Saturday's Good Reading: “The Scientific Adventures of Mr. Fosdick” by Jacque Morgan (in English)

 

Jason Q. Fosdick closed the book that he had received by mail that morning, "Electricity at a Glance," and for a long time stared at the blank wall of the tinshop. Mr. Fosdick was thinking. Mr. Fosdick spent a great deal of his time in thought—probably most of his time. It was a common saying in Whiffleville that "When Mr. Fosdick gets through his thinking something is going to happen!" And in this the citizens were never disappointed, for invariably when Mr. Fosdick did get through his thinking something always did happen. Everybody liked the homely little man with the kindly face and the mild blue eyes, and in all the countryside none enjoyed a greater confidence and respect than Mr. Fosdick, for he was an inventor and genius. In all matters pertaining to science he was the village authority—even a greater authority than old Professor Snooks, the fiercely bewhiskered savant of Doolittle College up on the hill. Snooks had once called him "a doddering tinker," but this Mr. Fosdick attributed to jealousy as did all the inhabitants of Whiffleville, for the Professor was a pompous man and an unpopular one. No fair-minded person could doubt Mr. Fosdick's versatility in the arts and crafts, for upon the signboard that hung over the sidewalk, in front of the door of the tinshop, was lettered his many accomplishments:

 

JASON QUINCY FOSDICK

Tinsmith, Key-Fitter

and Scissors-Grinder

 

As an inventor Mr. Fosdick had achieved great success. True, his patent corkscrew had never drawn a cork, but it had made a fair hairpin, and he had disposed of it as such for a dignified sum. His patent pump refused flatly to perform the duty for which it had been designed, but it turned out to be an excellent churn and the favorite creature of his inventive brain, his patent curling iron, was in service in countless homes throughout the broad land as a nut-cracker.

 

A Wonderful Idea in the Field of Electric Power

As Mr. Fosdick gazed abstractedly at the bare wall in front of him he beetled his brows after the manner of all geniuses when concentrating their minds upon some great and suddenly discovered phenomenon in the wonderful world of science. As stated before, Mr. Fosdick was thinking. And the thing that immersed him so deep in thought was a sentence that he had just read in the book. Many would have passed it by, but Mr. Fosdick's eyes had no sooner fallen on the lines of type—less than a score of words in all—than it immediately revealed to him a wide field of experimental research and one replete with thrilling possibilities. The momentous truth as told in the single, short and unobtrusive sentence was: "Static electricity may be generated by rubbing together such substances as resin and fur." Little did Mr. Fosdick at the time suspect that his stumbling upon this bit of elementary science was to result in focusing upon him the fierce limelight of international publicity and to make Whiffleville, for a brief forty-eight hours, the breathless topic of conversation throughout the civilized world.

Fully an hour passed. The noon whistle blew at Eben Stetzle's chop mill announcing to all Whiffleville the arrival of the dinner hour, and then Mr. Fosdick with the sigh of a tired man arose from his chair and started to close the shop. Had he followed out his intention this story would never have been written; but just as he was about to lock the front door there happened one of those strange and inexplicable things that so often change the destiny of men and nations—a large black cat walked across the threshold and sniffed rather contemptuously at Mr. Fosdick's shins!

Mr. Fosdick stared at the cat for a full minute and then he slowly put the key back in his pocket. "It's John L.!" he exclaimed. "By thunder, I'll try it!"

Pulling out a drawer of the workbench he, after fumbling about in a bushel or so of wheels, springs, screw-eyes and other odds and ends so dear to the hearts of all geniuses, eventually drew forth a large chunk of resin. And then picking up the unsuspecting John L.—so named after a highly successful pugilist on account of his extremely belligerent disposition—he placed the cat upon the bench and began to gently stroke him, fore and aft with the resin. Slowly the hair upon the cat's back began to rise and in a few minutes John L. had apparently grown to twice his normal size. No astronomer discovering some hitherto unknown planet—no mother gazing with loving eyes, at her first born, ever experienced the rapturous tumult of feelings that suffused Mr. Fosdick as he watched the rapidly expanding John L. Quickly wrapping a piece of copper wire around a water pipe, Mr. Fosdick with eyes burning with the excitement of the experiment, slowly pushed the other end of the wire in the direction of John L.'s nose. Suddenly and without warning there was a loud cracking sound, a hot blue flame shot out from the cat's nose to the end of the wire, and John L., with a -wild cry of rage, leaped some dozen feet in the air, and coming down, executed a neat right and left scratch upon the inventor's face; then with a single bound sprang through the door.

"By Jinks!" cried Fosdick. "She works—she works—she works!"

 

The Feline Light and Power Co. Organized

Less than a week after Mr. Fosdick had made his experiment, all Whiffleville was thrown into a turmoil of excitement by the erection of a mysterious crib-like structure back of his tinshop. Only a chosen few knew the purpose of the strange building, and they, Eben Stetzle and five other friends and admirers of Mr. Fosdick, maintained a sphynx-like silence. In fact these men, having paid in ten dollars apiece to Mr. Fosdick, constituted the stockholders and the first board of directors of The Feline Light and Power Co.

The plan of organization was broad and comprehensive. The Feline Light and Power Co. was to be the parent company. Mr. Fosdick assured the directors that it should, by virtue of the ownership of basic patents which he was sure to obtain, control all the other companies that would spring up throughout the country, just as soon as the parent company had demonstrated the success of the new method of power generation.

Briefly, the new power plant consisted of a room hardly larger than a piano box elevated some three feet from the ground by insulating pillars of glazed brick. The floor and the walls of the room were coated with a four-inch lining of pure resin. Into this room a "plurality of cats," so the patent application read, "were to be liberated therein by dropping them through the trap door (A) to the resin-covered floor (B) upon which surface they will conduct themselves in the manner hereinafter described." The prospectus which Mr. Fosdick had already started to work upon told in simpler language that the friction of the cats against the surface of the resin would generate electricity, which would be conveyed to consumers within a radius of ten miles—and possibly to the street railway and light stations in the city, fifty miles distant. Eben Stetzle was the first to foresee that there would be an immediate market for cats and secretly he and his brother-in-law set about organizing a cat-breeding corporation under the laws of New Jersey to be known as "The General Feline Co., Limited."

 

Mr. Fosdick and His Units

It took some pretty hard hustling upon the part of the directorate, but by the time the power house was completed twenty "units," as Mr. Fosdick called them, had been lured from as many back yards and for a day languished in the back room of the tinshop. In the evening, when night had thrown its sable shade over Whiffleville and left the world in darkness to Mr. Fosdick and his cats, as Mr. Thomas Gray would doubtlessly have written, had he thought about it when composing his famous elegy—at any rate it was after dark when Mr. Fosdick stole out of the tinshop and one by one dropped his units through the trapdoor of the power house roof. Twenty trips he made and twenty units were installed. Then he listened intently—there was not a sound. With a heart sickened with the apprehension of failure, Mr. Fosdick made one more journey back to the tinshop and reappeared this time with John L.,—the "exciter," as he afterwards called him. Hardly had he dropped the hero of a thousand back-fence encounters into the dark and silent hole than things began to happen. Such a beldam of yowling and caterwauling Whiffleville had never heard—the plant was in operation.

The next morning when President Fosdick and the other officers and directors of "The Feline Light and Power Company" elbowed their way through the crowd of curious citizens that had gathered about the power house it was evident from the noise that came from the units inside that the charging process was still in progress. With some trepidation they mounted the ladder and looked down into the generating room. A strange and wonderful sight met their gaze. Twenty-one cats, each of them the size of a beer keg, were fighting each other in a grand battle royal. Their hair stood straight out and sparks played over their dully luminous bodies incessantly. The crackling noise of electrical discharges was continuous and the peculiar odor of ozone filled the air. The directors were awed.

"Men, we're worth millions and millions!" ejaculated Mr. Fosdick, gazing down rapturously at the expanded units.

 

Mr. Fosdick and His Friends Acquire a Dangerous Electric Charge

Quickly handing Vice-President Stetzle the voltmeter he had brought with him, Mr. Fosdick slipped down into the room. Picking up a unit he handed it up through the door for more thorough examination. But the unit did not propose being examined. With a yowl of rage it sank its teeth into the vice-president's arm and then with a loud and furious hiss leaped to the ground. Upon just what happened then none could ever agree. Stetzle afterwards described the explosion as being like that of the sudden eruption of a volcano, other spectators when brought to their senses were sure there had been an earthquake. But Mr. Fosdick with his calm, unemotional mind of a born investigator believed neither of these theories. He saw the cat as it touched the ground—saw the sudden flare of blue fire—heard the tremendous report—saw the unit disappear in a dense cloud of white smoke, and afterwards identified all that was left of it—small patch of for about the size of a dime-probably an ear.

Hardly had the breeze wafted the dust and smoke aside when Mr. Fosdick became aware of a strange and startling phenomenon—his hair and whiskers stood out from his head and face like the quills of a porcupine. Mr. Stetzle was similarly affected.

"Don't touch the ground, Eben!" shouted Mr. Fosdick warningly. "If you do you will blow up like the cat did. We're charged with millions of volts!"

It was a terrible situation and the two men looked anxiously about for assistance, but the frightened spectators had fled to that haven of safety and gossip—the postoffice.

 

What Is to Be Done With the Charged Subject?

Excitement was at fever heat in the town. All sorts of rumors filled the air, and the telegraph was sending them to the remotest corners of the earth. Before noon extras were upon the streets of a score of cities telling in columns and columns of the terrible catastrophe and giving illustrations of it "Drawn by our special artist upon the ground."

