THE NTH MAN

Originally published in Amazing Stories Quarterly, Spring 1928.

CHAPTER I

Out of the Jaws of Death

Beyond a doubt, a child in a bathing suit appeals to the whole world. There is something universally enjoyable in the frisking, white legs, the dancing eyes and wild laughter. The surf loses its ominousness in the presence of such.

Florence Neil, aged nine, playing on the beach at Santa Cruz that summer’s morning, offered convincing proof of the truth just stated. The child held the attention of everyone, successfully competing with the charms of certain older members of her own sex, whose bathing suits had been calculated to monopolize all sightseeing. Even the most sophisticated of the beach-lizards found greater enjoyment in the child’s innocent abandon.

Already Florence gave promise of unusual beauty. She was a fairy-like creature, slender, small-jointed, and frail when in repose, although wonderfully animated in action. The tight, one-piece suit revealed the grace and freedom of every motion. Four years later, she was due to become stiff, angular and awkward, agonizingly self-conscious; now, she was utterly unaware that she offered a rare picture, a picture of radiant childhood, perfect, spirited, and unspoiled.

Cavorting there on the sand, her voice shrilling gleefully as she imagined herself being chased by the long, snaky bit of seaweed which she was trailing, she felt no inkling of what was passing through the minds of her beholders. The proud, watchful eye of her mother, seated under a wide umbrella a few yards away, made no impression upon the carefree mind of the child.

None of the admiring glances from beach, boardwalk or pier, made her forget the supreme satisfaction she was getting from her lark. In short, for the time being, she was merely the unconscious medium of expression for a bundle of animal spirits.

Noon approached, and the beach began to fill.

Presently, among the new arrivals, four attracted special attention among the beach-lizards already mentioned. The mother of the girl overheard this:

“See that little kid and the three women? That’s Bert Fosburgh, and his three nursemaids!”

“Gee! Daly Fosburgh’s kid?”

“Yeah. The only heir. It’s a wonder the old robber doesn’t hire a couple of cops to watch the maids!”

Florence Neil’s mother dropped her sewing, to get a good view of the quartette. The three young women handled the boy as though in accordance with some prearranged drill. One removed his bath-robe, another adjusted his rubber cap and sandals, while the third, presumably the maid-in-chief, stood ready to lead him by the hand. Presently the lad stood ankle deep in the surf.

“He’s eight or nine, now; isn’t he?” Florence’s mother heard. Then the reply: “Almost ten; he was born around Christmas, in 1911. Remember?”

Mrs. Neil remembered, too. When Daly Fosburgh’s son had arrived safely in this world, the event had been made one of great rejoicing. The multi-millionaire had presented the state of California with a magnificent art museum, in honor of his only son.

For a while Florence paid no attention to the newcomer. Then, she gave him a glance or two, decided that her highly important affair with the seaweed could wait, and stopped long enough to give the lad a single, thorough inspection.

He stood decidedly taller than she, and looked proportionately heavier in all respects. Moreover, he was larger-boned and bigger-chested. Furthermore, he was blond, of the type which never tans but merely turns red after exposure to the sun. Florence’s hair, eyes and complexion were all just a shade darker than average.

But the chief difference lay in the sedate, unbending manner and gait of the lad, as compared with Florence’s liveliness. He looked as though every impulse to spontaneous, natural action had been stifled in him before it arose. For, despite his premature self-consciousness and gravity, there lurked more than a suggestion of latent fire and force in the unusually good muscular development of his whole body. The boy possessed a very fine gymnasium.

The question was, did he possess a will of his own? He clung obediently to the maid’s hand as she led him, first east, then west, carefully along the rim of the beach. He took care to step in the minimum of water, so that the woman might not wet her dainty slippers. Twice he passed over the same stretch of sand, his eyes upon the tantalizing surf; a close observer would have noticed his free hand clenching and unclenching with repressed excitement.

Otherwise, no sign. He continued to walk quietly along.

Then, he noticed the girl. She was staring straight at him, wondering. Instantly she quit wondering, whirled around and dashed into the surf, laughing mischievously. Out she splashed until the water reached her shoulders, where she turned about and laughed again. This time there was no mistaking her thoughts. She put them into words.

“What’s the matter, ’fraid-cat? C’mon in! I dare you!”

The boy stared. This was a brand new experience. At the same time he seemed to feel, vaguely, that he had been dared before; far, far back in the history of that part of the human race from which he had descended, was an ancestor who had never balked at a dare. Not that any such philosophical thoughts passed through that mind; but his instinct told him that his manhood was being questioned; his character assailed; Somehow he knew it.

The maid’s grasp tightened. Automatically the boy started on. The grasp loosened, and at the same instant the girl’s mocking laughter pealed forth again. Like a flash the boy jerked his hand from the maid’s, and before she could make a move, he had dashed into water up to his waist!

There he stood, gasping. Even in summer the surf is cold, before noon. He was bewildered, too, by a stifled scream behind him and a delighted squeal just ahead.

“C’mon! ’Fraid to come any further?”

“Bertram! Come here this instant! Do you hear?”

He heard; but he knew enough to realize the difference between the command of a hired care-taker and the challenge of an equal. The one could be passed over; the other could not.

And thus Bert Fosburgh and Florence Neil became acquainted. The boy’s private plunge had made him a good swimmer, and he was accustomed to artificially salted water. For all her activity, Florence was barely his equal in the game of tag which immediately started.

Neither of the three maids dared venture into the water, for fear of a wetting. One removed shoes and stockings, but she could not get near the frolicking pair; they simply went out into deeper water. Presently the life-guard’s boat came near, attracted by the laughter; and the maids hailed it, imperiously:

“Make that boy get out of the water! He musn’t play in there! Hurry!”

The guard’s grin of enjoyment merely widened. “He c’n take care o’ hisself, Lady! Don’t need t’ worry about him!”

“But—he musn’t play there, I tell you! He might catch—something terrible, playing with—strange children!”

The guard took one look at the superbly healthy face of the girl. “No danger, lady! I’ll keep an eye on ’em!”

