Chapter 3 Into the Water

Phil Bregg led the way, setting a pace down the winding stairways that taxed them to keep up. From time to time, as they plunged downward, the building gave little premonitory shivers of a fate that could not long be delayed.

“The beginning of earthquakes,” said the man in the rear. “As the new stresses and gravitational pulls start in, there will be increased disturbances. And it’s going to be interesting to see whether the orbit of the moon is going to be affected. If it isn’t, there’ll be cross tidal influences which’ll twist the very structure of the earth. In fact, there’s a law of tidal limits within which tides destroy the substance. Take, for instance, the question of the asteroids. There’s a very good chance that some tidal...”

The words were drowned out as the whole building swayed drunkenly upon its foundations, then swung gradually, but definitely out of the perpendicular, shivered, and remained stationary again.

“Hurry!” screamed the girl.

Phil Bregg, accustomed to dangers, having the ability to adjust himself rapidly to new emergencies, turned to grin at her reassuringly.

“That’s all right. Going down’s faster than coming up. We’re making pretty fair progress right now. It won’t be long until we reach the water level.”

It was hard to make any progress now. The stairways were smooth marble, and they were inclined at an angle. But the trio fought their way down, making the best speed they could, waiting momentarily for the building to come crashing down about them.

Only once did they encounter any other people. That was a man who was running down one of the corridors. He cried out some unintelligible comment to them, but they could not understand, nor did they dare to wait.

They had long since lost track of floors. Their knees ached with the effort of descending, keeping their balance on the slanting steps. They had no idea whether there were two floors or twenty below them, whether the water was rising or falling.

And, abruptly, as they rounded a corner in the sloping stairway, emerged upon a slanting corridor, they came to the water level.

Windows at the end of the hall were smashed in by the force of the water and the drifting debris which dotted the current. The water was muddy, turbulent, a sea of dancing objects. Here and there people drifted by, clinging to floating objects, or fighting their way in frantic strokes toward some building which seemed to offer a place of refuge.

“What floor is it?” asked the man.

“The eighth, I think,” said the girl.

Suddenly Phil checked himself with an exclamation of astonishment.

“Look!” he said.

There was a door sagging open. The glass which composed the upper half had been broken. A big plate glass window in one side had cracked, and a big piece had dropped out of the center, which held a sign.

That sign read:

And back of the plate glass, held in position on wooden supports, looking neatly trim and seaworthy, was a big motor cruiser with a cabin and a flight of mahogany stairs leading up from the floor to the hull.

“Let’s get in there!” said Phil.

The girl shook her head.

“We could never get it out.”

“It weighs a terrific amount,” said the scientist, “but, wait a minute. There’s a chance! Look here!”

The building was leaning drunkenly. The water was rising steadily, and a part of the inclined floor was already slopping with little wavelets that were seeping in through the cracked partitions.

“If we had that partition out of the way, and...”

As he spoke, the building shivered again. The floor rocked. The cruiser slipped from its wooden supports. The mahogany stairway crashed into splinters. The cruiser careened over on its side, then began to slip down the wet floor.

“Out of the way!” yelled Phil.

They fought to one side.

The cruiser skidded down the slope of the wet floor, hit the frosted glass and mahogany partition marked in gilt letters with the words:

Those partitions suddenly dissolved in a mass of splinters and a shower of broken glass. The sliding cruiser, moving majestically down the wet incline into deeper water, as though she were being launched down greased skids, came to rest against the far wall of the building, floating calmly upon a level keel, in water which was some six or eight feet deep.

“Regular launching,” said Phil. “Personally, I consider that an omen. That’s the outer wall. If, we could only get her through there she’s ready for sea.”

“Wait,” said the scientist. “There’s just a chance! If we could tow her over to that other end, and then had the partitions out between those two big windows, she’d just about go through. There’s some dynamite in that sack of emergency equipment. Here, let me have it. I may bring the building down about us, but I’ll make a hole right enough.”

He tore at the sack with eager fingers.

Once his feet slipped on the wet floor, and he fell, but he scrambled up, dragged an oiled silk container out of the sack, opened it.

“Dynamite,” he said, “and there’s a bit of a more powerful explosive, something that’s the last word in scientific achievement. Here, let me get over there.”

He fought his way toward the side of the building, busied himself there for a few moments, then gave an exclamation of disappointment.

“Matches!” he said. “Of course I had to forget them. Those in my pocket are wet.”

Phil laughed.

“Well, that’s a habit of the cow country that’s hard to get away from. I’ve got a waterproof match box in my pocket. Here they are, catch!”

He tossed over the match box. The little man caught it with eager hands. There was the scrape of a match, and then the sputter of flame and a hissing steam of thin blue smoke.

He was scrambling toward them.

“Quick!” he said. “Out of the way!”

They got out into the outer corridor. The explosion came almost at once, a lightning quick smash of dry sound that was like the explosion of smokeless powder in a modern cannon.

They were impatient, eager in their desire to see what had happened. Of a sudden that cruiser, floating so serenely upon the water, seemed a thing of refuge, something of permanent stability in this world which had suddenly swung over on a slope, where skyscrapers careened drunkenly and crashed into showers of rock dust and twisted steel girders.

They found that the explosive had done its work. There was a great jagged hole in the building, against which the water lapped with gurgling noises.

“Now to get her out,” said Phil. “We’ll have to have power of some sort!”

But he had reckoned without the force of the current. Already an eddy had been created in the water, and the cruiser had swung broadside, the keel at the bow scraping along the tile floor of that which had been a display room.

“The first thing is to get aboard, anyway,” he said.

He took the girl’s arm, piloted her down the inclined floor to the side of the boat, found that the side of the deck was too far above water for him to reach.

“I’m giving you a boost!” he said. And he shifted his grip to her knees, gave her a heave, and sent her up to where she could scramble to the deck. “Now see if there’s a rope,” he called to her.

“One here,” she said.

“Okay, fasten one end and throw over the other end.”

She knotted the rope, flung it over.

“You and the emergency stuff next,” said Phil to the scientist, and he grasped him, swung him out into the water, sent him up the rope, flung up the sack, grasped the end of the rope himself, pulled himself to the deck.

“Well, well, here’s a boat hook, all lashed into place, and there’s a little boat with some oars, all the comforts of home!” he laughed. “I took a cruise once, down the coast of Mexico. Some of the other fellows got seasick, but I didn’t. It was a small yacht, and the motion was just like riding a bucking bronco. I was used to it.”

And he untied the boat hook, an affair of mahogany and polished brass. “All spiffy,” he said. “Well, folks, here we go out to sea!”

And he caught the boat hook about one of the jagged girders of twisted steel, and leaned his weight against it. Slowly, the boat swung from the eddy which was circling in the half-submerged room, and slid its bow out to the opening.

Almost at once the current caught them, whipped the bow of the boat around. The stern smashed against the side of the building with a terrific jar. The impact knocked Phil from his feet.

He rolled over, grasped at a handhold, gave an exclamation of dismay. He felt sure the shell of the craft would be crushed.

But she was strongly built, the pride of the corporation that had kept her on display, and her hull withstood the strain. She lurched over at an angle, and the water rushed up the hull, then she won free, and they found themselves out in the center of the stream of water, rushing forward, buildings slipping astern.

“We’ve got to find some way of steering her,” yelled Phil. “If the current throws us against one of those buildings we’ll be smashed to splinters. Can we start the motor?”

The scientist made no reply. He was too busy taking observations.

It was the girl, standing in the bow, who screamed the warning. The boat was swinging in toward the ruins of a collapsed structure. Just ahead of it a new building was in the course of construction, and the steel girders, thrust up through the black waters, were like teeth of disaster, thrust up to receive the boat.

In the office where it had been on display the boat seemed a massive thing. Out here in the swirling waters it seemed like a toy.

Phil Bregg ran forward.

“How much rope is there?” he asked.

“A whole coil of the light rope. Then there’s a shorter length of the heavy rope.”

Phil nodded.

“I’ll show you how we handle charging steers in the cattle country when we get a loop on ’em.” he said.

His bronzed hands flashed swiftly through the making of knots. He swung the rope around his head, let the coil gain momentum, and swung the loop out, straight and true.

It settled over the top of one of the girders. Phil swung a few swift dally turns around the bitts in the bow, shouted to the girl to get the heavier rope ready.

Then the rope tautened, the craft shifted, swung broadside, and the rope became as taut as a bowstring.

Phil eased the strain by letting the rope slip slightly over the bitts, then, when he had lessened the shock, made a reversed loop, holding the line firm.

The current boiled past the bow. The line hummed with the strain.

“Maybe we can hold it here, for a while, anyway. The heavy rope will serve when we can get a chance to drop it over. There’s a winch here, and I can probably run the boat in closer.”

He turned to look behind him, and grinned, the sort of a grin that an outdoor man gives when he realizes he is facing grave danger.

“Looks like we’ve got to stay right here. If we break loose we’re gone!”

And he pointed to a place where a building had collapsed, forming an obstruction in the current. The water fell over this like a dam, sucked in great whirlpools which gave forth an ever increasing roar.

A small boat, sucked into those whirlpools, would be capsized or crushed against the obstruction, and those who were thrown into the current would be hurtled downward.

It was at that moment that the scientist came toward them.

“The forces of stress equalization are at work now,” he observed. “You doubtless notice the peculiar agitation of the water, the waving of the buildings... Ah, there goes our skyscraper! An earthquake of increasing violence is rocking the soil.”

The skyscraper in which they had taken refuge came down with a roar, and then it seemed as though the boat was shaken as a rat is shaken by a terrier. It quivered, rocked, creaked. And the skyline flattened as by magic. Buildings came down with an accompaniment of sound which ceased to be a separate, distinguishable sound, but was a vast cadence of destruction, a sullen roar of terrific forces reducing the works of man to dust.

Where one had seen the more or less ruined skyline of a city, there was now only a turbulent, quake-shaken sea of heaving water and plunging debris.

And on the horizon loomed a vast wave, a great sea with sloping sides, a mighty wall of water that came surging toward them.

“Quick,” yelled Phil, “down in the cabin and close everything. It’s our only chance.”

And he pushed at the girl and the scientist, got them down the little companionway into the snug cabin. He followed, closed the doors, shutting out a part of the undertone of sound which filled the air.

The interior was littered with advertising matter relating to the seaworthy qualities of the little craft, the completeness of the equipment which was furnished with it.