All day long the two terrorized men cowered in the generating room. Outside at a safe distance a great crowd gathered. No one dared go near and it was generally believed that the unfortunate Fosdick and Stetzle must eventually starve to death. During the afternoon correspondents from the great city dailies poured in on every train and camera men clicked their instruments about "the death shed" in shoals. Towards evening it became known that the casualities were "one cat dead and two men electrified."

About supper time Prof. Snooks arrived, and it was owing to his suggestions to have food passed to them at the end of long glass poles that the men were saved from starvation.

In the generating room life was well nigh insufferable. The constant electrical discharges were irritating in the extreme and both men and units were in a vicious humor. It must be said, however, that President Fosdick made some attempt to bear the strain with the fortitude of a martyr to science; but the unhappy Stetzle displayed no such courage—he had a wife and family, he said, and he wanted to get out. Mr. Fosdick counseled the vice-president to have his family brought in, but to this suggestion Stetzle only replied with curses. In calmer moments Stetzle said that with two men and twenty cats in the bin there could be no room for Mrs. Stetzle and nine children.

 

The Frightened People Leave the Town

The next afternoon Prof. Snooks from a safe distance shouted to them that they might, perhaps, regain their liberty by wearing rubber boots; but that they should try the idea on a cat first. In this suggestion Mr. Fosdick saw a ray of hope, and Mr. Stetzle was so cheered that he offered to dispose of his stock in the company of Mr. Fosdick for a mere song. The offer was refused. Mr. Fosdick said that he was not interested particularly in financial matters at that time. He wrote a note to Josh Little, the harnessmaker, ordering a pair of rubber boots made, cat-size. Then the inventor by eloquent gestures attracted the attention of the crowd and threw the note towards it at which there was a great scattering. A moment later he sank back in despair, for just as the epistle touched the ground there was a slight explosion, a vivid red flash, and it burned up before his very eyes. Well might he shudder, for now he realized the tremendous electrical pressure with which he was charged.

A bolt of sheet rubber was passed in the next morning, however, and Fosdick set to work fashioning some ⟨insulating⟩ shoes for John L, These were ⟨completed⟩ by noon and the fifty thousand morbid spectators that had come in by special trains breathlessly watched the experiment. Rubber-shod, the cat was dropped to the ground—and it survived. A great cheer went up from the crowd. This had no sooner subsided than Prof. Snooks realized that a terrible mistake had been made. Hastily grabbing a megaphone from a barker of one of the numerous side shows that had set up their tents everywhere, he addressed the crowd. He told them that John L. was at liberty charged with perhaps a hundred million volts of electricity, and that contact with him could mean but one thing—death. Instantly there was a wild commotion in the terrorized crowd and then a wild flight from the awful peril. By nightfall the railroads had deported thirty-nine train loads of people and, save for the few that could find rubber boots, the streets of Whiffleville were as lifeless as the shady paths of the neighboring cemetery.

Rubber and rubber alone could protect them against the deadly menace of John L. This, all realized. A thoughtless humanitarian, Bill Hitchcock by the name, made rubber boots for his three dogs. One of the dogs that very afternoon, spying John L., set sail for him and although he managed only to touch the tail of the cat he became charged with the deadly electrical pressure. And worse, the dog coming home rubbed noses with Hitchcock’s other two dogs, charging them. With three electrical dogs and one electrical cat at large only the foolhardy ventured abroad.

 

Casualties Multiplied and the Two Charged Subjects Are Still in Captivity

Within the next twenty-four hours there were a number of casualties. About nine in the evening Old Tige, the largest of the dogs, came in contact with a lamp post. The post was instantly fused off even with the ground and the gas became ignited, making a geyser of flame that shot a hundred feet heavenward. The dog died. Later in the night another one of the dogs ran against a barbwire fence, killing ten head of stock four miles away. That dog also died. At daybreak there was a loud explosion in the outskirts of the town. It is thought that this came from a cat fight in which John L. participated. At any rate he has never been seen since and to-day only a pathetic hole in the ground marks his probable last battlefield.

The remaining dog was captured at great peril to life, and turned over to Prof. Snooks for experimental purposes. By gradually drawing off the electrical charge by means of a condenser, the Professor in a week's time reduced the dog’s pressure to approximately five thousand volts and then the animal was further discharged by hooking him up to the town arc light system of fifty lamps which he maintained in the splendid effulgence of over two thousand candle power for a period of nine hours and eleven minutes before his power ran down.

Mr. Fosdick and Mr. Stetzle are now living on two insulated stools in the laboratory of Doolittle College. Their potential is dropping at the rate of ten volts a day, and Prof. Snooks has calculated that they must remain there for the next 957 years, three months and two days before being fully discharged. It seems a great pity.

 

The End

Saturday's Good Reading: “Not Down on the Bill” by John Ulrich Giesy (in English).

The band stopped playing. Throughout the “big top” there fell one of those pauses which always precede a major act on the bill—a sort of preliminary silence which arrests the attention of the spectators and contributes in a subtle manner to the nerve-tension which the amusement-seeking public now considers synonymous with getting their money's worth.

High up on a spidery tower, midway of the tent, and directly in front of the reserved section, movement occurred. A man arose and approached a black square on which shone polished levers. A second figure arose, cast off a robe which shrouded its outlines, and stood revealed as a girl in pale pink fleshings about supple, pliant torso and limbs.

Viewed from below she looked small, dainty, young and blonde in a gold-and-crimson way. She took up a sort of wand and advanced to the edge of the tower's top, from which a wire stretched down at a slight angle from an upright, beside a little ladder like set of steps.

The ringmaster raised his hands. The silence continued. All other acts in the three rings below, and on the wires and trapeze above, came to a halt. The announcer's megaphone rang out to all parts of the monster tent:

“Ladies and gentlemen! Mlle. Mitchi Maya in her daring performance on the Live Wire! There are five thousand volts of deadly current passing through the wire upon which she works. Five thousand volts! Enough to strike a dozen men dead. A slip—a misstep—ah! Permit me to ask you all to maintain absolute silence during this exceedingly hazardous act. Are you ready, Mlle. Maya? Then—go!”

With a crackling sputter, two large arc-lights, one green on the tower, one red above the net where the wire ran down and ended, leaped into life as the man on the tower pushed a shining lever home. The girl bowed. She ran up the little steps to a level with the wire. She bowed again, poised like a diver; then—she stepped out on the wire itself.

A burst of flame came from under her shoe at the contact. The side of her body above the limb she stood on sprang into an outline of tiny parti-colored lights. She advanced a step. Again a flash of blue fire marked her action. Lights outlined the limb and girdled her slender waist on the opposite side.

She put down both feet and stood drawn in colored light. She walked, she ran, she danced on the deadly thing beneath her, turned and ran back to the ladder-like steps, and so down to the tower-top.

Already her assistant was busy. As the avid crowd sighed its relief and gaped for more, he led her to the edge, this time beneath the wire.

She turned back her face and seized something in her mouth. On her back the man was fastening something, one could not just see what; but in a moment one understood. She lifted her naked arms. The wings of a giant butterfly sprang into view. They waved as in preparation for flight, and—she was off!

Hanging by her teeth, arms outstretched, the wings and her body a mass of scintillating brilliance, the wheel upon which she slid and beneath which she clung throwing off sparks like the flare of a trolley from a charged wire!

She flashed down the wire, landed in the net and stood bowing to the wave of applause which greeted her having accomplished the thing once more. Then she slid to the ground on a rope, ran from the ring and so back to the “trapping-room.”

The “Human Butterfly” act of the Barnaby Shows was ended.

It was a genuine “thriller.” I, who was press agent of Barnaby's Shows, knew all about it. I knew that it had already been the indirect cause of a man's death, and of a wedding; and that it had nearly killed the woman who had just performed it anew and was making her way out of the ring while the audience rustled back to a casual interest in less sensational numbers of the bill.

I glanced into her face and nodded as she passed me in the fly of the big top. She nodded back with a smile. She was as winsome, as fresh near at hand as she looked on the tower. She was young, and seemingly happy.

I remembered the night when her petite body lay unconscious in the net. For the wire on which she worked was really charged as the announcer had claimed. The act was risky. It was genuine—no fake.

Forget that I am a press agent, because the story of the thing is true, on my honor as a man.

 

 

We of the circus know that about once every so often the public must have a thrill in their bill of entertainment. Human nature stays pretty much the same from year to year. The Romans had gladiatorial combats, and the old barons and such, knightly tournaments. Folks got hurt in those affairs.

Nowadays people like to see men and women go up in balloons and jump off with a few yards of canvas between them and kingdom come, or else see a loop-the-loop, or an airman fly upside down—anything where a mishap will mean sudden death. I don't know why, but it's so. You know it.

And so we amusement-venders have to pull a dangerous stunt now and then. That is how Pitkin came to dope out the “Butterfly” in the first place. He was our electrician. We have a new one now. But he fixed this “thriller” and it gave one audience, at least, a sensation not down on the bill.

Pitkin was nuts on electricity—had all sorts of funny notions about what it could do—was always experimenting with the “juice,” and he certainly knew how to make it do what he wanted it to.

He figured that a big act like this, full of blue sparks and things, would make a big hit, and he put it straight up to old man Barnaby himself.

At first Barnaby was shy of the thing. Then his need of a new act and the scheme of the thing itself took hold on him. Pitkin assured him that he could make it as safe as a church during Lent, and he fell for the act and had it built.

Now in itself, the act is all right—if something don't go wrong. That's the whole thing with most of the big stunts, however. It's the thing which sometimes gives the dear public something not down, and it's because of the off chance of something going wrong that they all hold their breaths and hope. But they're not hoping it will.