The three maids held a consultation. Immediately one of them repaired to the bathhouse, from which, in the course of time, she emerged clad in a bathing suit. Bert’s eyes clouded with the prospect of an end to his lark.

But the truth is that his teeth were chattering. So were Florence’s. But the maid made the mistake of going into the surf, instead of simply commanding him to come out. He might have obeyed, cold as he was. Instead, she waded in.

So it was to be a chase! The boy warmed up. Also Florence became re-animated as she discomfited the maid with well-aimed spurts of water, directed by sturdy palms. Five, ten, fifteen minutes passed, and the maid was unable to get nearer than three yards of her quarry. And the truth is that, of all the people on the beach, only the other two maids gave her the slightest sympathy.

In the end, it was sheer exhaustion that drove the boy to the sand. Immediately the reaction came; he was glad enough to creep, shivering, into the warm folds of his bath-robe. But his spirit still glowed as it had never glowed before.

“Good-bye!” shouted he to Florence. “I’ve had a jolly good time, little girl! Haven’t you?”

“You bet! Coming down here again tomorrow?”

The boy looked up into the three stern, anxious faces above him. The maids would have to make a strict accounting to Daly Fosburgh. Bert shook his head.

“I think not.” And then he was whisked away to the waiting limousine, at the same time that Florence’s mother, by a crafty bit of maneuvering, captured and enrobed her daughter.

That was in the morning. Neither child had any expectation of ever seeing the other again. And yet, in the most natural manner in the world, Florence’s mother and the three maids chose the same locality for spending the afternoon. There was nothing remarkable in the coincidence. Half the visitors at Santa Cruz follow the same procedure, putting in part of the day at the beach and part at Veau de L’eau.

This place is a portion of a famous Cliff Drive, where the sea has carved the cliffs into fantastic shapes and designs, where a small marine museum had been erected, and where lovers of the ocean invariably repair when at Santa Cruz. There is no beach; only the steady pounding of the sculpturing waters, and the wind.

The limousine arrived first. Keeping a firm grasp on the boy, the nurse-maids visited all the usual points of interest, carefully guarding against any sudden motion on the boy’s part. In fact, one maid kept constantly between him and the cliff; she had not yet recovered from the shock of his unprecedented actions in the forenoon. The lad, without showing any signs of the spirit that still burned within him, enjoyed the scenery as much as might be expected under the circumstances.

Presently the street-car arrived, and Florence and her mother got off. They wandered along the cliff, following the path that everybody treads at Veau de L’eau. It was inevitable that, when it was time for the boy to return, he must encounter the girl and her mother.

This happened about five in the afternoon; an important detail, for it marked the moment of low tide. The water lay about thirty feet below the top of the cliff. In the light of what happened, this cannot be too strongly emphasized; the distance from water to land was five times the height of a tall man.

Being late in the day, there were few sight-seers about. Such visitors as were on hand were scattered up and down the cliff, paying scant attention to each other. From time to time each gazed out over the ocean, without seeing any other craft than a distant coasting steamer. Earlier in the day, fishing boats would have been numerous. Now, scarcely unruffled by the breeze, the water was tenanted only by seaweed and the natural denizens of the deep.

“I’m tired,” announced Bert, about five o’clock. “Let’s go back.”

His word, in such matters, was law. Back the four proceeded, and in less than a minute, encountered Florence.

“Hello!” she shrilled, delighted.

“How do you do?” he inquired, sedately. But the light began to flash in his eyes again. One of the maids saw, and took hold of his other hand. He was a prisoner.

“What makes them so careful of you?” the girl wanted to know. Her mother, on seeing Bert, had deliberately turned her back and walked away, her brow clouded. And Florence went on, relentlessly; “Are you an invalid?”

The boy shook his head, mutely. The maid-in-chief answered for him. And as she spoke, she took in every detail of the girl’s simple, inexpensive gown, the unpretentious hat and sturdy shoes, the very evident lack of means in her whole appearance.

“He is no invalid, little girl. But his health must be very carefully guarded. Especially,” with great emphasis, “he must not associate with children below his station in life!”

This was over Florence’s head. Her only idea of a station was a railroad depot. She replied:

“Mamma says I musn’t play with every old Tom, Dick and Harry, whatever that means; but I don’t see anything wrong in playing with this boy!”

“Don’t you?” There is no snobbery like that of the snobbish maid to snobbish people. “Well, I think differently! Keep away from him, please! Do not come near!”

The girl stood back, astounded, hurt, mystified. She turned an incredulous gaze into the boy’s troubled eyes.

“Don’t you like me?” in an injured tone.

“Oh, but I do!” he flashed back, warmly. “I’m not angry with you, little girl. I’m just”—The-rest of his words were blown away by the wind, a wind created by the peremptory jerking of his two captors. No one seemed to notice Mrs. Neil, striding along ahead of them, her head down, and her cheeks streaked with tears. Her little girl! Was the child, like herself, always to face unhappiness because of the lack of money? Or—what amounted to the same thing—was Florence to suffer like that at the hands of those who had money? It was not right!

And thus it happened that the girl was left alone for a minute or two. She knew enough to keep away from the extreme edge of the cliff. She ventured to within what seemed a safe distance, and stared, still much hurt by what had happened, down into the idly moving waters.

Presently the boy looked back. Next instant he all but jerked loose from his captors. And he uttered a shrill scream.

The cliff was crumbling beneath the girl. As Bert screamed, Florence leaped to one side; but she landed on another crumbling portion. And before the eyes of those who were watching, the earth gave way and slid, with a rumble, into the sea. The girl vanished from sight.

Next moment the two women who were holding the boy found that they had their hands full. He screamed and struggled, so that the third maid had to help to hold him. It was Florence’s mother who, hearing the scream, ran up and peered over the edge.

Florence was on the surface, sputtering dazedly, but paddling much less frantically than one would suppose. Mrs. Neil shouted, trying hard to keep her voice brave:

“Can’t you get out?”

Florence heard. She shook her head, and pointed mutely to the base of the cliff. It was far too precipitous to afford a hand-grasp, much less a foot-hold.