A sign, scrolled in fancy lettering, carried the slogan of the company: “Craft that are ready to cruise.”

“Maybe there’s some gasoline in the—”

Phil had no chance to finish. The boat swung. There was a jar as the mooring line parted, and then they were thrust upward, and upward. The boat veered, rolled, and went over and over like a chip of wood in a mill race. Everything that was loose in the cabin was plunged about. There was no keeping one’s feet.

Phil felt his head bang against the cooking stove, struggled to right himself, and his feet went out from under him. His head slammed against the floor. The craft rolled over and over, and Phil lost consciousness.

Chapter 4 Rushing— Where?

He was aware of a slight nausea, of a splitting headache. He could hear voices that impinged upon his consciousness without carrying meaning. Slowly, bit by bit, he began to remember where he was. He remembered the disaster, the earthquake, that last wild rush of the tidal wave.

The words ceased to be mere sounds, and carried intelligence to his brain.

“...must be a fire.”

It was the girl who spoke.

“I should say it was a volcano, well away from us. There will probably be others,” came from the scientist.

Phil sat up, and became conscious of a more or less violent rocking. The interior of the boat was almost dark. It was visible in a peculiar red half-light that showed objects in a vague, unnatural manner.

“Hello,” said Phil, conscious of the throbbing in his head.

They came toward him, looks of concern on their faces.

“Are you all right?”

“Right as a rivet,” said Phil. “What happened?”

“We went over and over. We all got pretty badly shaken. You got a blow on the head and have been unconscious for several hours. The sky’s overcast, both with clouds and some sort of a dust. There’s an illumination that makes everything seem reddish, that Professor Parker thinks is from a volcano.”

Phil nodded.

“So you’re Professor Parker. I’m Phil Bregg of Fairbanks.”

He glanced at the girl.

“I’m Stella Ranson,” she said “and I was employed as a secretary. I guess that’s all over now. Ugh!” and she shuddered.

Phil found that they had placed him on one of the little berths in the cabin. He swung his feet over.

“Well, we seem to be on an even keel now. What can I do to help — anything?”

The man who had been introduced as Professor Parker shook his head.

“The sea’s comparatively calm. We have reason to believe there are earthquakes going on, probably quakes of considerable magnitude. We have found there is some gasoline in the fuel tanks, and a little kerosene in the stove and storage tanks. But we have no reason to waste any of it by starting the motor. So we’re waiting. There is some motion, but it’s not at all violent, and there’s no wind to speak of. The rain’s keeping up. You can hear it on the deck.”

And Phil became conscious of an undertone of steady drumming which now impressed his senses as the beat of rain.

“Well,” Phil grinned, “things could have been worse. When do we eat, if at all?”

“There’s some cold concentrated rations in the emergency kit,” said Parker. “We were just discussing trying a fire in the kerosene cook stove and warming up some of the concentrated soup. We’ll have to go pretty light on rations for a while, until we... er... experience a change.”

“Drinking water?”

“The boat seems to have been fairly well supplied,” said Parker. “Evidently they used her as a sort of a closing room where they could get a customer, cook a demonstration meal, and close the order.”

“Then there must be some canned goods or something stored in her.”

“We haven’t found any as yet. There are cooking utensils, however.”

Phil grinned at them.

“Find me a little flour, bacon and some baking powder, and I can give you some real chow,” he said.

There was a heartiness about his voice, an enthusiasm in his manner which radiated to his listeners. Despite the blow he had suffered, Phil was a well built, husky man of the outdoors, and he was accustomed to roughing it.

Parker grinned; the girl smiled.

“Well,” she said, “eat, drink and be merry, because tomorrow...”

And her voice trailed off into silence as she realized the deadly aptness of the familiar saying.

Professor Parker made a remark to fill in the sudden silence.

“I don’t want you folks to get a mistaken impression about me. My title of ‘professor’ is merely a courtesy title. In fact, it has been applied in recent years more in a spirit of derision.”

He was a small wisp of a man, pathetically earnest, with eyes that were intelligent, yet washed out in expression. Phil noticed that he appealed to the motherly impulses of Stella Ranson, those maternal instincts with which every woman is endowed, be she an infant or a grandmother.

“Well, I don’t know why anyone should laugh at you!” exclaimed Stella, jumping to his defense. “You’ve been right, and it was horrid of the newspapers to give you the razz that way!”

Phil nodded his assent. “Now you are talkin’, ma’am. And, if you’ll get out that soup powder, professor, I’ll get the fire going, and then I’ll be having a look around. There are lots of trick storage spaces on these yachts, and I may run onto a bit of flour yet.”

And he turned to the stove, primed it, pumped up the pressure tank, and had a fire going within a short time. Then he started an exploring expedition and, to his delight, he found that the couple had entirely overlooked a storage space in a closet back of the little sink.

This closet had a label on the inner, side of the door:

“Balanced Ration for a Six Weeks’ Cruise — Suggested Supplies.”

Phil grinned at them.

“Probably their idea of a six weeks’ cruise when they were showing the ample storage space in the boat didn’t agree with a healthy cowpuncher’s idea of food; but it’ll last for a while.” And he set about the preparation of a camp meal.

The girl watched him with wistful eyes.

“It must be great to live in the open! Lord, how I hate office buildings and apartments! I’d like to live for a while right out in the open.”

Phil grinned, “Why don’t you?”

“I’m chained to an office job, and...”

And with an abrupt little gasp, she realized that the office and the apartment were no more; that she was having her wish for a life in the open.

For a second there was the hint of panic in her eyes, and then she laughed, a throaty little laugh.

“To-morrow,” she said, “I’ll take charge of the cooking. I’ve done quite a bit of it. But I did want to see some of your camp cooking tonight.”

Phil Bregg chuckled.

“Maybe one meal of my cooking’ll do what the flood didn’t do, and put you under!”

And he rolled up his sleeves, looked around him. “Thunder!” he said. “Here I am wondering about fresh water for washing, and it’s raining cloudbursts outside. Let’s set some buckets and see that the tanks are filled up. There must be quite a water storage system here if they advertise the capacity of the boat for a six weeks’ cruise!”

“Here,” she said, “you take the buckets and fill the tanks. I’ll do this and you can give us a camp meal some other time.”

And she stepped to the stove, took over the duties of chef, while Bregg and Parker fought their way out into the rain, set buckets where they would catch rain water, used some canvas coverings they found to act as funnels, and gradually filled the tanks.

The girl called them to a steaming, savory repast, and Phil, accustomed to camp fare, served any old way by a masculine cook of rough and ready attainments, felt suddenly intimate and homelike as he saw the table, spread with a clean cloth, and Stella Ranson’s eyes smiling at him. But he had a healthy appetite, and he made a sufficient dent in the food to make him realize that the supply he had discovered in the cupboard would last far short of six weeks unless he curbed his hunger.

They resumed their water carrying after the meal. Phil, working on the outside, became soaked to the skin. But the water tanks were filling, and the boat seemed as dry as a chip, a seaworthy little craft.

There was very little wave motion, and Phil called the attention of the professor to that fact.

“Yes,” said Professor Parker, “this is not the sea proper. As nearly as I can determine, we are being swept in by the inrush of a body of water. Our direction is northwesterly, or it would have been northwesterly under our old compass. I don’t know what is happening now. The compass keeps veering, and I’m satisfied it is due to a magnetic disturbance rather than a change in our course.

“A continuation of our progress will take us to higher land, if the land is undisturbed. But we must remember that terrific tides and currents are being set up. It is possible we are ‘drifting’ on a tide that is traveling at a rate of speed which would be incredible were not the earth toppling on its axis.”

“You think it is?” asked Phil.

The light of fanaticism came into the washed-out eyes of the little man. “I know it is!” he said. “I knew it would happen, I predicted it, and I was ridiculed. They laughed at me simply because their scientific ideas, which were all founded upon terrestrial stability, didn’t coincide with mine.”

Phil nodded. “What do we do now, keep a watch?”

Professor Parker shrugged his shoulders.

“It won’t do any good. But I want to make some calculations and check over certain data I’ve gathered. There’s no reason why you two shouldn’t sleep. Then I’ll wake you up if anything happens.”

Phil regarded his wet clothes.

“That’s okay,” he said. “There’s a stateroom forward. Miss Ranson can take that. I’ll bunk down here in the main cabin and give these clothes a chance to dry.”

The girl nodded, crossed to Professor Parker. “You’ll call me if anything happens?”

He nodded.

“And promise you won’t work too hard?”

He smiled up at her.

“Yes, I will. If you’ll promise to sleep.”

“I’ll try,” she said.

Phil wished her good night, caught the wistful light in her eyes, saw her lips smile.

“As for you,” she said, her lips smiling, “you certainly made quite a pick-up in the subway! I’m afraid I just wished myself off on you as a nuisance.”

Phil gasped. “If you only knew...”

But she gently closed the door of the cabin.

“Don’t try to tell me,” she called. “Go to sleep.”

Phil Bregg removed his soggy garments.

“A wonderful girl!” he said to Professor Parker.

But the scientist didn’t hear him. He was bent over the table, illuminated by the electric light which was running from the yacht’s storage battery, and his fingers were dashing off figures on a sheet of paper, while his eyes had lost their washed-out appearance and sparkled with excitement.

Phil felt instant drowsiness gripping him as he lay back on the berth and pulled one of the blankets over him. Outside, the rain pelted down on the roof of their little craft, and the hypnotic effect lulled him into almost instantaneous slumber.

He felt, during the night, that he was riding a bronco in a rodeo, that the horse was taking great leaps that took him entirely over the grandstand on the first jump. That the second jump went over a range of mountains, and the higher atmosphere roared past them with a sound as of thunder.

There followed third and fourth leaps, and then a steady rhythm of roaring noise that filled the air.

Gradually the roaring subsided, and he felt the strange steed he rode coming down to earth. He breathed a sigh of relief, but there was a vague wonder in his mind as to whether he hadn’t “pulled leather” on one of those long first leaps.

But he was too drowsy to worry, and he went off to sleep again.

He awoke to find his shoulder being shaken, and his eyes opened to find daylight and the face of the professor.

Phil sat upright instantly.

“You were going to call me,” he said, “and let me stand watch!”

Professor Parker’s eyes were reddened slightly, and his face showed lines of strain, but he seemed filled with enthusiasm and strength.