In working, Mitchi wore insulated shoes and her tights were rubber, too. The mouthpiece of her pulley was made of soft rubber into which she bit. Unless she were to brush the wire with her naked arms or her face she was pretty safe.

She had to be quick at the net, of course, so as to hit it right and not fall against the wire. But that's nothing much for the trained acrobat which she was.

Still, when it came to getting a woman for the act after it was built, Pitkin and Barnaby had some trouble, until they picked up Mitchi Maya out of an aerial troupe.

She'd been with the show for some time and was about the neatest little gymnast you ever saw. She had blue eyes like the flowers of wild flax, and a little straight nose, and a clear, fine skin, with a figure as supple and pliant as a spring. And she had a nerve to match her good looks, which isn't always the rule by a long shot.

The old Hungarian who was head of the aerial troupe had picked her up as a baby, adopted and trained her, and he always kept her with him. There was some story about a widowed mother in the old country, and I know Mitchi used to send money somewhere over there.

Well, when she heard about the “Butterfly” going begging for a woman, I guess she got a bug she could save a lot more money out of the job. They pay big for such stunts. She thought if she earned enough she could get the old dame over here and sort of look after her first hand instead of by correspondence.

First off she had a long powwow with the old Magyar who had raised her, and though he put up some kick about her leaving his act, he gave in in the end like we all do for a pretty woman. Next she goes to the “old man” and says she'll sign on for the big bill; and the first thing we knew Pitkin and she were working the thing up between shows and before performances, after the big top was up.

The act created a good deal of excitement, even among our crowd themselves. I remember we all stood around mighty shaky the first time it got a try-out.

Some of the women got pretty pale the first time that little kid stepped out on that hell-spitting wire in her little pink tights, and I know I felt sort of lumpy in the throat myself.

But Mitchi was as cool as a nice icy grapefruit, and she got by with the trial in great shape. Then, too, Pitkin swore there wasn't any real danger.

He explained all about it. It seems that the balancing-wand she carried, with a big brass knob on the end, was a sort of safety device. At least that is what I gathered from his line of talk. He said the knob collected all the surplus electricity which wasn't taken care of by her shoes and suit.

It was something like some sort of jar—Leyden jar he called it. Anyway, as I understood it, it was a sort of fancy lightning-rod she carried, which caught up all the diffused currents and made her safe. As for the slide, it only lasted a few seconds, and the rubber mouthpiece was built so that she couldn't get hurt.

Still, it sure looked fierce to see that kid frolicking around on the thing. It gave me the willies the first time, and it sort of gets me fussed up now and again, even now. You see I can't just forget what happened—once.

 

After the trial we all congratulated them, and Mitchi laughed, with her little red mouth open so you could see her strong white teeth. She said it was a lot easier in fact than the trapeze act of the old Magyar's she had left. As for Pitkin, he grunted and let it go at that. Nobody expected anything else from him.

He was a funny fellow, dark as Mitchi was light, and wiry, with a sort of sallow skin and a great mop of black hair which he wore so long it curled up at the back like a duck's tail. He had black eyes, or at least black-brown, and a half-way discouraged mustache. By his own tell he was a Russian who had left the old homestead on the jump, about a hose-length ahead of a Siberian excursion the Czar was getting up for some undesirable “cits.”

Pitkin made a getaway and beat the police to the frontier. He'd been what he called a student with progressive thinks in his tank. He had a sort of slow, quiet way about him and wasn't much of a mixer. He'd rather get off by himself and mope around half a day than join a friendly gabfest or a game of cards. But he sure was studious when it came to using the “juice” for funny effects.

Oh, he was bright all right—only, to look at the chap, you wouldn't ever have thought he had a live wire of feeling coiled up in himself. He just gloomed around and we rather let him alone, most of the time.

But he was human under all his reserve—human in a wild, untrained sort of way, for all his being a student. Dogs, you know, are said to be domesticated wolves, and Pitkin was human the same way that a wolf is a dog.

I fancy the Czar was right—the chap wasn't safe to run with ordinary mutts like the rest of our crowd. We found that out later, too, and it all came about through the butterfly act.

Being with Mitchi like he was, in trying out the act and working it up he saw a lot of the girl. As a matter of fact I don't blame him for getting stuck on that pretty little kid. She was pretty, and game, and on top of that she was a sweet-dispositioned little thing and a prime favorite with our bunch.

The upshot of it was that the Russky fell head over heels in love and wanted to get married right away. Mitchi told him straight out that she didn't care for him that way and that she wouldn't marry any man unless she loved him. He took it mighty badly and grew more sullen than ever.

He was one of those people who have to have what they want, no matter how they get it; and he wouldn't take no for an answer. Every now and then he'd come back with his proposal. And each time he got the same answer he grew a trifle more grouchy about it. He used to go mooning around with his big eyes, black and mournful, except when he was looking at Mitchi, and then they seemed to snap, and dance, and sparkle.

I've seen him stand and eye her, and after a while spread out his fingers like claws and shut them as if he imagined he could grab her and drag her to him. He'd get a sort of hungry wolf-look on him at times like that.

But Pitkin wasn't the only person who had found Mitchi attractive. Before she left her own to go into Pitkin's act, Mitchi had been a member of a Hungarian family. It wasn't a family, really, like some of them are, but a bunch the old Magyar who ran it had picked up here and there and trained. One of them was a young fellow named Collins whom the old man had grabbed just before Barnaby signed the troupe.

He was a mighty good aerialist, was Tom Collins, but instead of a Hungarian he was Irish, with brown hair, blue eyes, and a mighty well set-up figure. Before she left the act he did one of those flying swings and catches with Mitchi. One of the fellows would grab her by the heels and swing head downward with her. After a bit he'd let go and toss her to Tom, who was hanging by his knees from his bar.

It was a trick calling for a cool head and a sure eye for distance, because the Magyar people worked without a net, and it's a long ways from the bars to the ground. Their apparatus was placed 'way up toward the canvas of the big top, higher even than the top of the tower for the Butterfly number, and a miss would have spelled good night for Mitchi. Tom, like Pitkin, was human—in a more human fashion. He was a good old-dog-Tray sort of human, though his nerve showed up all right when it was needed and made him a bit of the wolf for a time.

You can't expect a man to go on catching a pretty girl in his arms twice a day for months, without noticing what sort of a girl she is. Collins got so he had a hungry look in his eyes, too, those days.

He had a rather romantic respect for the girl, which made his love a wholly different thing from Pitkin's. Just the same we folks knew he was crazy about her, and Pitkin knew it, too—trust a man like him to sense it!

The result was that one day when Mitchi turned him down pretty sharply and told him to cut out his nagging in the future, he up and accused her of liking Collins better than she did him.

Mitchi rather lost her head for a minute and told him he was a pretty good guesser, though up to that time, as I know now, Tom had never told her a word about how he felt. I guess maybe the girl spoke on impulse, right out of her heart. She'd had a chance to notice big-hearted Tom, all right, the same as he had her, and she was a lot nearer his age and more his sort.

Anyway that's what she said, and Pitkin blew up. He swore that before Tom should have her he'd kill him, and added, if that wasn't enough he'd kill her.

Mitchi told him to stop talking foolish because Tom hadn't showed any signs of wanting to marry anybody that she knew of; and she certainly wouldn't marry a man unless he asked her, and not always then.

But Pitkin was too crazy mad to have any sense.

“You want to marry zat peeg, Collins!” he sputtered. “You haf say eet—but you s'all not. I swear it. Me you s'all marry an' no uzzer. Say zat you weel marry me, Mitchi, or I s'all keel zis Collins. I weel keel—keel—even you, Mitchi, my heart—even you!”

He lifted his hands and, clutching into his mane of black hair, waggled his head around and groaned.

At least that's what the ringmaster, who happened to be passing says he did. The ringmaster jumped in and called him down pretty swift, and he moped off.

 

Of course the thing leaked during the day, and Tom heard all about it. That night in the trapping-room, while everybody was dressing, he walked over to the Russian right before the whole male end of the show and put it to him straight, to let the girl alone. Of course he didn't mention Mitchi's name—Tom wouldn't—but we all knew what he meant.

“Look here, Pitkin,” he began. “I've heard a lot of stuff you've pulled about bumpin' me off. Now that's all right. Any time you want to get busy—why, start. But that ain't all. I ain't goin' to mention names, but I'm hep to what's eatin' you, my boy, and I want to tell you that maybe that sort of work goes where you come from, but it's too raw for over here. You want to be careful how you spill any more chatter like that while you're runnin' with this bunch, bo.”

For a minute Pitkin didn't answer. He stood with his black eyes snapping, breathing hard, and a look on him like a dog getting ready to jump at your throat, then—

“I say w'at I mean, Misser Collins,” he got out between gasps.

Tom gave him back stare for stare.

“I hope not, Pitkin,” he says rather slow, “because if I hear of your trying any more of this hazing—of these threats—oh, not about me, Pitkin—but on somebody else—I'll break your —— neck.”

Pitkin yelled out in Russian and jumped for him. I was there and saw it. Tom just put out a hand and shoved him back. The boy wasn't looking for trouble.

After a bit we got Pitkin quieted down and the thing blew over for the night; but as it happened later Tom was a bit of a prophet without really meaning to be.

When he was dressed for his act, which went on before Mitchi's, Tom hunted her up, however, and cautioned her to be careful of the Russian, and told her, if she found herself needing help, to call on him. Mother Boone, our “circus mother,” says they talked mighty low for a spell after that, and that Mitchi laughed in a rather embarrassed fashion and ran back into the women's section of the tent, while Tom walked off whistling in a rather self-satisfied way.