The mother threw a swift glance around. There was no boat nearer than miles. She had a fleeting fancy about airplanes and submarines; but there was no periscope in sight, and nothing but seagulls in the air. She shouted again:

“Keep away from the rocks! Hold your head up, and keep your hands and feet going! I’ll get help!”

Florence understood. She nodded, coolly, and proceeded to save her strength as far as possible, by putting forth only enough exertion to keep afloat. Her nerve was unshaken.

Mrs. Neil ran, as fast as her skirts would let her, past the boy and his maids, and towards the buildings. No outsiders seemed to have seen the disaster. And, even while clinging to the wildly thrashing boy, the three maids could see that the case was hopeless.

The child could not possibly live in that sea until her mother brought help. Even though she escaped being dashed against the rocks she must surely become exhausted and give up, long before she could be rescued. The buildings were too far away. Even the boy seemed to realize it, for, all of a sudden, he stopped his struggling and collapsed in a heap, at the same time bursting into a fit of uncontrollable weeping. The women bent over him.

When they looked up, for a moment neither could believe her eyes. Each looked at the other, stupidly, then gazed down at the boy as though to learn whether he, too, could see what they were seeing.

Then they turned their eyes towards the edge of the cliff again. At the same instant, the boy also looked up. It was he who first found tongue.

“Why—why—where did—Why, what does it mean!”

And then all four fell silent. There on the edge of the cliff, exhausted, dripping, without the remotest idea of how she got there; thirty feet above the water where she had been drowning only a moment before; above the highest point that any wave had ever been known to reach, lay Florence Neil, safe and sound.

CHAPTER II

A Chain of Wonders

The miraculous rescue of Florence Neil took place in July, 1920. And since then the world has been treated to a series of phenomena, each just as baffling, just as inexplicable. Moreover, as they are examined in their chronological order, these events are found to be progressively more bewildering, progressively more vast, until the final mystery leaves the mind fairly stunned with the terrific marvel of it all.

Taken one by one, these miracles offer no solution that is acceptable to the human intellect. It is only when they are grouped together, as the writer is now grouping them, that they become understandable. Only by scouting the globe to get the facts—for these mysteries were world-wide in their distribution—and by examining certain occurrences of the past thirteen years, can the mind appreciate the stupendous Thing that rescued Florence Neil, and that performed the other wonders about to be related.

Yet, once the list is read and all the facts in each case become known, the explanation becomes almost ludicrously simple. What had seemed miraculous, becomes natural, ordinary, understandable. One is no longer dubious as to whether the Nth Man was a creature or a thing.

The mind comes to see, after finishing the investigation, that humans readily become accustomed to that which is really astounding. The familiar example of the telephone will serve; today, we accept the wireless as commonplace. We forget that it was once considered impossible.

Just so do we now accept the Nth Man. We take him as a matter of course.

* * * *

The captain of the Cristobel raised himself, shakily, to his elbow. His voice quavered pitifully in his eagerness.

“Well? Quick, man—did you find it?”

The mate shook his head. “Brought up nothing but shells,” with a gruffness which he probably assumed in order to conceal any pity for the sick man. “Shall I try again?”

“No.” Captain Butler dropped back among his pillows. “Not tonight.” His voice was infinitely weary.

The mate lingered. “There’s something else, sir. When the boys saw that the drag was a failure, they—well, sir, I only hope it doesn’t mean mutiny!”

“Mutiny.” The word did not seem to surprise the captain of the little sloop. “Can’t say—that I blame them.”

He thought deeply for a moment or so, then asked for a finger of rye. He drank it, and in a minute felt strong enough to talk. He knew that the liquor would cost him dear, a little later, but he could only hope that the investment would pay.

“Payson—you understand what this expedition means. Don’t you think”—earnestly—“that you could make the boys comprehend? I hate to let this thing go on, rankling in their minds, until they are driven to extreme measures. I—can stand it to wait. But they can’t. How about it? Couldn’t you make them see it the way you do?”

Again the mate shook his head. “I’ve done too much talking already, sir. They’ve got so they won’t pay any attention to me unless I threaten punishment. They—I’ve spoiled them, sir, by arguing with them.”

“No, you haven’t.” Anyone could see that these two were not born-and-bred seafaring men, but gentlemen forced out of milder walks of life into one for which they were never intended. “No, Payson. I wouldn’t have it any different.”

He took a second drink of the liquor. “Help me into my chair,” he requested, rather than ordered. “I’m going to take a chance with them!”

The mate complied in silence. Within a minute the sick man was facing his crew, a motley dozen, picked up at Colon two months previous. The mate had rounded up everybody, including the cook.

“Men,” began the captain, without delay, “you can guess why I’ve come out here. I’m taking a big chance, with my hip in such bad shape; but I’ve tried to put myself in your place, and I know that I’d want the facts straight from the boss.

“This treasure that we’re after—it’s just as the mate has told you. It was lost about three centuries ago, from a Spanish pirate, the Cristobel. This sloop was named after her.

“But our work is not at all piratical. We are here to recover that treasure, which is in the shape of a single immense ‘nugget’—or rather, a chunk of quartz, shot through and through with virgin gold. Its history is uncertain, but it probably originated in Australia. As for the wreck, the data as to its location was handed down from generation to generation until, finally, it came into the possession of a man with money enough to get results.

“That man is—myself. As for this sloop, and its equipment, it represents all that I have in the world. If this expedition fails, I am a ruined man, and must go back to my wife and children to start life all over again.

“But, if success comes, I, and you just as truly, will be more or less wealthy. I don’t know exactly how much ‘the treasure’ amounts to, but the account indicates that the gold will yield over a hundred thousand, at least.

“It lies here, exactly where we are searching; of that, I am dead sure. Between Antofagasta and Caldera, on the ten-fathom line. And we have already dragged half the distance!

“Just stay by me, boys, and you’ll not regret it!”

The whiskey had had its effect. There was a manly ring in the sick man’s voice that carried conviction to more than half his hearers. A slight murmur of approval arose, quickly checked as a wiry, furtive-eyed Portuguese edged forward and spoke:

“We know, señor capitan. The mate, she tell us. Every day she tell. That all; she jus’ tell. No find notting!”