“There was nothing you could have done,” he said. “And the phenomena wouldn’t have interested you. On the other hand I wouldn’t have missed them for anything.

“During the night a series of terrific tidal waves swept us on our course with a speed that I don’t even dare to contemplate. The ocean seems to be rushing somewhere with a force and velocity which is absolutely unprecedented.

“What I am afraid of is that we may get into some huge vortex and be sucked down. I want to be able to steer clear of it if possible, and there’s a little wind. Do you suppose we could set a sail?”

“It isn’t a sailboat. It’s a motor cruiser,” said Phil, “but we might be able to get something on her that’d give us a chance to steer a bit, not to go any place, but to keep her pointed. Where’s Miss Ranson?”

“Asleep. She came out about midnight, or what would have been midnight, and said she hadn’t slept much. But she went back, and I think she’s asleep. It’s only four o’clock in the morning now, but the sun’s up.”

Phil looked out of the porthole.

“Why, it’s quit raining!”

“Yes. It’s been clear for three hours. I’ve been trying to check our progress by the stars, but they’ve changed position so rapidly I came to the conclusion the earth was still spinning.

“However, about half an hour ago it steadied down, and the course of the sun seems quite normal, around a plane which would indicate we are in the southern hemisphere, and, I should say, not a great distance from the new temperate zone. We may find the climate quite delightful.”

Phil Bregg reached for his clothes, kicked off the blanket.

“Maybe we’ll find a new continent or something.”

The tone of the scientist was dry.

“Yes,” he said, “maybe!”

In that moment Phil realized how utterly hopeless the man considered their plight. He was not expecting to live long, this strange man who had been predicting the catastrophe for years, but he was putting in every minute taking astronomical observations, checking data.

Phil grinned.

“How about breakfast?” he asked. Professor Parker frowned.

“I am afraid,” he said, “that we will have to regulate the rapidity with which we consume our somewhat meager stock of rations. Now it is obvious that—”

The door of the little stateroom opened, and Stella Ranson stood on the threshold, smiling at them. She looked fresh as some morning flower glinting dew encrusted petals in the sunlight.

“Good morning, everybody; when do we eat?”

“Come on in and act as reinforcements,” grinned Phil. “The professor doesn’t need much food, and he’s getting the idea that we should go on a diet or something. Now let’s get this thing organized, professor. You act as chief navigator and collector of data. Miss Ranson can take charge of the interior, and I’ll handle all the rough work and keep the crowd in grub. What do you say?”

“How can you keep us supplied with food when there is no food to be had?” asked the professor. “The world is devoid of life. There isn’t so much as a duck within sight, and, if there were, we are without means to reduce it to food.”

Phil grinned.

“You don’t know me. I’ve never gone hungry for very long yet, and I’ve been in some mighty tough country. Once down in Death Valley the boys thought they had me stumped, but I fooled ’em by feeding ’em coyote meat and telling ’em it was jackrabbit meat I’d cut off the bone.”

Professor Parker shook his head, unsmilingly.

“Oh, well,” grinned Phil, “I’m going to rig a sail. You can argue with Miss Stella. I think she’ll do more to convince you.”

And Phil went up on deck to survey the mast, figure on a sail. The sunlight felt mellow and warm, and he stretched his arms, took a deep inhalation of the pure air, and then, as his eyes swept the horizon, suddenly blinked, rubbed his hand over his eyes, and shouted down the companionway.

“Hey, there. Here’s land!”

Chapter 5 A Tree-Top Landing

No storm-tossed mariners, lost in an uncharted sea, ever greeted the cry with more enthusiasm. They might have been at sea for weeks instead of hours, the way they came swarming up the stairs. Even Professor Parker’s face was lit with joy, and with a vast relief.

The upthrust mountain which reared above the ocean was close enough to show the fronds of foliage, the long leaves of palms that were like banana palms.

“Thought you said we were in the temperate zone,” said Phil. “This looks like what my geography said the South Sea Islands looked like.”

The scientist nodded.

“Quite right. I said we were in the new temperate zone. I didn’t say anything about what zone it had been.”

“But,” protested the girl, “how could we have left New York yesterday and been swept down into the tropics?”

The professor grinned.

“That’s the point. We weren’t. The tropics were swept up to us. Take a bowl of water, put a match in it, turn the bowl. The match doesn’t turn. That’s because the water doesn’t turn in the bowl. There isn’t enough friction between the glass and the water to turn the bowl and its contents as a unit.

“To a more limited extent that’s true of the earth, although I’ve had trouble getting my scientific friends to believe it. Simply because the water hasn’t lagged behind in the daily rotation of the globe is no sign that it wouldn’t lag if the motion were changed.

“The earth has been rotating in one way for millions of years, and the water has fallen into step, so to speak. Now look at that island. See how rapidly it’s going past. Looks like we’re moving at a terrific speed, but the earth is evidently swinging true on its new orbit.

“However, I look for the motion of the water to cease shortly. There should be a backwash which will do much to stem the force of the rushing water... Unless I’m mistaken, here it comes. Look there to the south. Isn’t that a wall of water? Sure it is, a massive ground swell. It’s moving rapidly. We must be in a very deep section of the ocean, or it would be breaking on top.

“Let’s get down and close everything tightly.”

“Judas Priest!” groaned Phil. “Have I got to ride some more bucking broncos?”

“Quite probably,” was the dry retort, “you’ll have worse experiences than riding high tidal waves, my young, impatient, and impetuous friend!”

They tumbled back down the companionway again, battened everything down. The wave struck them before they were aware of it. They were swung up, up, up, and then down, then up again on a long swell, then down.

Then there was a roar and a smaller wave, the crest curling with foam, came at them. The roar sounded like a cataract.

“We’ll go over sure,” said Phil, but he spoke with a grin. Fate had handed him so many buffets of late that he was beginning to take it all as a joke.

The wave hit them, but the little craft, angling up the foaming crest, kept on its keel, and the top of the wave went boiling by, leaving them rocking in a backwash.

“Now,” said Professor Parker, “that should mark the beginning of some turbulent water, with, perhaps, a storm. Let’s see where our land is.”

And he thrust a cautious head through the companionway, suddenly ducked down.

“It’s right on us!” he yelled.

Phil jumped up, and was thrown from his feet by a jar that shivered the boat throughout its length. Then there was a scraping sound, and the crash of splintering wood.

The boat listed over at a sharp angle, held for a moment, then dropped abruptly to the tune of more splintering noises. Phil’s feet skidded out from under him. He flung up an arm to protect his head, and came to a stop on the berth where he had spent the night. A moment later Stella Ranson catapulted into him, breaking the force of her fall by his arms, which caught her in a steady firm grip.

“Easy all,” said Phil. “Where’s the professor? This looks like the end of the boat. All that splintering must have meant the timbers are crushed to smithereens!”

He scrambled to his feet, bracing himself, holding the girl against the sharp incline of the deck.

“Great heavens, we’re up a tree,” he said.

The voice of the scientist came from one side of the cabin where his watery eyes were plastered up against a porthole, surveying the countryside.

“We are not only up a tree,” he said, “but we seem to be pretty well lodged there. We rode in on the crest of a wave which deposited us in the branches of this tree. I do not know the species, but it seems to be something like a mahogany tree. Undoubtedly, it is a tropical tree.

“We have sustained injuries to our boat, and the wave is quite likely to be succeeded by other waves. There’s higher ground up the slope of this mountain, and I suggest we make for it without delay.”

Phil grinned at the girl.

“Translated,” he said, “that means we’ve got the only tree-climbing boat in the world, and that we’d better beat it while the beating’s good. Let’s get that rope and put some knots in it. Then we can lower down our blankets and provisions. Personally, I’m a great believer in having all the comforts.”

They fought their way to the outer deck of the boat, found that a jagged branch was stuck through the hull, that the boat would not float without extensive repairs first being made. There followed a period of activity, during which they knotted a rope, lowered down bundles of blankets and provisions.

Finally, they were safe on the ground, the boat marooned high in the tree, more than twenty feet above the ground. The waters had receded and roared a sullen, although diminutive surf, some twenty yards away from the roots of the tree.

“Well,” said Phil, “I always hated to carry camp stuff on my back, but we can’t go hungry, so here’s where I start. This is entirely in my department. I’ll make a couple of trips with the heavier stuff and then we’ll be established in camp.”

The other two protested, but Phil adhered to his statement, refusing to allow them to participate in the work of carrying the camp equipment up the slope. He divided it into two huge bundles, so heavy that neither the scientist nor the woman could lift them from the ground. Yet Phil swung one of the big rolls to his shoulder, and led the way up the slope.

They found a trail which Phil pronounced to be a game trail, although there was no sign of game. They followed this trail through a tangle of thick foliage to a ridge, up the ridge to a little shelf where a tree and an overhanging rock furnished shelter.

Here they made camp, some three hundred feet above the level of the ocean. Phil suggested they go higher, but the scientist, taking observations by holding his small sextant on the sun, insisted that the world had finished its weird toppling. He was inclined to think the poles had changed positions by a long swing of the globe, and that a new equilibrium had been established.

While he could make no accurate calculations in advance of knowledge of where the island was upon which they had effected a landing, he was inclined to think that the site of the new north pole was somewhere in the vicinity of England.

But all was mere conjecture, and Phil Bregg was more interested in matters at hand than in abstract scientific problems.

He made a trip back to the boat, brought up the second bundle of provisions, blankets, tools which he had taken from the yacht, and started making a camp with a dexterity which brought forth little exclamations of admiration from the girl, and approving nods from the scientist.

“Now,” said Phil, “what we need is a little more knowledge of what sort of a place we’re in, and maybe some fresh meat. That means weapons. I’ve got a hand-ax, and I can sharpen up a sort of Indian spear and harden the point in the fire. That might net us a hog, or maybe a rabbit, if they have rabbits.

“But I saw some hog tracks on that trail, and while the upheaval may have washed some of them away, and may have frightened the balance of them into cover, I’ll see what can be done.”

He built a fire, cut down a hardwood sapling, trimmed it into a pointed spear, hardened the point in the fire, Indian fashion, and grinned at his audience.

“Here’s where the hunting instinct comes in, and where the knowledge of reading trail I’ve picked up is going to help. You folks just promise me you’ll stay here. I’ll scout around. It’s pretty hard to go out in a strange country where there’s a heavy growth of brush and timber, and find your way back, unless you’re accustomed to it. So don’t leave the place.