After that Mitchi began to spend a lot of time with Collins, and Pitkin got so that he went around muttering and mumbling to himself. I think he really was touched a little. It's the only way I can explain the thing he planned to do. I noticed, too, that Tom used to watch the Russian every time the act went off after that.

The aerial act with which he worked, although beginning before the butterfly, stopped while the big act was on. Tom's bar was nearest the tower, perhaps twenty feet away and higher than its top.

Well, he'd sit on his trapeze during the interruption and watch every move the Russian made, and though none of us knew it then, he had planned it all out in case anything should happen while the butterfly act was on.

We made a couple of jumps after the two men had their run-in in the trapping-room, and nothing happened. Everything went smooth, and most of us had about let the matter slip out of our minds. And then the thing hit us like a shock of Pitkin's own “juice” and knocked us off our pins.

 

We were playing a two-day stand and the business was tremendous. Every performance packed the big top to the canvas. The Butterfly was simply going immense.

It was the last night of the stand. Collins was dressing for his turn when Pitkin rushed into the trapping-room and began to rummage about in his own trunk like a dog clawing for a buried bone. All the time he was mumbling away and sort of chuckling to himself.

At the time Tom didn't give much attention to him, but afterward he remembered and spoke of it to me.

Tom finished dressing and went out to the fly of the big top to wait for his troupe's signal. There he found Mitchi, wrapped in her cloak, waiting for the Russian to join her before they should get their call. Quite as a matter of course, Tom stopped and spoke to the girl.

She seemed rather nervous and hardly herself. He asked her what was the matter.

“I'm afraid, Tom,” she told him without any feminine fencing. She'd come to trust Collins pretty fully. “Boris—” Pitkin's name was Boris—“has been awfully queer all day. He's asked me to marry him twice since morning.” She laughed in a forced fashion, and went on: “That's a record. Once a day has been his limit. But ever since the last time, this afternoon, he's gone around muttering to himself—and I don't like his looks. Honest, Tom, I don't believe he's just right. I believe he's crazy——”

Collins grinned.

“He's crazy about you, all right,” he said.

“I meant crazy—about me,” said Mitchi. “And he's been threatening again, Tom. He says—he'll kill you—unless I do what he wants.”

“I ain't nervous,” Tom assured her. “He talks too much. Your bad man talks after, not before. But if he don't stop pesterin' you, why—I'll have to marry you myself.”

Mitchi laughed in a nervous fashion.

“Then if he keeps it up I'll have a right to break his neck,” Collins went on, rather carried away by his words and the girl's demeanor and nearness, and his own love for every atom of her. “I told him I would once.”

Mitchi gave him a smile.

“It's all right to joke,” said she, “but I'm really nervous tonight, Tom. If you'd seen Boris' eyes——”

Tom rather lost his head for a minute.

“I ain't joking, Mitchi,” he informed her in a way which brought her eyes up to his. “An' I tell you what you do. After tonight go to the old man and put it to him straight. He'll call this guy off or tie a can on him. Or—if you'd rather, marry me, Mitchi. As my wife, your bughouse Russky wouldn't have a leg left to stand on. Can't you think of worse things than bein' Mrs. Collins?”

I don't know what Mitchi would have answered to that, because just then Tom's act was called and he had to leave on the jump. Even love has to step down when your number is called in the circus. He joined his troupe, trotted in and was pulled up to his bar.

Later he told me that it wasn't till after that, when the act was really started, that he really began to feel worried. Then it came to him all at once that something was due to happen.

Just why it should be that night he didn't know. All along Pitkin's threats had gone for nothing. In fact Tom rather felt that the man was afraid to start any trouble. But now it hit him all at once that trouble was due.

He says he went through his own act by instinct pure and simple, and all the time something kept telling him to grab a rope and slide down and stop things before the Butterfly was called.

But he didn't. Circus people are pretty loyal to the show, as a class. They know the performance has to go on, no matter what happens; and most of them will suffer a lot of pain, or worry, or sickness, before they'll drop out of their act or make a holler of any sort. And the Butterfly is the big number, of course.

Tom told himself he was foolish; that just because he loved the girl so much he was nervous about her; that Pitkin was merely trying to scare her into the marriage, and he felt better—or at least he decided there was no cause for worry. Still, all the time he was worrying.

He says now that he knew something was coming, only he wouldn't admit it to himself because he couldn't believe anybody would attempt a thing as fiendish as the thing Pitkin did.

Just the same, when Mitchi and Pitkin came in, Tom watched the girl climb the tower, and all his love took hold on him afresh. She was little, and slender, and sweet, and he could see her face looked worried, too.

When the band stopped, and the megaphone barked, and his own and all the other acts in the rings came to a pause, he says now, he had all he could do to keep from yelling out and telling them to stop right there.

All he did do, however, was to draw himself up and sit on his bar, watching Pitkin and Mitchi's little pink figure, with every muscle in him tight with watching.

The act began all right. Mitchi did her stunts on the wire and came back for the slide. Pitkin took her to the edge after he'd fastened on her wings, and held the mouthpiece for her. They did it that way then, though now she always takes the mouthpiece in her teeth first. And there's a reason for that.

Well, Pitkin, who always wore rubber gloves, lifted the mouthpiece for her to bite, and Tom saw him speak to her when he did it. Mitchi shook her head and shrugged her shoulders. The Russian frowned and sort of nodded his head.

Mitchi flapped her wings and tilted back her pretty little face. Even then Tom never suspected anything except that Pitkin had proposed again, which he had—the last time, too, as it happened. I guess in his crazy mind he thought he was giving the girl a final chance.

 

All at once Mitchi goes up on her toes and grips the rubber bit in her mouth, and then, right before the whole tent, she stiffens and seems to stretch out in a sort of spasm. And before anybody could lift a hand, Pitkin pushes her off the tower and down she goes.

You know how a current will produce a spasm of the muscles. Well, that's what happened. When the current hit her through the jaws, they locked into the rubber and she couldn't let go or fall off. Pitkin knew that and figured on it to give the current time to kill her.

She flashed along the wire, hit the net and lay still under the wire, with the bit still fast in her teeth. And she never moved.

It sure was awful. When she hit, some of the lamps she wore broke and cut through her tights, but she never felt it. She just lay there and cooked. She was unconscious.

I gave one look at her poor little huddled shape in the net and turned away—sick.

Then I looked up at the tower. Pitkin stood there with his arms folded and his head back, and the most awful, hellish grin on his face I ever saw.

The whole tent was in an uproar. Several men ran toward the tower as if to climb up and shut off the current. Women were screaming and fainting all over the place, and men were yelling and cursing in excitement.

The ringmaster was trying to prevent a panic in the crowd. Through the megaphone he began barking at Pitkin over the shrieks and yells:

“Turn off the juice! Turn off the juice!”

Pitkin seemed to wake up at that, and looked down. The smile on his devil's face got wider, it seemed. He waved a hand toward poor little Mitchi and pointed to himself, as if to say he had meant to do it, and had succeeded, and defied us to do anything in time to save the life he was taking.

By that time one of the boys was half way up the tower, but he never would have made it in time. Even if he'd got up, he'd have had to fight Pitkin before he could reach the switch.

Right there the band began playing, by orders, to quiet the crowd. It seemed ghastly, too. There they were banging out ragtime, with that girl burning to death before everybody's eyes. I felt sick all over, believe me. It was fierce.

 

It was Tom Collins, the man who really loved her, who saw the only way out and took it on the jump. While we were yelling at Pitkin to cut off the current, and he was grinning his hellish triumph, Tom got busy. He let himself down from his bar by his arms and began to swing.

He gave himself a pretty strong momentum and forced himself to wait until it was sufficient. Then he let go. I've mentioned that his bar was higher than the tower and twenty feet beyond it.

When Collins let go, he came down in a straight foot-dive for the top of the tower itself, where Pitkin stood waving his hands and beginning a sort of fiendish clog-dance, right on the edge.

Pitkin's back was toward Tom and he didn't see him coming. I did. I saw him leave the bar and come down like an arrow, holding both feet together. Right in the middle of Pitkin's insane dancing Tom hit the tower, tried to straighten up, and staggered, lurching full into the Russian's back.

Pitkin yelled out once. He screamed like a wounded animal sometimes will—a wild, hoarse, unhuman-like screech. Then, thrown completely off his feet by Collins' impact, he plunged out from the tower's edge and fell over and over into the ring below, to lie awfully still with his black head bent back under his shoulders.

Collins paid no attention to that. He was at the switch. When he bumped into Pitkin it stopped his own fall and straightened him up.

In one leap he reached the switchboard and pulled out the lever.

The lamps sputtered and died, and poor little Mitchi relaxed in the net. I think everybody in the tent sighed at once. It sounded like a gust of wind.

Two of the tent-men were already swarming up ropes to the net, and Tom was racing down the tower. By the time they lowered Mitchi over the edge of the net, he was there to take her in his arms. He caught her and cuddled her up on his breast and kissed her before the whole tent. Then he turned and raced for the exit.

The band was still playing and the other acts started again at the ringmaster's signal. Two hands picked Pitkin up and lugged him out to the trap-room. Collins with Mitchi in his arms passed me at the fly.

There was a wild, fierce look in the boy's eyes. Just for that once I saw the old primitive, human-wolf strain look out. He gave me a glance and ran on into the woman's section of the dressing-tent, without so much as by your leave.

I think he'd forgotten everything on earth but the woman rolled in against his heart. He laid her down and began pumping her arms up and back and down again, like you do those of a man who has drowned. All at once he spoke:

“Get a doctor—a doctor—for God's sake! Ain't anybody got any sense? Get a doctor! She ain't dead! She won't die! I won't let her, I tell you! Get a doctor—quick!”