It was a supreme effort. His vocabulary was limited.

He slid back hurriedly behind his fellows, as though afraid he would be overwhelmed by the applause. It did not come.

“Does anybody else think the same way Manuel does?”

“Yis!” A powerful Irishman, the only man of his race aboard the craft, strode forward. He threw a scornful glance at the group which had murmured approval of the captain. “Oi t’ink it’s a dom shame, sor! Ye’ve kept us here, goin’ on two months, wit’ no gold to show fer it, at all!

“’Tis toime we pulled up an’ cleared out, sor!”

“Have you any personal reason for this opinion, Mike?”

“Yis!” The Celt was not to be daunted by the strange words the captain had used. “Them noospapers we got from th’ Dago tramp steamer, said they was offerin’ tin bucks a day for longshoremen at Noo York! That’s bet-ter’n we be doin’ here!”

To this, there was a rumble of agreement from the other half of the crew. And of those who had been friendly before, more than one began to look doubtful.

“Boys—there’s more to this than you think.” Captain Butler had made up his mind to a bold move. “I’m going to take you into my confidence.

“This money—assuming that we succeed—is going to accomplish something more than make us rich. It’s going to do the world a great good. And I’m going to tell you, right now—even Payson doesn’t know this—exactly what I intend to do with the bulk of my share.

“To begin with you’ve been calling me ‘Captain Butler.’ That is not my real name.” He paused to let this take effect. “I merely adopted the name because it sounded more impressive than my real name, which is Jones, and because I have been, all my life, until a few months ago, employed as a butler, in the States.

“For almost twenty years I was a butler, men. I worked for half a dozen of the foremost families of the land. And during that time I learned to have an immense amount of sympathy for people of my own class.

“I found that the average servant is to be pitied, not despised, men. Most servants are forced by poverty to accept such work. Few actually prefer to wait hand and foot on someone else. It isn’t natural.

“So I’m going to take my share and found a small home for servant’s children. I am planning to care for about forty. The idea is to teach the poor kids some useful trade or other occupation, so that they will not be forced into waiting on other people.

“That’s what I’m going to do with mine, boys! It’s a big work, and something to be proud of when I’m an old man.

“As for what you do with yours, I don’t care.

“That’s your business. But at least we understand each other, now; and I think you’ll stick by me, and match my patience with yours. How about it?”

Had there been any downright hard feelings among the men, or any spirit small enough to take advantage of a man in the captain’s position, the affair might have turned out differently. But the captain had chosen his men, in the first place, with an unusual amount of shrewd psychological guidance. And he had taken first-rate care of them; he, of the whole ship, had been ill. From grub to phonograph, they had no cause for complaint.

The crisis passed. Another month went by, with practically no change in the situation. The dragging brought no results at all; and day after day the sailors’ patience slowly oozed away. The captain’s condition, which ought to have become improved, remained the same as before. A little encouragement, and he would have recovered at once; disappointment kept him down.

The end came on the thirty-second day after the captain’s burst of confidence. It came, as before, when the final haul of the day had proven barren. And the first the captain knew of it, the big Irishman, with the entire crew at his back, was pushing his way past Payson into the cabin.

“Don’t be scared, sor!” exclaimed Mike. “We mane no harm to ye; none at all, sor!

“We’ve just come to tell ye that we quit; no more! ’Tis no mutiny, sor; we’re not that kind. Call it a strike. We jist refuse to stay here anither day, an’ thot’s an end to it!”

The captain looked steadily into their eyes. These men were, as he had judged before, of the right sort. He had nothing to fear from them, so long as he was reasonable. And he sighed as he admitted, to himself, that at least he must in justice give in.

“You are right, Mike. Go—back to your quarters. We sail—when the wind comes up, at midnight,” The men filed silently out. They knew that their stipulated thirty-a-month would be forthcoming when Panama was reached, and that they could ask nothing further. Payson followed them, and softly closed the door. No one knew what sprang to the captain’s eyes the moment he was left alone.

That final evening off the coast of Chile, saw the crew in their hammocks at the usual hour. Five bells found the ship perfectly quiet, save for the soft lap of the Pacific against the hull, the gentle slapping of lines as the sloop swayed at anchor, and the constant, complaining squeak of wood against wood. Except for the men on watch, all were asleep.

Of those awake, one was the Irishman. The other’s name, Nelson, is important because it typifies the kind of a character who was the chief witness to the second of the “Colossal Mysteries”. Nelson, a stolid, unimaginative Swede, a total abstainer, whose veracity was proverbial aboard the ship, stood at the wheel. At the prow stood Mike.

By six bells, the breeze had become nearly strong enough to work with. Mike, however, had orders to wait until midnight; and now, with a return to civilization so near, he could afford to be patient. He fell to watching the sway of the vessel, speculating on the angle to which she leaned.

Suddenly, without any apparent cause, the ship careened far over towards the shore. Immediately, of course, she righted herself, or nearly righted herself; yet Mike fancied that she remained with a decided shoreward list. It was odd. Mike called, in a low tone, to the Swede:

“Did ye notice thot, Nels?”

“Did Ay notice watt.”

“Th ship: how she tilted, jist now!”

“Oh, yah; Ay notice him, oil right.”

“What d’ye make of it, Nels?”

The Swede, as always when he did not know how to answer, made no reply at all. Silence once more settled over the sloop.

Now, it is at this point that we have to rely largely upon what Nelson told. Apparently Mike’s thoughts, and eyes, were elsewhere at the moment. This is queer, because he afterwards declared that he had been eyeing the waist of the ship more or less, wondering what could have caused that cant.

But Nels Nelson was sure, absolutely sure on this point: That, within a space of one minute, he gave two glances towards the waist of the ship. In the first glance, he was certain, he saw nothing out the way. Nothing was there save the white surfaces of the cabin walls and roof, the aft hatch, and the usual paraphernalia in the stern. On his second glance, less than a minute later, he saw—It.

“Mike,” called he, softly.

“Whot is it?” just as softly.

“Ay tank you batter wake de captain.”