“I’ll be back inside of a couple of hours, and I may have game.”

The girl promised to wait in camp. The scientist showed no disposition to leave. He was propped with his back against a stone, a pencil and notebook in his hands, jotting down impressions.

“And only put dry wood on that fire,” warned Phil.

“Why?” asked the girl.

“Wet wood makes a smoke.”

“But don’t we want to make a smoke? Shouldn’t we signal?”

Professor Parker favored her with a peculiar glance.

“To whom,” he asked, “did you contemplate sending a signal?”

And, as realization of their predicament thrust itself once more upon the girl’s consciousness, Phil softened the blow for her with a grin and a joking remark.

“I want to save the smoke to cure a ham I’m going to bring in,” and he swung the spear into position, and started up the slope, climbing steadily, yet stealthily.

He reached the summit of the peak within a matter of fifteen minutes, and was able to confirm his original impression that they were on an island. It was not over two miles broad, but seemed to stretch for eight or ten miles in a general easterly direction. It was a tumbled mass of jagged crests and Phil strongly suspected that what he was seeing as an island was merely the top of a high mountain range which had been entirely above water before the world had swung over in its change of poles.

He followed a game trail, saw fresh pig tracks, heard a rustle in the brush. A little darting streak of color rushed across the trail, and Phil flung his spear and missed.

He chuckled.

“Better have used a rope,” he said to himself, and went after his spear.

He had not yet reached it when he heard a deep-throated grunt behind him, the swift patter of hoofed feet on the trail. He sent a swift glance over his shoulder, and saw a wild boar, little eyes red with fury, curved tusks champing wickedly, charging at him. The boar was very high of shoulder, very heavy of neck, long of head and tusk. And it was savage beyond description.

Phil made one wild leap for his spear, caught it up, tried to whirl.

The boar was on him before he had a chance to swing the spear around so the sharpened end faced the charging animal. But he did manage to make a swift, vicious thrust with the butt end. The wood caught the animal flush on the tender end of the nose, deflected him in his charge, sent him rushing past, knocking the spear from Phil’s hand, throwing Phil, himself, off balance.

But Phil recovered, grabbed at the spear again, waited for the animal to turn.

The boar, however, seemed to have had enough. He swung from the path into the thick foliage and vanished from sight, although the branches continued to sway and crack for some seconds after Phil had lost sight of him.

Phil gripped the handle of his spear, surveyed a skinned knuckle, and grinned.

“Well,” he said to himself, “that’s the first lesson. Hang on to your weapons. That was a nice ham that went away, although he might have been a bit tough, at that.”

He was commencing to enjoy himself. Being out in the open, with nothing but his hands and a sharpened spear of hardwood with a fire hardened point, called for his knowledge of woodcraft, made him feel the thrill of the hunter.

He took careful marks so that he would have no difficulty in returning to the proper peak when he was ready to come back. Those landmarks were the significant ones which would have been overlooked by an amateur woodsman, yet which would be always visible from any direction.

Phil found himself surveying his clothes, wondering if the girl knew how to sew. It began to look as though they would be forced to make clothes of skins, fashion a shelter, cache away food.

He saw that there were some species of fruits on the trees, and suddenly remembered that he was hungry. The fruit looked edible, and Phil picked a tree which was not so large but what he could climb it, leaned his spear against the bole, and started up.

He reached the top, pulled off some of the fruit that was soft enough to eat, sliced away a thick, green skin, and found that the interior was pink, slightly acid, rather sweetish. There were seeds in the interior as in a cantaloupe, and Phil scraped out the seeds, cut away slices of the thick fruit, and devoured them eagerly.

But his stomach craved meat, and he realized that it was the part of wisdom to conserve his reserve rations. Therefore, the situation called for a kill of some sort. So he started to slide down the tree.

He had reached a point in the lower branches some ten feet from the trail, and directly above it, when a very slight motion in the shadows attracted his attention.

He froze into instant immobility.

No one but a woodsman would have seen that flicker of moving shadow within shadow, but Phil had trained his senses until they were as alert as those of a wild animal, and he not only saw the motion, but he sensed the menace of it with some subtle sixth sense which placed him on his stomach along the overhanging limb.

A moment later the motion became substance. A dark-skinned man, naked save for a breech cloth which was wrapped about his hips and middle, emerged into the sunlight which patched the trail.

Chapter 6 Jungle Death

Phil saw the woolly head, the wide nostrils through which a piece of white bone had been thrust. He saw, also, that the man’s eyes were on the ground, that he was following trail, and realized, with a sudden thrill, that the trail he was following was Phil’s own shoeprints in the loamy soil.

The man carried a bow in his hand, an arrow ready on the string. There was a quiver over his shoulder, and in this quiver were some dozen arrows, their feathered tips showing as bits of gaudy color against the darkness of the foliage covered mountainside.

There could be no mistaking the menace of the man’s approach. It was the approach of a killer stalking his kill, of a hunter crawling up on his prey.

The bare feet of the savage made no sound upon the trail. His advance was like the advance of a dark cloud sliding across the blue sky, ominous, silent, deadly.

Phil realized the danger to the girl and the scientist. Unversed in woodcraft, they would fall easy prey to such prowling savages. It became imperative for Phil to ascertain whether the man was alone or whether he was but the outpost of a large force, scouting up the slope.

And the quick eyes of the savage would soon see the telltale tracks leading to the tree, the rough spear which was thrust against the bole. Phil had no doubt the arrows in the quiver were tipped with a deadly poison. The man had but to fling up his bow, send an arrow winging to its mark, and Phil Bregg would be killed as swiftly and mercilessly as one shoots a puma down from a tree.

There was but one thing to do — to steal a page from the hunting tactics of the puma himself, and Phil flattened himself on the limb, tensed his muscles.

The native came to the point where the tracks turned. He grunted his surprise, started to look up.

Phil dropped from the limb.

But the man-made shoes with which civilized peoples clothe themselves are far inferior to the sharp claws of a mountain lion, when it comes to jumping down from branches which overhang trails, and Phil’s feet, slipping from the smooth bark of the limb, threw him off balance, and made him bungle the noiseless efficiency of his spring.

He came through the air, arms and legs outspread, trying to imitate the lion, but resembling some huge bat. The native, moving with that swift coordination which characterizes those who have lived their lives in the wild, whether beast or man, jumped back and flung up his bow.

But Phil didn’t miss entirely. His clutching hand caught a tip of the bow as he went down, and jerked it from the hand of the naked savage. And Phil, remembering several occasions when he had been pitched from his saddle by the fall of a horse, managed to get his legs in under him by a convulsive motion of the stomach muscles.

He lit heavily, the bow flying to one side, the arrow flipping from the string.

The savage uttered a yell, and gave a leap forward.

Phil was still off balance.

He felt the impact of the brown flesh, the sudden tenseness of the iron-hard muscles as the man threw himself upon him, reaching for his throat.

Then Phil managed to get his shoulder under the savage’s stomach, got his heel dug into the loamy soil of the trail, and straightened, sending the savage up and off balance.

The man slipped to one side, recovered himself with catlike quickness, and leapt forward. His teeth had been filed to points, and now, as he leapt, his mouth was open, snarling like an animal. The lips were curled back, and the white of the filed teeth showed as a twin row of menace.

Phil Bregg knew something of the science of boxing, knew the deadly effect of a blow that is not delivered helter skelter, but is well timed.

Phil Bregg snapped his right for the jaw.

The gripping hands were almost at his throat when his blow, slipping under the naked, outstretched arm, crashed home on the button of the jaw.

As the blow struck, Phil lowered his shoulder, gave a follow-through which sent the savage’s head rocking back, lifted him from the heels of his feet, hurtled him through the air, smashed him down upon the dark soil of the tropical forest with a jar that shook the leaves of the trees, dislodged Phil’s spear, and sent it slithering down the side of the tree.

Phil jumped on the savage, wrested the quiver of arrows from his back. As he had expected, he found that the steel tips of the arrows were discolored by some dark substance which was undoubtedly a poisonous preparation.

The savage was unconscious, and seemed likely to remain unconscious for some time. Phil picked up the bow, tested the twang of the string between his thumb and forefinger. The bow was a powerful one, and the taut string gave forth a resonant note like the string of a violin.

Phil dragged the native away from the trail, covered the inert form over with some heavy leaves he cut from a low shrub with his pocket knife, possessed himself once more of his spear, and slung the quiver of poisoned arrows over his shoulder. Then he strung an arrow on the bow, ambushed himself back to a tree, and waited.

If there were more natives coming, Phil wanted to be in a position to attack upon terms which would give him something of a chance, even if it was a slender one. This, he realized, was no sporting event in which he should make of the conflict something of the nature of a game. This was a life and death struggle in which he must meet cunning with cunning, ferocity with ferocity, and win, not only for the sake of his own safety, but for the safety of the girl as well.

However, there seemed to be no more savages treading the trail. Phil heaved a sigh of relief. That meant this single native, probably on a hunting expedition, had come across the tracks of Phil’s boots in the soil, and had followed them, intent upon gathering a head for his collection, and without bothering to back-track to find out where the man had come from.

Phil stepped out from cover, uncertain as to whether to proceed with his explorations or to return to the camp and make certain that the others were safe.

He finally decided that the savage, upon regaining consciousness, would seek to follow his trail, and knew that if he left a plain trail back to the camp he would simply be bringing danger upon those whom he wished to protect.

So he started along the trail, running lightly upon the balls of his feet, the quiver thumping his back, the arrows rattling against the sides of the container. He wanted to find a stream of running water. If he could do that, he felt reasonably certain of his ability to shake off the man who would undoubtedly try to follow.

He found the stream in a little canon between two of the headlands. He turned, as though he were going downstream, and was careful to leave a track on the bank, showing the direction in which he had plunged into the water.

As soon as he was in the stream, however, he reversed his direction and waded up it until he found a rocky ledge upon which he could emerge without leaving any imprint.

He followed this ledge for several hundred yards, then found an overhanging tree from the branches of which there hung a green creeper. By taking hold of this creeper he managed to swing far out into the tangled mass of vegetation before he dropped.

He was satisfied that a single man, trying to follow his trail, would be baffled. A party of eight or ten, by dividing on either side of the stream, might be successful, but the lone savage, stalking him unaided, would be at a loss.