Some of the girls and Mother Boone tried to get him to let them take charge, but he wouldn't. As it happened, though, there was a doctor in the crowd, and by that time he was coming into the dressing-tent door. He came in and took hold in good shape as soon as Tom would let him.

At first the boy was so rattled he wouldn't let anybody touch her; just knelt there beside her little pink body and snarled, and worked her arms up and down.

I went up and told him the man was a physician, and because he knew me he listened. He looked up at the doctor; then staggered to his feet.

“Take me away, Bill,” he mumbled.

I took him by the arm and led him outside the door of the girls' section.

There he balked. He wouldn't go a step farther. We hung around for a good two hours, and though everything else was loaded up for the jump, we didn't strike that tent till Mitchi could be moved. Old Barnaby sure acted white about that. A delay means a lot to show-folks; but Barnaby sure did the handsome. I guess he felt sort of guilty about having let Pitkin fix up the act in the first place, for he paid Mitchi's hospital-bill.

 

It was about one o'clock when the doctor came out and says he thinks she'll pull through with good care, and that he's going to call an ambulance. When he heard that, Tom began to laugh all at once.

“I told you she wouldn't die!” he said between chuckles to me. “I wouldn't let her! She's mine! But Pitkin died, didn't he, Bill? I told him I'd break his —— neck!”

And with that Tom dropped to the floor in a genuine faint.

He stayed behind, too, when the show went on. All the four weeks Mitchi was in the hospital he hung around. By the time she was ready to come back to the show, the two had decided to sign each other up for a life-engagement. They went off and got married, and Mitchi came back as Mrs. Collins.

But they work under her name. They bill as a brother-and-sister act, and Tom Collins handles the switch.

As for Pitkin, his neck was certainly broken. I think he deserved it for what he did that night. I've mentioned that the man was an electrical expert, and he had planned this thing all out. He'd taken an extra pulley and mouthpiece and soaked the whole thing in a strong copper solution for days.

That night he switched pulleys and put on his copper-loaded one. When Mitchi bit it the current jumped into her like lightning. That, by the way, is why she takes the bite now before her wings go on.

If any josher tried that stunt again, she'd taste it or drop on the tower, at least, even if Tom didn't get it first in his bare hands. He doesn't wear gloves. Tom Collins is sure mighty careful of his wife.

We picked up a new electrician, and nobody wept for Pitkin. Even the coroner, when he'd heard all the evidence we could give, decided his death was due to accidental causes, and nobody kicked on that.

Wednesday's Good Reading: “Lancing the Whale” Talbot Mundy (in English)

 

As he watched the stricken enemy slink off toward the skyline and knew there would be vengeance later on, Dick Anthony no more feared the future than he thought of flinching from his own half-drilled rabble.

He admitted to himself now that his two quick victories within a week meant little more than two spur-marks on Russia's hide. He had to stir if he was to save Persia from the Russian yoke! Action, and only action—swift, unexpected and well-planned—could help him in Persia.

Russian dead and wounded lay scattered over two square miles of plain, and the walled city of Astrabad lay helpless for the taking.

His ragged line stood still gazing in wonder at him in the flush of his new success, gaping belief, now, more than ever of Usbeg Ali Khan's wild story, that made him Alexander of Macedon reincarnated. But he cantered down among the spaced-out companies, letting the sunlight flash along the blade of his strange jeweled claymore, and his voice was like the cracking of great whips, as he made his will known, his seat in the saddle that of a man who is obeyed.

"Back!" he ordered, "back to your hills again!"

"Let them loot, bahadur!" Usbeg Ali Khan advised, riding up to Dick's side.

Dick wheeled on him, spinning his big horse in one of those swift movements that were as disconcerting as they were characteristic.

"I made you second-in-command! What are you doing here? Take the left wing and answer for your men's behavior! Join your command, sir!"

Without another word he spurred to the far end of the other wing where his seven hundred horsemen were drawn up and Andry MacDougal leaned, swearing soft, endearing oaths at the machine gun.

"Where awa', Mr. Dicky?"

Dick reined in and the huge man laid a hand on the charger's withers.

"Back to the hills, Andry. Are your men in hand?"

"Ou-aye!"

"Then lead the way! Lead off with your gun! Back along the way we came!"

"But—Mr. Dicky——"

"What?"

"About Marie?"

"Man! Her that's waitin'-wumman on the princess yonder!"

Dick scowled at the horizon. A cloud of dark dust curled and eddied above a low hill and stampeding Cossacks; beyond the cloud, he knew, was the princess who had interfered and played with him until he was outlaw who had once been proud Scots gentleman. It was only human to connect the princess and her maid together in one comprehensive loathing, and to forget for the moment that the maid had fallen victim to Andry's gargoyle charms—that she loved the huge man—and that she had already given proof of her devotion.

"Did you hear my order?"

"Ay! Stan' by y'r traces, there! Take hold!"

Sixty tired men sprang from the ground to do his bidding instantly, and Dick rode on to where all the Russian reserve ammunition lay piled on commisariat wagons, horsed from the stables of Russian officers.

"Forward!" he ordered, pointing to the hills, and the cavalcade began to move.

At the far end of the other wing Usbeg Ali swallowed his own thoughts of plunder and forced Dick's will on men whose ideal might be Persia liberated, but whose immediate yearning, like his own, was for the loot in Astrabad bazaars.

"Bismillah!" he muttered in his beard. "The fellow strokes his stubborn chin, looks up once to heaven, and then knows what to do! I tell tales of him that I invented and the tales prove true ones! I prophecy about him, and the prophecies come true! Who am I that I should doubt the hand of Allah! Nay—I am a soldier and I have my orders!"

He rode like a thunderbolt, once up and once again down the line, shouting for close order; and since close order presaged movement of some kind they obeyed him readily enough.

Dick halted where the foothills rose abruptly from the level land, and the horses could no longer drag the heavy wagons fast enough to keep up with the climbing infantry.

He ordered the wounded taken from the wagons where they lay on the cartridge boxes. He ordered bough-litters made for them, and told off carriers. Next, out came the cartridge boxes, and he served out two hundred rounds a man. There were thousands on thousands of rounds left over, and he had them packed on the horses. Then he ordered:

"Haul the wagons by hand along the ridge! Draw them up in line!"

They obeyed him, wondering. In full view of the distant city they arranged a barricade of wagons, overturning them and locking each to each until the whole was like a wall.

"Now guard them for me until my return!" Dick ordered, riding down to where the rearguard watched inquisitively. Usbeg Ali stared wide-eyed, but Dick bade him lead the advance guard now straight up toward the mountains.

"Lead off with the horse!" he ordered. "Throw out a screen ahead and on either flank. Wait for me unless I have caught up before you reach the fifth mile."

Dick shut his lips tight in a way that Usbeg Ali was beginning to recognize for the abrupt, blunt end of argument. He saluted and rode away.

"Now! 'Tention! Listen!"

They had been leaning on their rifles, but the crack and resonance Dick gave his words brought them up standing like drilled men.

"Yonder in Astrabad there are not many Russians left, but those we have just worsted may rally and return. They are likely to. I am going on, a day's march from here. If you are attacked you may send a man to warn me. Meanwhile you—Yussuf Ali—command this rearguard. Stand here and defend this position and these wagons until I come back. Don't trouble to conceal yourselves. Light fires tonight; let the Russians know where you are; and the best way to avoid attack will be to make the Russians think you are more numerous than you are. To the wagons—forward—march!"

Five minutes later, he left them digging trenches with whatever tools they could improvise, and he rode away with no doubt in his mind that they would stay there.

"Forward!" ordered Dick, riding to the head of the remaining infantry. Up, up Dick led but said nothing and no answered questions. Not even when they came on the advance guard, waiting for them on the plateau, and Usbeg Ali Khan rode back to report the trail all clear, would Dick give any details of his plan.

He called a halt at last when he reached the brow of a cliff that overhung the plain, and pointed to a fringe of trees behind which they might lie and rest.

"No camp-fires now! No watch-fires tonight! No noise! Eat your rations cold and sleep where you lie!" he ordered.

"Bahadur, I am second-in-command; may I not know the secret?" asked Usbeg Ali. "Am I likely to betray a confidence?"

Dick smiled. He knew well the Afghan's loyalty. But he knew, too, who had told those utterly amazing tales about Iskander come to life again, and he judged that such poetical imagination would be better not too freely fed. Dick wanted his army quiet—incurious—at rest.

"There's no secret, Usbeg Ali. I've got suspicions; by dawn I'll know the truth. Help me pick watchmen now! Use all your wits—we need eyes, ears and silence!"

Then as Gideon once did in Bible story, Dick took steps to choose a handful from his host on whom he could depend. He and Usbeg Ali walked here and there, here and there, in and out among the companies, looking for men whose eyes were bright still, and who are not too tired to answer jest with jest.

It took them two hours to pick a hundred and fifty men; but at last they had three fifty-man platoons to take the strain in turn, and then they pushed a living fringe far forward, beyond the low foothills to the hot plain. Dick posted them, though Usbeg Ali went with him to see, and Usbeg Ali listened to the orders that he gave; but the Afghan learned little.

"Now for the closest watch that ever army kept!" commanded Dick. "The man caught nodding dies! The first man to get information wins promotion on the spot! I'm short of good sergeants!"

"We will watch as the night birds watch for mice!" they promised.

"Two hours!" said Dick. "Two hours, and then relief for four—then, two hour's watch again!"