Mike was electrified. He knew the Swede pretty well; nothing short of something phenomenal could have roused Nels to that extent. In seven steps, Mike, racing along the seaward side of the deck, reached the steersman’s side.

“What is it, Swede?” excitedly.

Nelson merely nodded in the direction of the cabin. The Irishman looked, and as his eyes caught sight of what lay on the shore-ward side of the deck, between the rail and the cabin, he felt his hair slowly rising beneath his cap.

An instant’s hesitation, and he darted below. And not one minute elapsed before both captain and mate, the former well bundled up and the latter bearing a powerful acetylene lantern, emerged on the deck.

“Well, Mike?” constrainedly, from the captain.

The Irishman silently took the lantern, and turned it upon the deck beside the cabin. There stood an enormous object, like a huge boulder. Two minutes before, it had not been there.

A swift examination, and the truth was known. Beneath all its coating of ocean growths, was revealed the long-lost “nugget” of the old Cristobel. It was that, and nothing less.

But how did it get there? Water was dripping from the stone, forming a large pool on the deck. On the rail was more water, and seaweed and bits of broken shells. On the hull itself was a large wet area, and more shells. As for the surrounding waves, a thorough search showed nothing.

How did the stone get there? How could it possibly have gotten there? When it was weighed at Panama, it tipped the scales at nearly fifteen tons!

CHAPTER III

What Happened to the Sphinx

Pausing only to remark that Captain Butler lived to see his cherished plan succeed, with hundreds of servants’ children infinitely better off because of his work, the investigator of the “Colossal Mysteries” is taken to still another part of the world. And, whereas the affair off the coast of Chile took place in December—which is to say, summer, south of the equator—of 1922, this next event occurred nearly two years later, the day before Thanksgiving, in the northern part of Africa.

The account begins with a very commonplace matter: Two American tourists, about five o’clock in the evening, stepped into a waiting automobile in front of a hotel in Cairo. One Arab, kneeling on the running board, accompanied them. The younger American himself drove the car.

Little was said as the car passed through the magnificent avenues of the modern part of the city. Presently, however, an older part of the capital was reached, and both visitors became interested enough in the ever-changing, yet changeless hordes of unfathomable Orientals. It was not until the car had crossed the Nile and was approaching the railroad at the west, that the older American spoke anything that called for a reply.

“I was just thinking, Redpath,” with a sudden chuckle, “that these Arabs we’re passing would’ve been pretty badly shocked, twenty years ago, to see a sight like us!”

“You mean, our car.” Redpath slowed the machine and drove carefully alongside the road, as they overtook and passed a caravan of camels, desert-bound. “I understand that the first of these ‘devil wagons’ was pretty badly bunged up, Shaw. The Arabs stoned the driver.”

“But now, they’re used to it,” commented Shaw. “Just what I’ve always held. People can get used to anything, if they’ve got to.”

“And yet, there’s a limit.” Redpath seemed, for all his youthfulness—or, shall we say, because of it?—more earnest and thoughtful than his elderly acquaintance. “There’s some things that won’t stand for change. They’re perfect. They’ll remain as they are for all time.”

“Don’t believe it,” stoutly. By this time an unobstructed view of the first pyramid was to be had. “Everything’s got to change. Change is the only thing that’s permanent. Change!”

“You don’t say so. How about that?” And Redpath pointed to the great Egyptian monument just ahead.

Shaw waved a hand, airily. “That? A mere pimple on the face of time! Another few seconds out of eternity, and”—he puffed a cloud of smoke from his cigar—“gone, like that!” Redpath made no comment for a while, being too much occupied with the problem of driving. He wasn’t accustomed to a roadway in such fearful condition. In fact, the topic of Change versus Changelessness was not revived until about three hours later, when the Americans, camped for the night near the two pyramids which flanked the Sphinx, sat down for a final smoke following their supper.

“This Arab,” commented Redpath, “is a dandy. He’s really managed to keep all the other grafters away. You had the right hunch, Shaw, about paying him five in advance and holding up the other five until we get back.”

“Yes, and I generally have the right hunch, too, young fellow!” But there was nothing patronizing about Shaw’s manner. No one would have guessed that there was twenty years difference in their ages. “I was right about getting here in the evening, so’s to view the monuments by the morning sun. You’ll see that I’m right; much better view than most tourists get.”

“Yes, but it’s tough about our water-supply. These bags make the water taste second-hand.”

A short silence, broken only by the stertorous breathing of their Arab, who had gone to sleep. His head was carefully sheltered from the moon’s rays. Redpath had an idea, and turned the rays of their portable searchlight upon the snoring mound, and waited. Presently the Arab turned over, uneasily, and without half awakening, he twisted about until he got his head on the other side of the packing-case that had sheltered him from the moon.

“See that?” chuckled Redpath. “Subconsciously, he believed that the moon has moved in the sky. And he is afraid to sleep with his head exposed to it!” A pause of thoughtfulness, then: “I wonder if that isn’t a pretty good argument?”

“What for?”

“In favor of Changelessness. This fellow’s subconscious mind. He has the same subconscious mentality that his ancestors had, thousands of years ago!”

“Pretty fair,” admitted Shaw. “Pretty fair; no use talking, it is.”

“And yet, young fellow, how long d’you suppose this moon-mad notion of his’d last, if something should happen to the moon? Suppose a comet should smash the moon, for instance. Wouldn’t his subconscious change?”

“But nothing’s going to happen to the moon!” Redpath looked as though slightly shocked. He will be better understood when it is said that, like many other young men of wealth in America, his education, while very deep, was not at all broad. In short, extremely conservative.

“The moon is there to stay!” he insisted. “So is the earth, the stars, and everything else in the universe! Only the details change! The big facts, the big principles, never change!”

And Redpath wisely shook his head, an assured smile playing about the corners of his mouth. He was staring at the Sphinx as he added: “No; when it comes to the great principles of life, Shaw, my mind is as changeless as—that Sphinx!”

Shaw peered through the darkness towards the great, lion-bodied head. “That! Why—she’s changing all the time, Redpath!”

“The Sphinx? Change? Where do you get that stuff?”