Phil fought his way through the dense tangle of vegetation, searching for a game trail by which he might make a more silent progress.

A slow sound, throbbing the air, keeping tempo with the pulse of his blood, suddenly impinged upon his consciousness. He became aware then that he had been hearing this sound for some time without taking conscious thought of it.

It was a sound which had started at so low a note that it had insinuated itself upon his senses with a gradual insidious approach that had made it seem a natural part of the physical environment, rather than something new and startling.

Once aware of it, he paused to listen. It was the throbbing of a drum. From the sound, it must be a distant drum, massive, resonant. The sound came from no particular place, seemed no louder in one quarter of the compass than in the others. Yet when he stopped to listen to it, when he took conscious note of its existence, the sound was sufficient in volume to dominate the whole island.

It was, he gathered, some master drum which was used to transmit signals. He had heard of such drums, had heard of messages which were transmitted by savage tribes with the speed of telegraphed news.

He tried to take note of the pulsations.

To his ear they seemed to be entirely alike, a monotone of rhythm that came and went, ebbed and flowed, swelled and died.

The drum rose louder and louder in its tone, then began to die away. The notes seemed to possess less volume. Then the beating became so low that it was hard for the senses to tell whether the impulses they detected came from the pound of the heart or the throbbing of the drum.

When Phil had about convinced himself that the sound had ceased entirely, the wind swung a little, and, for a moment, he could hear it again distinctly. Then the breeze ceased to rustle the leaves, and there was no more sound.

He was about to start forward when he heard another drum. This sound could be located. It was away off to the left. While it was deep in its tone, nevertheless there was not the heavy resonance about it that characterized the beating of that master drum.

More, he sensed at once that this drum was sending some message. There was a rapidity about the strokes, a variation in the periods of pulsation, which was at once apparent.

He tried to line up the sound accurately, and fancied that he had it pretty well located, when it ceased abruptly. There was none of the gradual tapering off into silence which had characterized the other sounds from the big drum. It was simply that the drum was beating with steady resonant volume at one moment, and at the next it had ceased.

Phil listened.

The silence of the tropical jungle hemmed him in.

Then he heard something else, a rapid pound, pound, pound, that seemed to jar the earth. He crouched down in the shadows, and waited. The pounding grew louder, kept the same rhythm. A dark shape, moving through the trees, became visible.

Phil saw it was a savage, naked except for the loin cloth, and that the man was running down some established trail. The sound of his bare feet thudding on the ground was the noise that Phil had heard, some little time before he glimpsed the runner, and that thudding of the feet continued some little time after the naked savage had vanished in the jungle growth.

Phil waited, aware now that he must move with caution. He was on an island that was peopled with a savage and warlike tribe. He had no weapons worthy of the name, no means of escape. And he had the responsibility of caring for two people, both of whom were utterly helpless as far as any actual ability to care for themselves against any such obstacles.

Phil decided that he would work his way back to the camp, taking care not to leave a trail that could be followed, warning the two that they must take no chances of showing themselves, getting them, perhaps, in a better place of concealment.

He started through the brush, realizing that the trail which the native had followed was but a short distance below him. Evidently that trail had crossed downstream, then zigzagged up on the side of the stream he had crossed.

He had not taken more than a single step when he heard the smaller drum again, volleying forth a message, and almost at once the big master drum started its deep-throated booming.

Phil, standing there, perspiring, alarmed, every sense alert, could not be certain, but he felt that the big drum was relaying the same message that had been received by the smaller drum, sending it booming forth to every part of the island.

For there could be no question now but what the big drum was conveying a message. The change in tempo of the throbbing sounds could be readily perceived.

Suddenly the noise of a rifle shot cracked out, and it was followed almost at once by two more shots.

The noise of the reports drowned, out the sound of the drums as they echoed from crag to crag.

Then, after the noise of the shots had died away, there sounded the noise of the big drum again, booming forth a series of repeated signals. There were three rapid beats, a delayed moment, then two slow beats, a pause, and then one single booming beat of noise. Following that was silence, a silence which lasted for several seconds. Then the big drum repeated the signal.

Phil listened to the repetition of that signal for several minutes, and came to the conclusion, without having any evidence to base it on, other than the fact that the smaller drum was silenced, that the big drum was booming forth something in the nature of a call signal, waiting for a reply from the smaller drum.

Phil decided that the girl and Professor Parker could hear the signal of the master drum, which was booming in increased volume with every repetition. Indeed, it seemed that the signal must carry to every part of the island.

And Phil felt certain that the warning conveyed by that drummed signal would be sufficient to apprise the girl of the presence of hostile savages, and that she would use every precaution to insure against discovery.

The savage he had found had been armed only with bow and arrow. The sound of the rifle shot indicated the presence of a more civilized man, and it was very possible that some other white man, better armed, had been caught by the same tidal currents which followed the shifting of the poles of the earth, and that those currents had deposited him upon the same island.

Phil changed his plans, determined to make his way toward the place from which he had heard those rifle shots, particularly as they had seemed to be almost in the same locality as the source of the drum beats from the smaller drum.

Phil had an idea speed meant everything. He cast caution to the winds, broke from his concealment, found the trail the running savage had been following, and set out along it with swinging strides that devoured distance.

But Phil was taking care lest he should run into an ambush, and his trail-wise eyes took in every detail of his surroundings.

The trail was beaten hard by naked feet. It wound like a black ribbon through the dense growth of tree and shrub, vine and creeper, following the contours of the upper levels with a slope that showed some considerable engineering efficiency in its construction, an efficiency which is the result of laborious study in civilized schools, yet which comes instinctively to game animals and savages.

Phil dropped down a gully, following the trail, saw where a branch trail turned into the shrub on a shoulder of the next ridge, and decided to follow that branch trail. He was, he realized, getting close to the place from which that shot had sounded. Had he been trailing a deer hunter, he would have started to look for a dead deer along in here.

He slowed his pace, moved with every sense alert, his eyes taking in every bit of the slope, penetrating the shadows of the jungle.

It was the sight of a brown foot protruding into a patch of sunlight which sent him jumping into the shrubbery beside the trail, the bow raised, arrow on the string.

But the foot remained motionless, the toes pointing upward.

Phil stepped forward, silently, cautiously.

The foot was motionless. As he walked, a leg came into view above the foot, then another foot and leg, the latter twisted into a grotesque position.

Then, rounding a tree trunk, he saw the man.

Chapter 7 The Murderer

He knew, then, the target that had received those rifle bullets. The man had been struck in the back, a little to one side of the right shoulder blade. The bullet had ranged through the chest, emerging from the left side. Death had been instantaneous, and the heavy drum stick, padded with a ball of animal hide which the fingers of the right hand still held, told the story.

There was a huge drum suspended from the branches of the tree by a twisted grass rope. The drum was made from a section of a hollowed tree trunk, and the hide which stretched across it was apparently exceedingly heavy. Phil found himself wondering if it could be a strip of elephant hide.

The drummer was dressed as the others had been dressed, simply in a loin cloth. But there was no ivory ornament thrust through his nose, although the skin of the chest showed a species of tattooing.

Phil stepped around the body, mindful of the presence of the man with the rifle, mindful, also, of the fact that the savage had been shot down without warning, and in the back.

The possibility that the man who had fired that rifle shot would be a friend and ally became more remote as Phil reconstructed the scene of the shooting.

The drummer had been standing before the drum, in the very act of beating the resonant hide. Then had come the shot, and the force of the bullet had hurled him to one side, sprawled him in the position in which he now lay.

But how about the other shots?

Obviously this man had been taken completely by surprise. That meant that he had not received any warning of the presence of his slayer until the bullet had crashed him down into death.

He must, then, have been killed with the first shot.

Phil looked around, and suddenly recoiled with horror.

He had found the mark of those other bullets!

She was a slip of a girl, hardly more than nineteen or twenty, slim formed, delicate of limb, shapely of body. She, too, was attired in nothing save a loin cloth, and even in death the beauty of her figure was apparent. Sprawled as she was upon the leaves of the forest, her body disfigured by two bullet holes, she remained beautiful with that grace which is the property of youth alone.

She had been running, Phil decided, when the shots had brought her down. The first shot had dropped her, the second had finished the gruesome task.

Evidently she had been standing beside the man when he had been beating the drum. The first shot had killed the man, sent her into headlong flight. And Phil, reconstructing the scene, remembered the short interval between the first shot and the following shots, realized that she had covered quite a bit of space in that brief interval.

She had evidently flashed into flight with the speed and grace of a deer, only to be brought down as ruthlessly as though she had, in fact, been a fleeing denizen of the forest.

A sudden rage possessed Phil Bregg. Whether these people were hostile or not, the man who had fired those shots, be he native, American or European, was a coward and a murderer.

By picking the angles of the bullets from the positions of the bodies, Phil was able to determine almost exactly the spot from which the shots must have been fired.

It was a little ridge, some fifty yards away, to which there was a cleared path in the jungle. It was obvious that the man who did the shooting must have been on this ridge, equally obvious that he was not there any longer, or, if there, that he was making no display of hostility, since Phil had been in plain sight of the point when he had walked up to the body of the drummer.

Phil concluded the man had moved away, and he walked boldly along the cleared space, straight to the ridge. He found that he had been correct in his surmise. There was no one in sight when he arrived at the ridge, although there remained ample evidence that a man had been there.

There was a burned match, the glittering gleam of three empty rifle shells, lying where the ejector of the repeating rifle had thrown them. There was, on a closer inspection, a little pile of dark ash which smelled strongly of stale tobacco. The man evidently smoked a pipe, and had scraped out the bowl of its dead residue before refilling it with fresh tobacco.

Phil consulted the trail, and found the track of feet that were covered with shoes, made after the fashion of civilized footwear. He got to hands and knees and surveyed the ground. He found a few grains of fresh brown tobacco, still pleasantly fragrant and moist.

The man had evidently refilled his pipe after the shooting, and the burned match indicated that he had lit his pipe. Phil was armed only with a bow and arrow, a rude, home-made spear. He sensed that this man would be hostile, that he was a cold-blooded murderer. The deaths of the savages had shown his utter ruthlessness, the fact that he had filled and lit his pipe indicated some of the callousness of his nature.