When the last fixed post had been attended to, he and Usbeg Ali walked back through the gathering gloom to the foot of the overhanging cliff, where Dick had ordered a grass bed made for himself, raised on four cleft sticks.

"I'm going to sleep here," he said, "where they can find me quickly. Go up to where the men lie; sleep until dawn!"

"Sahib, I——"

"It is an order, Usbeg Ali!"

So the Afghan went, regretfully—almost resentfully—yet sore-eyed from long wakefulness, and soon his snores sang second to Andry MacDougal's rasping salutation to the sleep god. The whole host was sleeping almost before the sun went under, and none but the shadow-lurking outposts saw four horsemen, one by one, go racing along the plain at chance, uncertain intervals.

Dick's orders were for silence and no attempt was made to shoot the gallopers; three slipped by untouched. So the fourth man, riding within sound of the third's hoof thunder, gathered confidence. He rode full pelt into a trap. They tripped his horse with a pegged rope, and pounced on him to strip him, and whether he broke his neck in falling or they broke it for him they reported him to Dick as dead. When they had torn every strip of clothing from his body they discovered a letter tucked in his sock, and hurried to Dick with it, quarreling as they ran as to who had earned the reward. Dick—leaping from his bed before they were within ten yards of him—promoted all five instantly.

Then he struck match after match, and burned his fingers in his eagerness to read the message, chuckling to himself and thanking the god of good adventurers because he knew enough Russian to understand the fifty words scrawled on a piece of unofficial paper. No need of an interpreter! No one to share the news! Nobody, then, to warn the Russians! For the hundredth time his trick of keeping silent had served him well!

At dawn, when the drifting, greyish mists were rising to proclaim the hour of prayer, he found Usbeg Ali Khan—adventurer, idealist, true believer—rising from a prayer mat facing Mecca.

"Look!" said Dick, pointing through a rift in the mist to the plain below. Something moved, slowly, like a darker bank of mist amid the rest—half a thousand feet below, and ten miles distant—noiseless apparently, and yet there was a hint of something that suggested thunder.

"By the blood of Allah's prophet!" said the Afghan. "Guns!"

"In a few hours we will have guns!" answered Dick.

 

•••••

 

Never, probably, since in the dawn of ages Asia first began to writhe under the hates and loves, the devilish desires and passion-bred wars of individuals, had the hot plains outside Astrabad seen fury such as rent the Princess Olga Karageorgovich while Dick's little army wound its way towards the hills.

"Cowards!" she screamed. "Curs!"

She turned them, though it took two hours. She brought them to a halt at last—rallied them—faced them about—and lead them back; and how she did it, only she knew. There were men behind her when she came whose faces streamed blood where her whip-lash had descended; there was an officer whose blood ran in his eyes. They followed her like little beaten dogs, tramping in fours as if in leash, too dazed and frightened to remember anything, or to do anything but obey her dumbly and march numbly at her bidding back to Astrabad.

They were challenged—brought to a halt outside the gate.

"Open!" she ordered, and the gate swung.

So she rode in at the head of a little more than two half regiments, reckless of the dead and dying on the plain outside and thoughtful only of Russia's grip that must be reclenched on northern Persia. Gone was her passion for Dick Anthony—gone up in a blaze of anger and replaced by a hate for him that was inhuman in its devilish determination. Gone was the thought of serving Dick by playing the Okhrana false—gone any hope of seeing him king.

Not a minute did she waste. The wires were down and the Caspian cables cut; she had the field all clear, and none now would be likely to oppose her orders. She seized new buildings for the Cossacks, raided the bazaars and seized an ample supply of food, arrested twenty of the leading citizens and whipped them—set Astrabad a-thunder with the preparation for new, resolute beginnings. Then, looking out toward the foothills from a high muezzin's tower, she saw Dick's line of wagons and believed that he intended to entrench himself in that position.

"Idiot!" she laughed, gazing through the binoculars. "He waits for me! I must smash the wagon barricade with guns!"

But the guns had been sent to harry Dick in his former fastness up in the Elburz mountains.

"Gallopers!" she ordered. "Four! No six!"

She wrote a letter, and made six copies of it, ordering the guns to hurry back and not wait for their escort, explaining in fifty words that Dick Anthony was entrenched near the city, and that therefore the road below the foothills must be clear. She sent them one at a time at intervals, in case of accidents. Two got by unobserved. The following three were seen. It was the last man whose letter reached Dick Anthony.

 

•••••

 

Wreathed in the rising mist, Dick Anthony stood silent on the cliff's projecting lip and gazed through binoculars.

"Bahadur!" said Usbeg Ali, drawing nearer now respectfully, yet somehow with a hint of insolence. He was angry that he had not been consulted.

Dick closed his binoculars, snapped them in their sling-case, and faced Usbeg Ali at last with a good-humored smile that made the Afghan wish he had not spoken.

"I'll trouble you to get your men in hand Usbeg Ali. Get a thousand hidden along the ridge to our right—that ridge that reaches out across the plains. You'd better hurry—the gunners won't be long about breakfast. Wait! Play a waiting game! When they get well within range, open on them; they'll limber up and retire to look for their supports after they've answered with a round or two. Leave 'em to me then. Don't follow—pepper 'em at long range. But don't break cover!"

So, while the gunners ate their breakfast, there crept between them and Astrabad a long line of Persians who had a crow or two to pick with Russia.

A trumpet sounded. Leisurely the gunners seized their reins and mounted. They started at an easy walk—six guns, one following the other, with an extra ammunition wagon to each gun and a considerable convoy of provisions.

A second trumpet sounded for the trot, and for perhaps four hundred yards the column jogged and bumped along, with heavy wagons jolting in its wake, making the dull, rumbling thunder that rides ever with artillery. Then, an officer of the advance saw something on the ridge ahead that awakened his curiosity.

Instead of sending an alarm back and letting the guns halt until he had investigated, he galloped ahead alone; and as he spurred—timed to a nicety—Dick Anthony led his seven hundred horsemen at a walk behind the other ridge. Now, the Russians were between two hidden bodies of an enemy and absolutely unsuspicious of the fact.

The officer rode on and nothing happened. He reached the edge at a point where low bushes crowned it. He rode over it and disappeared. Nobody heard that yell for help as he was dragged from his horse and knifed; nobody saw his body again, for the jackals finished it that night.

The rest of the battery continued to advanced, sublimely ignorant of twitching fingers curled over triggers and of a machine-gun whose mechanism purred to the testing of a canny, careful Scot. The Cossacks loosed their tunics—lit their pipes—and some of them began to sing.

It was that other sense all savage people have—that wordless intuition of impending danger that brought the advance guard to a halt at last within a hundred yards of the ridge. They halted first, and then an officer called "Halt!" without exactly knowing why.

The order had but left his lips when a rifle shot made the word his last one; and then instantly the whole long ridge became a line of spurting flame and there was no advance guard any longer—only a row of horses that stood patiently and one loose horse that galloped back. Heads appeared above the ridge, and yells that made the blood run cold were raised in a sudden storm of sound.

The Russians unlimbered and got into action with a speed that did them credit, and there were enough men left to man each gun and send a withering dose or two of grapeshot shrieking on its way across the ridge.

But Andry's machine gun opened on them pip-p-p-p-ip-ip-ip-p-pip-pip! In a storm of bullets that seemed to slit the very universe in fragments, and that rattled off the barrels of the guns like hail on a window, the Cossacks hooked their teams up, turned and fled—back in the direction of the mountains—back to meet the infantry who should be hurrying hot-foot to catch up to them.

They rode straight towards Dick Anthony. He loosed but half his seven hundred, and rode straight at them! There was sword-work before the guns were taken. A major of Cossacks, maddened at losing the battery that represented all the pride he had, singled out Dick and met him half way, blade to blade. The odds were on Dick Anthony the minute they touched points.

But a Cossack rushed to his major's aid, and Dick's good charger groaned, hamstrung and helpless. A Persian shot the Cossack dead as Dick dismounted, but the Russian major's sword missed Dick by the breadth of a breath of air.

"Surrender!" he yelled; but he gave Dick no opportunity to yield. Instead he rode in with a rush, to make an end.

Dick sprang, if a man may be said to spring whose movement is too quick to see, crossed the horse in front, and seized the major's leg. He could have killed him then and there, for the horse raced on and Dick's grip was unbreakable.

The next thing that the Russian new was that Dick's foot was on him and a claymore's two-edged point was at his throat.

Dick called half a dozen men and ordered one of them to snatch the major's sword away.

"Now, bind him hand and foot!"

He looked once keenly at all six of them, memorizing faces; each knew he could pick all six again out of a thousand should he wish to.

"I hold you six answerable for him!"

He had time to look around him then, and in a second his calm humor left him. His eyes blazed again and his lips became a straight, hard line. His Persians were butchering their Cossack prisoners! Dozens lay dead among the gun-wheels and under the legs of the horses. Fifty more were lined up, ready to be shot, and he was just in time to fling himself in front of them, and stopped the folly that would have turned his battlefield to a shambles and his victory to a crime.

 

•••••

 

Midnight found the Princess Olga Karageorgovich chin on hand, staring at the distant Persian watch-fires that danced before a row of upset wagons.

She believed Dick Anthony behind that row of fires.

Reasoning, in her wild, swift-twisting way, ignoring facts and trusting only prejudice, she had deduced, that Dick was afraid to keep the city he had won. She believed him now to be waiting for reinforcements, and perhaps to be arguing with a swarm of discontented men. The only alternative suggestion she could make was that he meant to watch for the returning guns and then slip back to his mountain-top where he would think that he was safe.