“Oh, perhaps you’re thinking something like this, Redpath: ‘Changeless as the Sphinx’. But it’s bunk, young fellow; bunk; Besides, that isn’t the correct quotation.

“Redpath, that stone is very slowly disintegrating; and the time’s coming when it’ll go back to the sands it came from!”

“That Sphinx,” deliberately, aggressively, “will be right where it is now, until the end of time!”

“Oh, don’t be so darned stubborn! You know better than that, Redpath. Why, the blamed thing changes with every sandstorm; it changes with every cold snap. It’s changing every day; every night!”

“Pure, unadulterated nonsense,” calmly lighting a fresh cigar.

“Is that so!” Shaw grabbed the storage battery, and handed the searchlight to the other. “Grab this, and come on. We’ll have a look at her!”

It was beginning to get a little cool, and both men welcomed the exercise. A vigorous trudging through the sand, and presently the pair were standing in front of the great, rock-hewn monument of the ancient Egyptian civilization.

For a while, like all who look upon the enormous face for the first time, both men remained silent. Despite the fact that they were Americans, neither made any calculations as to the weight of the rock, or the years that must have been spent in sculpturing that tremendous head out of the living stone. Each remembered having read that it stood more than sixty feet high, a close rival in size to the head of the Statue of Liberty. The flashing rays of the searchlight somehow made the figures seem too small. Truly, it was a marvel that the ancients could have achieved such a thing.

“Of course, you observe its nose?” at last, from Shaw. “Or rather, the place where the nose used to be. Gone now, for hundreds of years. What’ve you got to say for changelessness, now?”

“Just as much as ever,” stolidly. “How do we know that this thing was made with a nose? Perhaps it was designed just as we see it!”

“Without a nose!” Shaw was staggered, more with the coolness with which the idea was stated, than with the notion itself. “Well, it ain’t impossible.” He led the way closer. “Better take a look at the mouth, Redpath.”

The light plainly revealed the effects of constant exposure to the storms of the desert—storms and the many onslaughts from Arabian spears. The rock was fairly eaten away from the upper lip. Grinding and polishing the face of the stone, the sand had made unmistakable inroads upon the features. But Redpath would not admit it.

“May have been built that way,” he insisted. “Of course, it doesn’t seem reasonable to suppose that it was. I’ll admit that.

“But I’m dead sure you go too far, Shaw, when you claim that the Sphinx is changing—every day, I think you said.”

“Not a bit of it,” sturdily. “It’s changing right now, before your eyes! Fact. Only, it’s too minute for us to see.”

“Before our eyes! You’ve got to show me,” with irritating nonchalance.

Shaw became more than slightly excited. “See here, you’re too all-fired stubborn for any use! You know mighty well I’m right. You’re just holding out because—”

“I’ll bet you anything you like,” interrupted the other, aggravatingly, “that this Sphinx does not change in the Slightest, overnight! I’ll leave it to any scientist! It doesn’t change!”

“It does!” flatly. “And I’ll gamble on it with anybody!”

“How much?” insolently.

“Any—amount—you damned—” Shaw stopped in the middle of his emphatic reply. His face changed; an idea had struck him. And he smiled grimly as he went on: “See here, young fellow! I don’t like to bet money on a sure thing like this. It’s like taking money from a baby. I know I’m right and you’ll just throw your money away. I won’t bet—money!”

“All right,” with a sneer. “If you haven’t got the courage, why—”

“As I say, I won’t bet for money.” There was a new, a steely look in Shaw’s eyes, now. “But I’ll put up another kind of a wager, and see if you’re man enough to take me up!

“The proposition is this, Redpath: This Sphinx changes a little bit, each and every night. We’ll leave it up to a vote of two out of three scientists. How’s that?”

“All right. But what’s the bet?”

“Punishment, for whoever loses. I’m so dead sure I’m right, I’m willing—if I lose—to come back here to the Sphinx and climb to the top, and kiss the rock! We’ll say, I’m to make a pilgrimage here every ten years, to do the same thing!”

“Fair enough. What about me?”

“If you lose—if we learn that the old girl really does change overnight—then, since you’re so infernally sure of your stand, you’re to do this:

“You’ve got to change your clothes six times a day for the next six months!”

Redpath gravely considered. “For six months?”

“Not a day less!”

“All right! I’ll take you up on that, Shaw!”

The two men shook hands. Then, feeling rather ashamed, perhaps, they stood for some time playing the searchlight over the great countenance, and studying the baffling expression of its weather-beaten features.

As they returned to camp, Redpath switched off the light; they strode through the sand for some minutes in silence, enjoying the effects of the moonlight, upon the desert. Queer shadows loomed from behind sand heaps, and changed the landscape into a gray and black one, full of possibilities for those who are susceptible to fancies. Redpath was practical, but Shaw had an imagination. And it was he, who, shortly before reaching camp, stopped suddenly and uttered an odd exclamation. “Redpath! Did you see that?”

“What?” curiously.

“That pyramid! I thought it—moved!”

Redpath laughed, maliciously. “Moved! That pyramid? Sure it didn’t stand on its head, Shaw?”

The older man had recovered from his surprise, and now looked very much abashed. He took out a handkerchief, and wiped his forehead.

“My eyes, I guess. Might have been a camel, moving around behind the thing. Fooled me, all right.”

But Redpath noticed that his companion cast more than one mystified glance at the huge heap of rock before reaching the camp. And, the last thing before getting under the blankets, Shaw raised his head and looked long and earnestly at the object which had startled him.

“By George,” he muttered, mainly to himself. “I could have sworn that I saw something move, over there! Something as big as the pyramid, or I’ll eat my hat!” But the unaccustomed exercise had the usual effect. Within a very few minutes both men were emulating the Arab’s example. As to whether they, like he, slept audibly, there is no evidence one way or the other. The automobile was the only witness.

As afterwards told by Redpath and Shaw, the hour when they were awakened was in the neighborhood of three o’clock, and the moon had set. Each described the event in the same language: a mild earthquake, very much prolonged, and accompanied by a fitful breeze. It did not awaken the Arab. He may have been accustomed to earthquakes. But both Americans, after looking at their watches, lay for several minutes experiencing the sensation. They were not frightened; they were not near anything that could fall on them. Each set it down in his memory as an uncommon, but not unpleasant, adventure.