But Phil knew that the island swarmed with savages, and he realized that he could expect short shrift should he fall into the hands of these savages. Undoubtedly the ruthless slaying of the man at the drum, and the young girl who had been with him, would stir the savages to a rage against all intruders upon their island, even had they been friendly in the first place. And Phil, reflecting upon the attitude of the man he had seen stalking him with such deadly ferocity, knew that there had been no opportunity for friendly relations.

There remained, then, his predicament, between the devil and the deep sea. There was a man somewhere ahead who was a murderer. But, at least, he might be prevailed upon to give shelter to his own kind, and he evidently possessed but little fear as to his own safety.

He had killed the natives and then moved away, doing the whole thing as casually as a hunter might shoot a rabbit.

Phil took up the trail, moving cautiously.

The ground was too hard to leave him any footprints other than an occasional heel mark. Apparently the man he sought had walked calmly and serenely straight down the trail.

Phil sniffed the air.

He thought he detected the odor of tobacco smoke, and pushed forward more rapidly. If his man was smoking it would be easy to tell when he was within some distance of Phil.

The odor of burning tobacco became stronger, held the unmistakable tang of a pipe about it. The trail Phil followed grew broader, another trail intersected it, and Phil became conscious of a blue cloud of smoke drifting through the branches of some trees a hundred yards away.

He moved cautiously, convinced himself the smoke came from pipe tobacco, burning fragrantly. Its very volume caused Phil some misgivings. But, he reflected, the man might well be smoking some gourd pipe which held an enormous quantity of tobacco.

He worked his way cautiously toward the eddies of smoke which filtered through the trees.

He left the trail, moved through the forest like a wild animal, keeping to the open spaces so as to avoid rustling branches or breaking twigs. He had learned the art of stalking from Indians, and had learned his lessons well. His progress through the forest was as that of a drifting shadow.

He pushed through a light tangle of bush, paused behind the trunk of a tree, saw that the poisoned arrow was on the string of the bow, and then slipped out into the open.

He noticed the eddying blue of the tobacco smoke, and knew at once that he had been trapped.

For the smoke eddied from no pipe held in the lips of a man, but came instead from a rock where a little pile of tobacco had been stacked so that the burning base sent wisps of smoke from the grains of tobacco that had been piled on top of the red-hot grains underneath.

The man he hunted had, then, cunningly arranged this trap, so that any one trailing would come sneaking up on the smoke. Phil knew the answer at once, even before a cracked laugh grated on his ears.

He looked up, in the direction of that laugh.

He saw gleaming eyes, loose lips, teeth that were stained, a face that was covered with stubble, the shoulders and left sleeve of a coat that had once been white, and the black muzzle of a rifle, the latter trained directly upon his heart.

“Well, well,” cackled the man, “look what walked into my little trap!”

Phil stepped forward, boldly.

“I hoped I’d find you. You seem to have means of taking care of yourself, and I seem to be on a hostile island.”

He determined that he would say nothing whatever about the presence of his companions. He felt that it would be far better if this man knew nothing of the fact that a young, attractive white woman was on the island.

The rifle covered him.

“I wouldn’t come no farther, and I think I’d drop that bow!” said the man.

Phil relaxed his grip, let the bow drop to the ground, shook the quiver from his shoulder, let it clatter to the ground, and then gave the man with the beady eyes his best grin.

“Captured it from a native,” said Phil, trying to speak easily, frankly, as though he had no question of the ultimate friendship between himself and this man. “The chap was stalking me, so I dropped down on his shoulders and took his weapons.”

The man with the rifle laughed.

“That tobacco sure smells good,” went on Phil, “got any more of it?”

And he took a step forward, making it a point to walk casually, as though he expected to be invited to sit down and join the other in a social pipe.

“That’s far enough,” rasped the voice. “Get back there! Get back there, damn you, or I’ll shoot you just as I would a native!”

The eyes glittered, the loose lips lost their grin, and the face became a mask of menace. Phil realized the fact that the man’s trigger finger was about to tighten, and he jumped back.

For a second or two there was a stark hatred, the desire to murder, a red blood lust in the eyes of the man. Then the face slowly relaxed.

“Come alone to the island?” asked the man.

Phil nodded casually.

“Yeah,” he said, “I got shipwrecked.”

He was trying to place the man’s nationality, decided that for all his ready use of the language, he was not an American, nor was he English. He was, perhaps, a racial mixture.

The man laughed again.

“Don’t lie,” he said. “I know everything that goes on here on the island. There’s three in your party, and one of ’em’s a damned pretty woman. I want that woman.”

Phil felt the red blood of rage mounting his forehead. He forgot discretion, forgot the fact that the other held him covered.

“Well, you’re frank about it,” he said. “That’s about the way I had you figured, at that. Now try and find her, you cowardly murderer!”

But the words seemed to have no effect other than to arouse a certain amusement in the man who held the rifle.

He chuckled, and the chuckle was rasping, as unclean as his face and the sleeve of the garment that had once been white.

“Heh, heh, heh,” he chuckled, “gettin’ independent, ain’t you? Well now, my friend, let me tell you something. I can control these natives because they fear me. I’ve held the whip hand over ’em all the time, and I’m ruthless.

“I’ve got a house around the corner of the trail that’s a regular castle. I built it before the natives got hostile. Afterwards they got independent, and I had to kill off a couple. That brought about a showdown. They tried to attack me.

“When I got finished with ’em they were good dogs. I’ve kept other white men off this island, and there isn’t a firearm on it except what I’ve got. I’ve got plenty.

“That’s the way I keep the natives in line. They can’t reach me, but I can kill them off whenever I want to, and I give ’em orders, rule ’em with an iron hand. That’s the only way to rule if you’re goin’ to rule.

“I told ’em not to beat that drum down there. It disturbs my sleep when I’m taking a nap. They laid off for a while, but today they violated my orders, so I went down there and put a little of the fear of God into ’em.

“And I figured some of them might come trailing me, so I set a little trap for ’em. I hadn’t figured you’d walk into it. That’s the way to deal with these natives, kill off a couple of ’em every so often, then they get all worked up and start after me, I set a little trap and kill off a couple more. Then I go and live in my castle for a while until they come to their senses.”

Phil held his face expressionless.

“Well,” he said, “how about us, what are you going to do with us, give us shelter?”

The man laughed.

“I’ll give you shelter, in a savage’s belly! I’m the one that encouraged ’em in cannibalism. They did it on the sly until I came here. I got ’em in the belief that it was a good thing, to come right out in the open and do it. They never bother in here, the government, although they’ve got the place listed on the map.

“But I keep out the traders. It’s a good system. That leaves me king of the island. I should kill you right now, but I’d rather leave you to wander around and play hide and seek with the natives. That’ll keep their mind off of me for a while, and they need something like that to divert their attention from the little disciplining I gave them.

“Well, I’ll be moving on. Don’t let ’em capture you alive if you know what’s good for you. They’ve got pleasant little methods of torture. They say the flesh tastes better when it’s about half cooked while a man’s still alive. I don’t know. I’m virtuous. I ain’t never tried it. But I hear their screams every once in a while on a still night. The natives have a ceremonial feast every time after there’s a battle with any of ’em on the other island.

“Put up the best fight you can. They’ll get you in the long run, but while you’re running around in the bush playing hide and seek they won’t be after me, and I can get in some sleep.

“They’ll get you finally. They always do get ’em. There was a ship came ashore here a couple of months ago. Funny weather. Funny the last couple of days, too. The damned island settled a bit, or the ocean raised, I don’t know which it was, big tidal waves and everything. Guess that was what brought you in.

“Must have been a hole in the sea down here to the south somewhere. The ocean boiled past at ninety miles an hour, judging from the roar of it. Oh, well, it’s a high island, and it’s been here for a while, and it’ll be here for a while again.

“The natives’ll turn over the woman to me. I’ve got ’em sold on the idea it’s bad medicine to eat a white woman — clever, eh?”

And the man got to his feet, disclosing a giant figure, unkempt, dirty, yet radiating ruthless power and brute strength.

“You stay right here for five minutes. You move up on this ridge before then, and I’ll save the savages a job. After that five minutes is up you can go anywhere you damned please.

“Watch out for their arrows. They’re tipped with a funny kind o’ poison. It’ll numb the nerves and paralyze you for a while, but it won’t kill you. You’ll come to after a hour or two — ready to be cooked on the hoof. They say it makes the meat taste a lot different.

“They’ve got a big bed o’ coals, and they truss you up and broil you a bit at a time over the slow fire. Don’t know where so many men get the idea cannibals boil ’em in a kettle. They don’t. They broil ’em. That’s the only way human meat is any good.

“So long!”

And the man abruptly stepped down from back of the ridge.

Chapter 8 Captives

Phil failed to heed the warning about remaining where he was, but he knew better than to charge up the ridge. Instead, he tried to estimate the probable direction in which the man was traveling, and struck off into the forest, making a wide semicircle.

He fought his way through thick growth, came to a more open ridge, and streaked up it with the best speed he could command. He gasped for breath, but he knew he must hurry if he stood any chance.

In the end he missed out by a matter of a few seconds.

He felt that the tall man would turn frequently to watch his back trail, that this would slow down his progress, and that there was a chance to ambush him by leaping from the bush on the side of the trail.

But he saw the shadow of the other’s long-limbed progress slipping by up the ridge while he was still ten feet away, and he knew that it would be sheer suicide to charge through the tangled shrubbery. The man could snap the rifle into position before Phil would have a chance.

So he remained motionless, watched the other stride by on the trail above. Then Phil slipped up to the trail.

The man was covering the ground with great strides, moving at a rate of speed which was faster than a smaller man could have traveled at less than a jog trot.

Phil watched him travel; saw, almost at once, his destination. It was a castle which had been built on a ridge of rock, a castle which was impregnable to anything except an attack by artillery.

The construction was of a cobbled concrete that made the structure gleam white in the sunlight. It was built on the top of the ridge, at the very apex of a massive outcropping of native rock.

There was but one place by which the castle could be reached and that place had a barred gate with a huge lock which stood out even at the distance from which Phil was observing it.

A wall ran around the castle, a wall that was surmounted with jagged coral and broken glass. The rock dropped away on all sides in a sheer slope that was smoothed over by the aid of concrete so that its sides were as glass. The trail ran up the winding zigzag, passed under the barred gate, and came to another gate, a mere opening in the wall.

Gunpowder might have reduced the fortress, but as far as the simple savages were concerned, armed as they were only with crude weapons, it represented an absolutely impregnable retreat in which one man could live unmolested.