She wrote another message and sent six more gallopers careering through the night, and this time each bore a little map that showed the line of Dick's probable retreat. The infantry were told, instead of following the guns, to climb into the foothills—hunt for Dick's trail—and lie on it in ambush.

Feverish hands, she knew, were laboring at the wires that had been cut. Within an hour from midnight she expected to be in touch again with Petersburg and the secret, swift pulsing heart of half the world's treachery. The Okhrana then would have to know what the outcome of the plan was to use Dick Anthony.

The thought was disquieting.

But that thought brought others, and it seemed to her she had won! From the first the plan had been to make Dick Anthony an outlaw, so that Russia—or rather the Okhrana that is Russia's bane—might have excuse for bringing down more troops to Persia. What more excuse was wanted for the invasion of Persia by an army corps?

She began to see now that her vengeance on Dick Anthony might be accomplished better while at the same time making her own position doubly strong with the Okhrana.

Through the dark, stifling streets she ran swiftly, though entirely unafraid, to a palace that had been assigned to her for quarters before she and the military came to loggerheads. There in a strong-box that was screwed to a heavy table, there were papers that contain the whole Russian dispositions as well as a chart of Persia's weaknesses.

She opened the box now and chuckled as she drew her finger over the map, sweeping every other minute at the moths that fluttered against the lamp or fell singed on her secret papers. Suddenly she slipped the map back in its envelope and called her maid.

"Sit there!"

The princess pointed to a chair at one end of her desk, and the maid sat on it, leaning both elbows in front of her.

"Write!"

With deft fingers, now, she took dictation, writing in longhand, but so swiftly that the princess scarcely had to pause. The princess spoke with her eyes on the wall in front—as if she were focusing the future—and she did not notice that Marie Mouqiin had inserted carbon-paper underneath the sheet she wrote on.

Sheet after sheet was filled. Sheet after sheet was laid on the blotter; but a carbon copy of each sheet fell into the maid's lap, and in a moment when the princess paused to think, shifting in her chair restlessly and glancing to a shuttered window, the sheets were rolled up and slipped into a stocking.

At dawn, they brought word that the wires had been repaired. By that time Olga Karageorgovich had a message ready, written in code, and hers was the first message that went through. It stated after asking that the army corps be started on its crawling way, that a letter giving fuller and important details followed; and the letter started, one hour later, in the pocket of a man whose orders were to kill as many horses as he could by galloping.

But before dawn, another messenger had gone off in a different direction; he bore a copy of the princess's letter, and the original of her secret map. Stowed with them in the envelope was a sheet on which the maid had poured her heart out in what she thought perfect English, and the whole was addressed in a rambling hand to Monsieur MacDoogle, chez monsieur Richard Anthony.

 

•••••

 

"Modern guns, bahadur!" exalted Usbeg Ali. "Nearly automatic! Non-recoiling—no need to re-aim after each shot! A little intricate, the mechanism, yes—but shooting with such guns is easier to teach! Maneuvering? Ah—that is different, but we have picked our best men; they can already ride, and the teams are good! We are an army, now, bahadur—we have guns!"

But Dick knew they were very far indeed from being an army yet. He knew that two regiments of infantry were hurrying to overtake these guns he had just captured and that he must deal with those regiments within a few hours.

The Russians had all that he had not. They had even aeroplanes and wireless. He might expect at any time, he thought, to see a dozen aeroplanes circling like kites to mark him down; and he had heard too much from the princess about an army corps all ready to cross over the border not to believe in its existence.

"Get those guns hidden along the ridge!" he ordered. "We'll wait here for those Cossack regiments."

But he was not destined to fight two battles in the same place. Dick had hidden his six canon in ambush; Usbeg Ali Khan and the other Afghans were busy teaching their beginners the A, B, C of gun-practice; a screen of scouts had been thrown out in four directions, and Dick was busy taking stock of the contents of the captured wagons when the man appeared over the brow of a gentle rise—halted in doubt—and was brought down at long range by a rifleman.

Within ten minutes the dead man had been stripped and his letter was on its way to Dick. In the princess' usual style the letter was unaddressed, though it bore her scrawled initials. Dick tore it open—read the message to the Cossack infantry, ordering them to take to the hills and lie in ambush there—frowned, folded it, tied it in a cleft stick in a way that is customary all through the east—and called a horseman.

"Take this letter. Ride until you find the Russian infantry. Give it to their officer commanding. Say you had it from the Princess Olga Karageorgovich!"

Within an hour Marie Mouquin's messenger rode into view and threw up his hands in the nick of time.

He gave Andry a big envelope, and Andry passed it to Dick without so much as looking at it.

"It's yours," said Dick. "Open it!"

One by one, with awkward fingers that were more used to heavy labor, Andry drew out a letter from the French maid to himself, a folded map and twelve sheets of closely written carbon copy. He passed everything to Dick except the letter.

Dick sat on an ant-hill, poring over the map and comparing it paragraph by paragraph and line by line with the carbon copy of a letter, his eyes glinted as he recognized the unmistakable genuineness of the map and letter, both; he recognized careful workmanship, and most ingenious pains in the provision for a constant succession of brigades on the march southward. And with an instant genius that is born in few men, and that cannot even be acquired by most, he laid his finger on the weak spot before he turned two pages.

"Look here, Andry!" Dick exclaimed. "Look here, Usbeg Ali! Where's Usbeg Ali? Send him here. Look at this, both of you. See? This is the track of the gunboats and other steam-craft that are to bring the first division by water. They're to deliver their loads in Astrabad bay and then return for more. See what it says here? Shallow water! See this footnote? 'Water growing shallower every year.' Note the provision for floats and native craft to be collected and kept in Astrabad bay to help the troops ashore?"

The Afghan was staring at the map over Dick's shoulder, running fingers through his beard and striving hard to make sense of what was altogether strange to him.

"Take it and look at it!" said Dick, pushing the map into his hands. "It's all planned for an advance, isn't it? Do you see the slightest preparation, anywhere in one particular, for a retreat? What would happen for instance, if it were attacked from this direction?"

"In the name of Allah the Compassionate, bahadur, this is the gift of God! The Russians are delivered into our hands!"

 

"Not yet quite, Usbeg Ali! But you see the idea? They've made a foil of us—they've used us as a good excuse for the advance; and once they get here—provided we stay still—they'll have us shut in at their mercy. But we needn't stand still. We can take the fight to Russia, and that, my friend, is what we are going to begin doing this afternoon!

"Usbeg Ali," continued Dick, "hurry, please, and pick me out the best four hundred men we have—four hundred diehards to lead on a forlorn hope!"

"You will invade Russia with four hundred?" laughed the Afghan.

"Surely," said Dick. "I want you and the rest to hold those two Cossack regiment's in check behind us."

 

•••••

 

There had been too many messages, too much ordering and counter-ordering, for the officer commanding the two Cossack regiments not now to be thoroughly on guard.

His scouts reported the approach of Dick Anthony's men long before half of his preparations for an ambush were complete.

Long-range firing began at once, but it served him to do little more than disclose to Dick the nature and extent of the defenses. The first inspection satisfied him that he might well take his four hundred horsemen away, for this was a clear case for infantry and guns.

"By the wagons, he's provisioned for a few weeks, Usbeg Ali! Lay siege to him!" ordered Dick. "If he surrenders, take him and his men up to our camp in the mountaintop and keep him there; otherwise, keep him hemmed in and busy. I shall be perfectly satisfied if I find him in the same place when I get back."

The four hundred rode off, and the only man who had the least idea of what their destination might be, or of the nature of the work ahead, was Dick, who rode in front of them.

He rode ahead for a mile or two; and then, since he did not know what new plans the princess might have made, nor what reinforcements she might have summoned, he sent twenty men along in front of him, under an Afghan officer who knew to an ounce, or a mile, the endurance of a horse and could guess within a reasonable fraction of the limit of a man.

What had been a cruel march from Astrabad was scarcely more than a pleasant gallop back again. In the cool of the night the horses were still fresh enough to quicken the pace, and it was long before midnight when the leading scout caught sight of a watch-fire burning before the barricade of wagons. He galloped back to report all well, and nothing less then Dick's authority could have suppressed the cheer which almost burst out from the column.

Dick went to the front row now and lead them along in silence, and it was he who answered the challenge of a sentry half a mile before he reached the barricade.

He rode on with scarcely a word to the sentry, and his men filed after him by two in silence.

"Salaam, bahadur!" said a deep voice when the barricade was near.

"You, Yussuf Ali?"

"I sahib."

"All well?"

"All well, bahadur!"

"Good!" said Dick. "Leave fifty of your men here. Then take the rest and hurry to Usbeg Ali's aid. He needs you!"

"Where, bahadur?"

"Back along the rode we came. Yes—now—tonight!"

 

•••••

 

Olga Karageorgovich took hold of the reins of government in Astrabad and held them with a grip that would have done credit to a practised ruler of another sex.

She had enough men there to hold the place now against any new attempt Dick was likely to make, but not enough men by a long way to let her dare assume the offensive until the guns should come.

She sent telegram after telegram to Russia along the mended wire, urging that the army corps be started on its way.

In proof of how careful the Russian plans had all been laid for invasion of Persia when occasion offered, gunboats with troops on board began to arrive and dropped anchor in the bay the day after her telegram was sent.

She was seized with the yearning to have it out with Dick—to capture him, and torture him and kill him with her own fingers before the army corps should come to rob her of her revenge. The sight of his dead body would not be enough for her. She, she—must kill him with her fingers!

Then she saw dust and a column on the skyline. She sent gallopers to tell the guns to hurry. Gazing from a tower through strong glasses, she knew nearly as soon as the gallopers that the gunners had left their guns behind and were trudging as another regiment had done, weaponless, ashamed! Now she knew that Dick had fooled her; that he wasn't behind that row of wagons after all!