Within half an hour the camp was again silent. Pitch darkness, relieved only by star-light, once more settled over the place. Once there was a subdued crackle or two from the auto, as pieces of metal reacted to the change of temperature. That, together with the ticking of watches and the sound of three men breathing, was all that broke the stillness.

As might be supposed, it was the Arab who first awoke in the morning. The sun was yet an hour from rising, but it was fairly light already. And the first the Americans knew of it, there came the voice of the Arab, flat on his carpet, his face towards Mecca, as he repeated the unintelligible lingo which he believed would save his soul. The Americans listened without moving their heads. In a moment, the Arab was done; he got up, and rolled his carpet. Next second he turned around and looked towards the west; and his voice broke into a terrified shriek.

“Allah is great! Great is Allah, and Mohammed is his only Prophet!”

And down he fell upon his knees, gibbering. The two Americans sprang to their feet, startled, looking at one another in amazement. Then, their gazes turned towards the west, and they saw.

The head of the Sphinx was—gone! Gone completely; it looked as though it had been snapped off.

“That earthquake?” breathed Shaw, his flesh creeping.

Redpath stood as though petrified. His gaze wandered, shakily, to one side. And he gave a gasp of awe.

“You win!” he whispered, and pointed a trembling finger.

On top of the nearest pyramid, securely planted upon the flat space at the very summit, stood the missing head of the Egyptian Sphinx.

CHAPTER IV

The Amazing Theft

In collecting the data which is here presented, the writer has culled, from the long list of unaccountable events that were attributed to the Nth Man, only sufficient to make a chain strong enough to sustain the astounding truth. No attempt has been made to even hint at the many peculiar incidents which a stricter historian would include. Besides, some of these incidents are doubtful.

For instance, the matter of hanging black crepe on the Statue of Liberty, on the night of July Fourth, 1926: Why should people blame this on the Nth Man? Almost any passing helicopter, manned by a daring anarchist, could have committed this sardonic piece of sacrilege. The mere fact that the crepe was unusual material, afterwards traced to Tibet, does not change the situation. The stunt certainly was not characteristic of It.

So one had better follow the simple chain here presented. This brings the series to 1927, early in the spring; March 28, to be exact. And the location of this staggering affair was staid, matter-of-fact Europe, where nothing miraculous had happened for centuries. Moreover, whereas the preceding mysteries had had outdoor settings, this took place under a roof.

This roof covered a large, three-story structure in the city of Hamburg, Germany. The building, some hundred feet square and soundly built of steel and stone, housed the bank known to the world as the Zollverein Internationale. And, although it has nothing to do with the matter, it may be mentioned that the roof was made of very fine Spanish thing, for the bank was designed in a modified Mission style. Hamburg took especial pride in it.

On the evening previous to the day in question, a man of peculiar personality left a certain hotel about six blocks from the bank, and quietly strode down the street. It being almost midnight, the man was given a quiet scrutiny by two or three policemen, each of whom allowed him to pass without question, after noting his dignified bearing and the obvious elegance of his attire. Seemingly a rich American tourist, out for a stroll before turning in.

Upon reaching the bridge over the Binnenalster, the stranger paused and leaned on the railing, apparently lost in thought. One policeman passed him there. Immediately afterwards, the stranger sauntered on, shortly arriving opposite the Zollverein Internationale.

There he paused and deliberately surveyed the structure. Two witnesses corroborate one another in this. The stranger remained nearly two minutes, carefully taking in every detail of the bank, especially the heavy grill work which protected the windows nearest the vaults.

Then he passed on. Reaching the next corner, he disappeared, taking a turn to the right. This should have brought him back to the river, further upstream; and in fact he was later seen, three blocks away from the bank, studying the waters from the railing of another bridge. This time, when he moved on, he walked in the direction of the hotel from which he had come; but he never reached the place. He was never seen again.

Only within the last few years has the truth about this stranger become known. His disappearance, it seems, was a perfectly natural thing, under the circumstances. For, curious though it may seem, this stranger was the cause of the extraordinary affair of the Zollverein Internationale.

Upon leaving the bridge upstream from the bank (we know, now) the stranger strolled for a short distance in the direction of his hotel. Then, reaching a street which shall here be nameless, he turned to his left; and after walking a trifle over two blocks, he came to an abrupt halt in front of a quiet, unpretentious residence.

This house, by reason of its standing on a slight elevation, overlooked a good deal of the city. And, in the foreground of its view, lay the dim white walls of the bank.

The stranger cast a keen glance in each direction, before running up the steps. Then, he gave an unusually long ring to the bell, followed by two more, very short and crisp. Almost instantly the door opened. Like a flash he darted in; and the door was as swiftly closed. All this, without a light being shown.

Once inside, however, the stranger quietly produced a small, electric light, which he calmly switched on and then handed to the person who had opened the door. This person, a woman, turned the light full in the stranger’s face; and for ten or more seconds subjected him to a silent, but thorough scrutiny, during which she referred several times to three photographs which she held in one hand. In the end she seemed satisfied.

“Come,” said she, in German; and led the way up an old-fashioned staircase. The man followed, showing no surprise when, after reaching the top of the stairs, the woman led him down a short corridor and then began mounting another flight. In all this, no light was used other than that from the little lamp.

Shortly, the two reached a door on the third floor. The woman stood aside for the man to enter; and, keeping his hands conspicuously in his side pockets, the stranger stepped in. The woman followed, and closed and locked the door.

Next moment she pressed a button, and the room was flooded with a curious radiance. It was a deep, red light, which came from concealed sources. And the man gave a startled exclamation.

“Fraulein! You should have pulled the curtains!” The woman smiled. It was a slow, patient smile, queerly distorted by the odd lighting effect. She shook her head.

“Nein, mein herr. The window glass is green in color. And, as you know, red light cannot pass green glass.”