Now that Phil knew the truth about the people who inhabited the island, he realized the gravity of the position in which he had left his companions, knew that it was vitally necessary that they be warned, given the real facts of the situation without delay.

He slid down the slope of the ridge, picked up the landmarks which gave him the location of the shelf of rock where he had left Stella Ranson and Professor Parker, and plunged into the dense shrubbery.

He was afraid to follow any man-made trails, and the forest growth was too thick to penetrate without losing too much time in forcing his way through the tangled mass of creepers and vines, to say nothing of the noise that would be made by such a means of progress.

But the place was cut up with trails made by hogs, trails which led in zigzags or ran directly through tangles of brush. Phil dropped to all fours and followed those trails, trusting to his sense of direction to carry him to his ultimate goal.

Twice he disturbed bands of hogs that were resting in the thickets, and they tore away with great gruntings, startled squeals, their short legs rattling and clumping over rock and down timber.

Aside from those, he encountered no sign of life, either man or beast, and finally arrived at the bottom of the ridge where he had left his party. He gave a low whistle.

There was no answer.

Fearing the worst, he started the laborious ascent, up the rock slope which led to the shelf where he had established camp.

He slipped around the screen of a bush, and came upon that which he had feared to find. The camp was in a state of confused disorder, blankets torn and scattered, the canned goods either cut open or rolling about on the rock floor. There was no sign, either of the professor or the girl, save a torn bit of cloth which had come from the girl’s skirt.

Phil knew much of woodcraft, and he had trailed pack-horses over long and difficult stretches of country. Now he set himself the task of trailing the raiding party which had captured his companions.

And the task was absurdly easy. The trail led up the slope and around a shoulder, where a broad, well-used trail led along a ledge of rock below which flashed the blue of the ocean.

Looking along this rocky ledge, down toward the ocean, Phil could see what appeared to be a gigantic serpent, writhing along the rocky trail. It was, in fact, a long line of men, naked, excited, walking in single file along the narrow trail, and in the center of this writhing line of brown backs and black heads appeared the light colors of the garments worn by Professor Parker and Stella Ranson.

Phil left the trail and kept to the ridge, keeping just below the skyline. He worked his way along until he could see the party below him enter a dense clump of trees. They did not emerge.

Closer inspection showed Phil the tops of thatched houses showing dimly through the trees. He knew that something had to be done, and done fast, but he was alone and virtually unarmed.

Then he thought of the strange hermit, of the gun which the hermit had held, of the big automatic which was strapped to the cartridge belt which circled the hermit’s waist.

Phil had to possess himself of those weapons. How?

And, as he stood there thinking, the natives themselves furnished him with the idea which he needed. They started throbbing out a message on the big master drum.

Phil could make out the drum now, and the drummer. The drum was made of wood, and a huge savage swung a mallet as one would swing a sledge. The resonant wood boomed out its deep note, a series of signal calls.

Phil crawled on his stomach, slipping over the skyline of the ridge, like a deer slipping through a pass on the approach of hunters. Once he had passed the skyline he got to his feet, slipped down the slope until he came to the trail he had followed earlier in the day, and raced along at top speed.

His heart was pounding and his lungs laboring by the time he came to the forks in the trail. There was no time for caution, so he flung himself blindly forward, half expecting to see some hostile native arise in front of him.

But things were as he had left them when he had started to trail the killer. The two natives were sprawled out, stark in death. The big drum still hung from the tree.

Phil inspected that drum closely.

It was suspended by a long rope, and there was a sufficient surplus of rope to answer Phil’s purpose.

He picked up the drumstick, swung it in a powerful blow, squarely upon the head of the drum. The booming note resounded over the island. Phil, trying to remember the sound sequence of the drumming he had previously heard, repeated the blows, imitating the first signals which had been given by the savage as nearly as possible.

He swung the drumstick for a full five minutes. Then he picked up a native spear which lay near the dead warrior, planted it in the ground, fastened a springy branch to it, tied the drumstick to the branch, and raced up the trail to a place from which he could see the castle.

He found that his ruse was working.

The owner of the place, armed to the teeth, probably seething with indignation, was coming down the steep trail from the castle with long strides, his rifle thrust forward.

Phil timed his approach, then ran back to the drum, gave a few more beats, and started twisting the ropes which held the drum. When he had them twisted tightly, he adjusted the spear at just the proper angle, affixed the drumstick and springy bow in place, and let the drum go.

The untwisting ropes swung the drum in a half circle, brought the head against the drumstick. There came a low, abortive, yet plainly audible sound from the drum, which was arrested in its progress. Then the spring of the limb slowly let the drum head slide past the stick, and the drum made another revolution, again hitting the drumstick.

It was a makeshift device, good only for a matter of a few revolutions, but it served Phil’s purpose.

He ran back up the trail, plunged into the brush by the side of the divide just in time. He could see the long legs of his man coming on the run.

The drum continued at intervals to send forth low noises far different from the deep booming that had come from it when it had been struck a smart blow with the padded striker, yet noises which were of a sufficient volume to be plainly audible.

And, over all, there sounded the deep booming of the master drum.

But the long-legged giant, striding up with murder in his mind, was not a simple, trusting soul to be caught in a trap unaware. Evidently natives had tried to ambush him before, and he slowed his progress to peer cautiously into the brush when he entered the region where the undergrowth was thick enough to furnish cover.

Phil knew that it would only be a matter of seconds before the drum would cease to give forth sound, due to the relaxing of tension on the rope.

He tensed his muscles, finally determined on a rush. The man was peering cautiously and intently into the shadows. A rush seemed suicide, yet Phil could think of no other way.

He worked his feet firmly in under him, and the drum gave forth a low moaning sound, due to the rubbing of the hide-covered head of the striker, rubbing against the drum head, just as he was preparing to rush. That peculiar sound aroused the curiosity of the long-legged ruler of the island sufficiently to overcome his prudence. He started forward.

Phil charged.

The man was unbelievably quick. Yet Phil had anticipated that quickness. It was impossible that the man could have lived so long on the island, going out occasionally for food and to inflict his discipline upon the natives, without having been enough of a woodsman to protect himself against ambushes.

He jumped to one side, flung the rifle around and fired all with one motion.

The bullet missed. Phil felt the fan of its breath against his cheek.

He flung himself forward, head down, like a runner sliding head first into a base.

The gravel scratched his hands and chin. There was a cloud of loamy soil, twigs and decayed foliage thrown up. And the maneuver surprised the man with the rifle, for the second shot missed.

Then Phil’s hands gripped the ankles, he flung himself up and around. The man swung the clubbed rifle. The blow caught Phil upon the shoulder, numbing him with sickening pain, but he hung on.

His adversary dropped the gun with an oath, and Phil knew that he was reaching for the automatic at his belt. Phil flung up his right hand, hooked the fingers in the belt, yanked as hard as he could, striving to get to his feet.

The tension on the belt had an unexpected result. The buckle gave way, and belt and gun thudded to the earth. The big man swung his right foot back for a kick at Phil’s face, and Phil, pushing forward while the man was standing on one leg, threw him off balance.

That gave Phil a chance to get to his feet.

They faced each other, two men, each unarmed save for nature’s weapons, and neither having the slightest doubt as to the sort of struggle upon which he was embarking. It was a fight to the death.

The long-armed man swung over a terrific blow. Phil ducked it and planted a swift right smash to the stomach, and had the satisfaction of hearing the tall man give a grunt of pain.

He pressed his advantage, swinging a left, right, left.

Then the long arms closed on him. But Phil knew something of wrestling, and sensed that the other was punch groggy. He broke the hold, flung him away, and set for the delivery of the final smashing blow that would end the conflict.

The tall man swung wildly, awkwardly. Phil stepped forward, easily assured of victory now. He needed but to walk inside of the swing, slam home his right, and...

His foot slipped on a round pebble. He lurched, back, off balance, directly in the path of that vicious swing.

He tried to dodge, made a frantic but futile effort to block the blow with his elbow. But he was falling, the fist crashed into the side of his jaw, and he saw a great flash of light, then streaking ribbons of black, then felt himself falling into black oblivion.

Something crashed the back of his head after he felt that he had been falling for hours, and he realized that it was the ground which had hit him, the back of his head thudding into the soil of the trail.

He fought with himself to keep his senses, to get his eyes open and his vision cleared.

He managed to open his eyes, but all he could see was a confused blur of dancing tree-tops against the blue of the sky. Then he saw something else, a weird figure which swung about between him and the tree-tops. Gradually that figure took form and substance. It was the long-legged man, once more in possession of the rifle, although still punch drunk, swinging the clubbed weapon in a blow that would undoubtedly brain the prostrate cowpuncher.

Phil saw the rifle swinging down, gave every ounce of will power he possessed into a last desperate attempt at rolling to one side.

He rolled, flung out his hand. He could hear the whooshing whistle of the rifle butt as it just grazed his head. Then his hand, outflung, touched a hard object.

His senses were clearing rapidly. He knew at once that his hand rested on the automatic which had been jerked from the waist of the long-legged ruler of the island.

Phil rolled over and over, clutching the belt, holster and gun in his hand.

He knew the other would fire, was raising the gun.

He jerked the weapon from its holster.

The rifle roared.

Phil scrambled to his hands and knees, his face stung by the flying particles of dirt, thrown up by that rifle shot.

“Drop it!” he yelled.

The man tried for another shot.

But he was dealing with a man who had learned the use of a short gun out in the open spaces where one must be able to shoot the head off of a coiled rattlesnake without taking time to line up the sights along the barrel.

Phil fired twice, and the bullets, plowing their way along the side of the gun stock, slammed into the right hand of the man who held it, ripping away the trigger finger, smashing bones.

With a howl of pain, he dropped the gun.

“Turn around,” said Phil.

The man hesitated, then turned.

“Put your hands back of you.”

The command was obeyed.

Chapter 9 The New World

Phil pulled the man’s coat off, ripped it into shreds, bound the arms, then gave attention to the wound. The right hand was badly smashed, bleeding freely. Phil stopped the bleeding by making a rough tourniquet.

“Now,” he said, “you’re going to march straight to that native village, and instruct the chief to turn over the captives he’s taken into your charge. You’ll keep out of sight when you make the command, and I’ll have the guns trained right on your back. If anything goes wrong you’ll be the first to go.”