And, peering from behind the wagons, Dick laughed, in that strange and musical infectious note of his, in about three keys and without a word of explanation.

He could see, bit by bit, the whole puzzle piecing itself together into the shape he wanted. He could guess what move the princess was likely to make next; and his laugh rang like a bell as he saw the smoke of a fair-sized gunboat lifting over the seaward skyline.

The commanding officers refused to march out of Astrabad until the men from the gunboats had marched in, and though she stormed at them and threaten them they stuck to their point. So there was a long delay while a little force of sailors, marines and nondescripts was got together on the shore and the boats were stripped of all except their engineers. Then, when the new force marched in, the old and far more numerous force marched out, hot-foot in an attempt to reach the two regiments before Dick Anthony could capture them or else utterly destroy them.

As they marched Dick watched them closely. He had seen the men brought from the gunboats by the shore. He saw the city gates closed and the few defenses manned by newcomers. Half-way, as he was, between the city on his right front and the bay on his left, he saw everything and read between the lines. Later, he saw the new, big gunboat drop her anchor in the mud and almost her whole crew landed to be marched into the city.

Russia was at her old game—advancing! No thought of a retreat or the need for covering one entered the head of anyone connected with the business.

At night, with steam hissing gently through the safety valves in proof of readiness for all contingencies and of oil fuel's superiority over coal, they all slept except for a man or two who watched the gauges in the engine rooms.

Dick's orders were given so silently that only the company officers gathered round him could hear them. The fifty men whom Yussuf Ali had been told to leave behind were left now in charge of the horses, and company by company the rest were led in silence to the shore, where they hid in deep shadows. Fifty men were sent to cut the wires again; for now it was Dick's turn to wish secrecy. Fifty more men lay down their arms and went in search of small boats. It was two hours after dark when the keel of the last small boat discoverable grounded between the reeds and a voice said:

"All ready now, bahadur!"

With a little splashing and oar-bumping, which made Dick and the company commanders curse, but did not disturb the drowsy gunboat crews, the five advance units of Russia's Caspian fleet were surrounded one by one. Dick blew a whistle, and at once the small boats all headed inward. An alarm was shouted, long too late. The bigger gunboat's siren screamed and her searchlight flickered and then flared, full-on. But by that time Dick was up the side of her—on deck with his sword drawn, and each of the other gunboats was in like predicament.

"Below with you! Get below!" commanded Dick, and the thinned-out crews obeyed. They showed less resentment and more curiosity than the military—more disposition to change masters without troubling themselves about it.

But even Dick, who knew what to expect, was surprised at the readiness with which he was obeyed. The engine room crews were utterly outnumbered, and in the bowels of the biggest of the gunboats—that on which Dick held the wheel—there was a grim, tremendous Andry with a rifle in his hand to see that the bridge signals were answered instantly; but there was no opposition anywhere. The men on the other for gunboats obeyed the orders of Dick's deputies as readily, and got up anchor without waiting for a taste of force. Threats were sufficient.

Dick led the way on the biggest of five gunboats through the winding shoal of Astrabad bay and out to open water while the city behind him stared at the row of watchfires he had left dancing before upturned wagons. Before midnight, he was out of sight of land, steering by compass, and very closely followed by the rest in single line ahead.

So he steamed with the wind behind him, ordering his men to study the bow machine guns and bring ammunition for them up on deck. To his amazement, a Russian gunner left on board as night watchman volunteered to show them how to use the seven-pounders, and Dick accepted his offer without comment; the knout with its stained lash hanging in the wheelhouse was sufficient comment on anything a Russian sailor did by way of treason.

Something of the same kind happened on the following ships, for when Dick led them in a long sweep around toward the lee of a big island his searchlight showed their guns housed, and scratch crews busy trying them. In a few minutes, he ordered the searchlight discontinued, for his heart leaped within him at the site of Russian riding lights. There were dozens of them! There was a regular fleet at anchor, ducking and tossing in a rising sea. There were enough ships there to be carrying ten thousand men—and he had five ships, with four hundred!

"Come on deck!" he ordered down the speaking tube, and Andry came.

"Now, Andry, choose your gun—take that seven-pounder if you care to. You can see the Russian ships? They think we are part of their fleet running to shelter behind them. The storm's rising every second. By the time we're abreast of them it ought to be a hurricane, and six shots ought to turn the trick for us!"

A-wash, a-reel, plunging like a deep-sea monster, Dick's ship headed straight for the Russian anchor-chains, followed dangerously close by four others that moved their helms as he moved his. Suddenly a spurt of flame leaped out from a machine gun, and a stream of lead went whistling—not at the front ships, but at those behind. Instantly the ships that were following Dick's opened up with all the guns they had—a score of rifles took up the refrain, turning the storm into hell's chorus.

Just as the Spanish Armada was defeated by the weather and not men, and only the courage of a faithful few played second to the weather, this steel armada of Russia's for the conquering of Persia was swept and washed into unrecognition by a Caspian southeaster. Dick took no credit to himself. He pursued the Russians till they were scattered all apart. And then, in that condition, Dick drew off and left them.

Is needed all his seamanship to lead his little string of ships back to the shelter of the island from which he had chased the Russians.

Before dawn, the storm died down a little—not enough for comfort, but enough for safety's sake. He ordered the anchors up at once and steamed away before the crews of the stranded Russian ships could recognize him or tell the direction he took. And before midday he steamed into sight of Astrabad Bay.

"Run the boats ashore outside the Bay!" he ordered. "Then blow them up. Let the engineers and crew bring their things ashore, but keep them prisoners—they'll be useful in an hour or two."

 

•••••

 

News of Dick's coming was reported in Astrabad by the roar of five explosions, and by that time Dick had, in all, nearly two hundred prisoners. He marched them to the row of wagons on the hillside and then sent a mounted man to the city with a flag of truce and a word that he was willing to exchange.

"Tell him I will treat with him direct!" the princess answered.

The man rode back with her message and Dick frowned.

"Ride back!" he ordered. Tell her I will come and meet her half way, with one man, provided she shows my forty-three alive outside the wall first."

So the princess made a virtue of necessity and rode out with her maid, followed at a distance by Dick's forty-three.

Dick did not dismount. He touched his forehead, since he wore no hat, and then met the princess eye to eye.

"Is this a decent note to send to a lady?" she asked in French holding out a piece of paper from Dick's memorandum book that he had given to the gunner major.

Dick smiled.

"'These men are murderers,'" she read, "'and this officer has done his best to kill me. I can imagine no worse fate for either than to leave them to your tender mercy. Do your best or worst. Dick Anthony.' Is that a decent letter, Dick?"

"What's the matter with it?" Dick asked. "How did you treat them? Look at them!"

He could have bitten his tongue off in the next instant, for she turned before he meant her to and—saw!

She saw Andry, and there was little else to see because the man was huge, and Marie Mouquin's inches were all smothered in his fast embrace.

"Have you a chaplain in Astrabad?" asked Dick.

The princess smiled sweetly as an angel; so Dick knew he might expect new deviltry.

"Andry!" he said, sternly.

The giant set the maid on her feet and stood upright. The girl sobbed as she drew her first long breath in minutes.

"Get to your place behind me!"

"Now," said Dick. "We are here to exchange prisoners. I offer all I hold of your men against my forty-three you have brought out with you."

"Take your forty-three!" she said, glancing back and motioning them forward with her arm.

The poor devils were so sore and famished they could scarcely begin to march, but they drag themselves forward and each touched the earth as he passed Dick.

"That ends the parley, then!" said the princess.

"Since you say so," answered Dick.

"Then, take that, sir!"

She plunged her hand into her breast and drew a knife. She poised it—aimed it for ten seconds while Dick sat and smiled at her—and hurled it at him. But he ducked and the knife went whizzing past Andry's head as the big man rushed forward to protect his master.

"So, the parley's over, is it?" laughed Dick.

He looked down at the flag of truce that she had flung to the earth. Her horse was standing on it. He tossed his own down and laughed. She screamed, for she knew a turn of events was coming that she was not strong enough to cope with. She wheeled her horse and spurred him, but Dick seized her rein, and she looked up into his eyes again, flashing her hate of him, but conscious of the fact that she was at his mercy.

"My man Andry wants your maid," smiled Dick, "and she seems to want him. So he is going to have her."

The princess stared up at Dick, but she did not answer.

"She needs a chaperon," said Dick.

"Dick. What d'you mean?"

Dick recognized the new note in her voice, and his own changed instantly.

"I mean exactly what I say! Take your girl, Andry!"

More amazed than ever the princess had been, Andry step forward and obeyed.

"Come on!"

"Dick seized the princess's bridle rein and started back toward where his own men waited. She tried to throw herself from the saddle, but he seized her around the waist; and since Andry's girl would follow him without persuasion, the giant left her to stride beside the princess's horse.

"You vixen!" Dick called her; and that was the hardest thing he had ever called a woman to her face. "You gave all your trumps away when you threw that knife at me! You will come now to the mountains and protect your maid's good name!"

She did not answer. She was dumb with rage and fear. Dick rode with her at a walk until he reached the barricade.

"Now, burn those wagons!" he ordered. "Hurry!"

Within ten minutes the long line of wood and wheels was all ablaze, and the princess looked past it at the Caspian, beyond whose waves was Russia and the world of intrigue and luxury that she loved. Her eyes were wet, but Dick laid a hand on her arm and called her.

"Come!" he said simply. Then, turning to his men, he shouted at them "forward! Ride! Ride to the aid of Usbeg Ali Khan!"