The tall man was white of face, and his eyes were filled with sullen hatred.

“I can’t walk. That bullet’s smashed my hand all to pieces, made me sick all over.”

Phil prodded him menacingly with the gun.

“You asked for it,” he said. “You’ve done a lot of killing in your time, and I imagine you’ve had very little mercy for the ones that were on the receiving end of your guns. Now you’re going to be a good dog and get started, or I’m going to put you out of the way right here. It’s either your life or the life of two who are worth a hundred of you, and if you think I’ll hesitate about shooting, you’re just a bad judge of character.”

The man who had been master of the island until a few moments previous, sighed, started to walk.

“Untie my hands so I can keep my balance,” he said.

Phil jabbed him in the back with the business end of the rifle he had confiscated.

“Don’t talk, walk,” he ordered.

The man immediately lengthened his stride.

“Any treachery, and you get shot. If they’re killed before we arrive, you get shot. So remember that you’re going to be the one who determines your fate!” snapped Phil.

The man ahead of him said nothing, but strode on, purposefully, grimly silent.

They swung into a trail which ran to the right, dropped down a steep slope. The trail widened, and other trails came feeding into it. The sound of the drum grew louder.

A watcher jumped out into the trail, snapped his bow up. The tall man with the bound arms called out something to him in a guttural tongue and the native dropped the bow, turned, and ran at top speed.

The tall man lengthened his stride.

The sound of the big drum ceased. There sounded the rattle of voices clamoring a chorus of sudden panic. Phil gathered that the watchman had warned them of the approach of the man who carried thundering death with him.

“Stop here,” said Phil’s captive.

Phil held the gun ready, cocked.

“Remember,” he said, “the first sign of treachery, and you get your backbone blown to splinters.”

“Hell,” snorted the tall one, “I ain’t a fool.”

He raised his voice in a sharp call.

Instantly the chattering sound of the many voices which came from beyond the screen of trees subsided.

The tall man called a few sharp commands in the strange tongue. He was answered by someone from beyond the screen of foliage, and then raised his voice again, this time giving harsh rasping orders which thundered down the leafy aisles.

There was a period of silence.

“It’s a damn fool thing, coming into the village,” he muttered to Phil. “They ain’t found the dead drummer yet. If they had, they’d be mad enough to rush me. As it is, I’ve run a bluff, and told ’em I’d kill their king if they didn’t send out two men with the man and the woman they’ve captured. I left orders for all the rest of ’em to get down on the ground and lie on their faces.

“But they’ll make trouble before we get away. They’ve been wanting me for a long while. They’re frightened now, but they’ll try to cut off our escape when we start back...”

There was a bit of_; motion ahead, then Phil saw two natives, so frightened their knees wobbled, bringing the two captives along the trail.

“Tell the natives to go back,” said Phil.

And his captive obediently rattled forth another order.

Then Phil raised his own voice, called to the girl.

“It’s okay,” he said. “Come on the run!”

She gave a glad cry, started to run. Professor Parker joined her, his face wreathed with smiles.

“Well done,” he said; “that was a masterly—”

The tall captive rasped forth an oath.

“Never mind that stuff. Get back quick. They’ll be trying to ambush us! Save your breath for running. Let’s go.”

And, despite the bound arms which interfered with his balance, he turned and started at a long jog trot up the trail.

“Can you keep up?” Phil asked the girl.

“I think so,” she said, “but, tell me, how—”

“Later. We’ve got work ahead of us, and I’ve got to watch this spindle-shanked hombre in front. He’s about as trustworthy as a rattlesnake.”

They ran on in silence, their feet beating the trail in rhythm. Behind them all was silence.

The moist air of the jungle growth seemed heavy and oppressive. The trail was steep, and the man in front stumbled twice, finally stopped.

“I’ve got to have my hands free,” he panted.

Phil stepped forward. “I’ll just get the keys to your castle,” he said. “Then you won’t feel so anxious to run off and leave us.”

The lips twisted back in a snarl, as a rattling volley of oaths showed that Phil had discovered the man’s intentions and checkmated him.

Phil searched the pockets, found the keys, unbound the man’s hands.

“Keep well ahead and in the trail,” he warned.

The man laughed grimly, pointed back around the shoulder of rock.

“Look at ’em,” he said. “Trying to get ahead of us and ambush us.”

Phil looked.

There, winding up the face of the cliff, was a swarming horde of naked men, armed with bow and arrow and spear, climbing in swift silence, some six hundred yards away.

They were making an almost miraculous speed up the sheer slope of the rock.

Phil flung up the rifle, fired.

The bullet hit the rock directly in front of the leader, flinging up a cloud of dust and stinging splinters of rock.

Phil slammed the lever of the gun, fired again and again.

The savages flung themselves down behind whatever meager shelter they could secure. Phil waited until one raised a cautious torso, got to his feet, started to climb again, and then fired. The bullet slammed from the rock, making a little geyser of stone dust. The savage hurled himself back and down behind his shelter.

“Man,” said Phil’s captive, “that’s shooting, and I don’t mean maybe!”

Phil motioned.

“Get started,” he said.

The tall man shook his head.

“Look at ’em, over on the other side. They’ll head us off!”

So natural was he, so genuine did his consternation appear, that Phil swung about, half raised the rifle.

He heard a warning shout from the girl, the swift rustle of menacing motion, and the big man came down on him like a swooping hawk.

The spring had been well timed. Phil was downhill from his assailant, and the force of the rush brought him down to his knees. The man’s wounded hand seemed to check him not at all. His hands clasped about the rifle.

Phil felt the impetus of the other’s charge wresting the rifle from his grip. He suddenly loosed his grip on it, dropped to his knees, shook off the other man.

That individual, possessed of the rifle, let forth a roar of rage and swung the muzzle, only to find Phil, still on his knees, the butt of the automatic in his hand, eyes glittering, tense, and ready. The cowpuncher, trained in a quick and sure draw, had snaked the smaller weapon from its holster with a speed that was almost incredible.

“Drop it!” he yelled.

The tall man hesitated, and in that instant of hesitation there sounded the sharp twang of a bowstring. Something flashed through the air in a whispering path of hissing menace, struck the man square between the shoulders. With a thudding sound the arrow arrested its progress, quivered there in the man’s back.

Phil snapped his automatic around, fired into the jungle growth in the general direction from which the arrow had come. The report of the weapon rang out on the hot air, subsided with a volley of echoes.

There came the sound of running steps, a crashing of brush, and silence.

The tall man dropped the rifle, swayed. His eyes were already glazing. The snarl came to his lips. He tried to curse, and his voice failed him. He wobbled, tottered, crashed to the earth.

Phil grabbed the gun. “No time for sentiment, folks. Let’s go while we may.”

It was well that his forest training had enabled him to mark each turn of the path, each intersection which marked the branches of the trail. Now he ran with swift certainty of direction.

From the high divide, with the castle well within reach, and a downhill trail to follow, he called a halt, looked back.

The savage band had once more gone into motion. Here and there, through breaks in the foliage, could be seen the moving flash of dark skin as some runner pressed ahead of his mates up the trail.

Then came a wild shout from the place where the tall man had fallen. The shout was taken up, became words, was hurled back down the trail from screaming throat to screaming throat, a wailing cry of savage exultation.

Then the big drum began to boom forth some code message.

Phil nodded.

“They’ve found him. He was the one they wanted. I imagine we won’t be bothered now if we move fast.”

And move fast they did.

It was only after Phil had fitted the keys to the iron gate, heard the welcome click of the lock, that he felt safe. He ushered the others into the gate, closed and locked it, went through the smaller gate, and surveyed the domain to which he had taken title by right of conquest.

There was a massive patio to the rear, a plateau which ran out over the outcropping of rock, surrounded by the smooth sides of the wall. On this plateau were trees and vines. There was a very commodious house, furnished with hand-carpentered furniture. The whole thing was an impregnable fortress, well equipped with guns and ammunition.

Phil climbed to the roof, looked out over the ocean.

Suddenly he let out a yell. Around a jutting promontory of the island appeared the white bow of a huge boat, cutting through the water at cautious half speed.

Phil’s shout attracted the others.

They crowded to him. Watched in silence as the length of the boat came into view.

She was a large passenger steamer, and she had been battered by mountainous seas, yet had won through. Her lifeboats were either carried away or were stove in by the high seas. She had a tangle of wreckage on her boat deck, and more wreckage on the bow of the main deck, but she was cutting through the water slowly, majestically.

Professor Parker nodded.

“We could have expected it,” he said. “Most of the larger boats that were afloat when the world swung over were undoubtedly turned topsy turvy by the terrific waves. You will remember that our own craft rolled over and over. But it righted itself because it was small and buoyant. Big boats, once over, would never right themselves, but would go down.

“But somewhere there were undoubtedly boats that won through.

“While the catastrophe was world-wide, it is certain that some sections were spared, just as this island was spared. And the terrific current swept most of the north sea shipping down to this vicinity. It is almost exactly what I expected to find, this boat, and—”

But Phil was not listening to explanations. There was a flag in a flag locker on the top of the castle: Grabbing it out, he tied one corner to the halyard, raised it and lowered it along the stumpy, homemade flagpole.

There came a cloud of steam from the whistle of the boat. The steam stopped. Another cloud followed, then another. As the third cloud of steam was emerging, the sound of the first whistle came to their ears.

“Three whistles!” said Phil. “A salute! They see us!”

Professor Parker nodded his satisfaction.

“Now,” he said, “we can get some authentic news. If there are any unsubmerged continents that have survived the period of stress equalization and tidal inundations, they doubtless have sent out radio broadcasts. And you will notice that the boat retains its radio equipment.”

Phil turned to the girl.

“Suppose,” he said in a low voice, “there are no more continents, and we have to begin life anew. Would you... er... I mean, is there anybody, such as a husband, that you left behind?”

She laughed at him, extended her left hand.

“Not even engaged,” she said.

Phil grinned.

“In that case,” he observed, “you ought to be ready to take things as they come, Miss Ranson.”

She looked at him with that frankness of appraisal which characterizes the modern girl.

“Yes,” she said; “it’s a new world, and I’m ready for it, regardless of what it is. I’m not afraid of the future... and you’d better begin calling me Stella, Phil.”

And Phil Bregg, his face lighted with a zest for life, grinned at her.

“Bring on the new world,” he said. “I like the people in it!”