The man made a quick gesture. “Pardon me. I might have known that you would be careful, fraulein.” He looked around, and selected a straight-backed chair of some old Bavarian design. He paid no attention to the other furnishings of the room, which might be described as a combination of library and sewing-room. “Your credentials, please, fraulein.”

The woman silently drew, from her bosom, a small envelope. This she handed to the American, who carefully examined the photographs and other data he found. Apparently he was satisfied, for he returned everything with a curt nod.

He was perhaps forty. The woman noted heavy, determined lines about his mouth, and a coldly calculating expression in his eyes. A man to be reckoned with, certainly.

“We may as well come right down to business,” said the woman, her voice as well as her appearance typifying all that is generally associated with the autocratic classes of Germany. “You have come, I understand, to collaborate with me in a rather extraordinary enterprise. Suppose we understand one another perfectly?”

“Very well,” agreed the American. “To put it in a word, fraulein, I have been commissioned by a certain American of vast wealth, to bring about certain changes in Europe. These changes, naturally, are such as will benefit my client. You see, I am being quite frank.”

“That is much the best way, mein herr. Now—what results do you wish to secure?”

“The overthrow of every republic in Europe!”

“And—why?”

“That is my client’s affair!”

The woman nodded slowly. “Quite so. There remains just one point: How do you intend to go about it?”

“There are two methods, fraulein. One is to induce”—he used the word with sarcastic significance—“induce various officials in these republics to adopt policies more to my client’s liking.”

“I am afraid,” softly, “that it is far too late to talk of such a method. Practically all these officials are honest, strange though that may seem.” She paused. “I see from your face that you are already satisfied on this score.”

The American cleared his throat. “I only mentioned the method because I was instructed to do so. You are sure, fraulein, that it will not work?”

“Quite.”

“No other way than your way?”

“None.”

“State it!”

The woman stepped to a table which stood in the center of the room. From a drawer she produced a large tape-wound envelope. This she placed in the American’s hand, and quietly resumed her seat.

Hill deliberately scanned the documents. These consisted of several closely typewritten sheets, some maps, two charts and a small sheaf of memoranda. Within ten minutes, the American had caught the drift of it all.

“By jove!” he ejaculated, relapsing into his own tongue. “This is the right dope!”

“I beg pardon?”

“The fault was mine,” resumed the German. “I must say, fraulein, if this plan is of your making, then you are an extremely clever woman!”

She made a deprecatory move of the hands, an expression that betrayed her mixed ancestry. “Unfortunately, I am not that competent. It is the work of another.”

“Who, fraulein?”

“Who would one suppose?”

Hill’s brows contracted. “Not—not the”—

She nodded. “None other. Even though in exile, Wilhelm is yet to be reckoned with!

“You are quite right, Herr Hill; the plan is an excellent one. It is complete; it is sound; it cannot fail! Given the money—your American money!—and within a week, Germany shall be once more within the grip of her former rulers!”

The man’s eyes flashed. “And then?” excitedly.

“All Europe, one monarchy!” her face lighted up. “A few swift blows, and—democracy shall end!”

The American leaped to his feet. “By Jove!” in unmistakable delight. He began to pace the room. From time to time he stopped to re-read some part of the plan, and to ask eager questions.

“This overlooks nothing, fraulein?”

“Nothing! Publicity, munitions—even telephone tolls! Everything, mein herr! The people have always had a soft spot for royalty in their hearts. All that is needed is—money!”

Hill came up short, and suddenly wheeled upon the woman. His brows narrowed with suspicion.

“All very well, fraulein! And yet, how comes it that you, an anarchist, are thus plotting to place monarchy back on the throne again?”

She laughed, a short and disagreeable laugh, which showed an entirely new side to her character. “I really did not think you were so dense as that, Herr Hill.

“There are anarchists, and there are anarchists. A few fools are sincere in their desire for no government at all. But the real leaders—pah!

“We are merely a little more clever than you supposed, Herr Hill.”

“You mean, that you are really in sympathy with the autocrats? Even your anarchists—in America?”

“All who really count, mein herr. Their function is to stir up violence, so as to give your autocrats an excuse to persecute the true reformers. Surely, you knew of this before!”

“Yes,” dubiously. “But I never could believe it, fraulein. In America, we are apt to take things for granted.”

He fingered the documents once more. Apparently he made up his mind at that instant, for he turned, abruptly, and said; “We shall call it a bargain, fraulein. The money shall be yours!”

The woman’s eyes glowed. “Herr Hill—you are willing that my organization shall do this?”

“Fraulein, the matter was left entirely to my discretion. The man who is backing me, gave me instructions to go ahead if I felt satisfied that the plan would succeed. And—I am satisfied!”

“Good!” She swept to her feet. “When can we proceed, mein herr?”

“At once! This very night!”

The woman stopped short. “You mean—the money is already—at our disposal?”

He nodded. “Enough and to spare, fraulein!”

“But”—She seemed bewildered. “Surely, you cannot have so much money in Hamburg, mein herr!”

He chuckled, dryly. “You do not understand American methods, fraulein. The cash arrived this afternoon, secretly, by a fleet of submarines. It was unloaded at an underwater dock, and conveyed by tunnel to the bank!”

The woman reached out a hand, as though to steady herself. “You have it all?” she whispered. “The American gold—for which our Cause has prayed all these years?”

“Enough to wipe out your national debt!”

The woman recovered herself. “Pardon,” she smiled, a little shakily. “But it is very—very unnerving, after one has waited so long. Good news—may be hardest to bear.

“You are willing, then, that I shall summon the committee?”

“Of course,” curtly. “I am instructed to make terms only with the properly accredited officers of your organization.”

“And—when?”

“Right now, fraulein!”

She picked up a telephone, and gave a number. Presently she was speaking, in a guarded voice:

“Franz—this is Bertha. The eagle is ready for his breakfast. Bring the waiters. Do you—understand?” She replaced the instrument. “It is done, Herr Hill.” Her face was wreathed in smiles, now. “You shall meet our executives inside the next half hour.”

“Good.”

The woman’s nerves demanded action. She began to walk excitedly about the room, just as the American had done a short while before. And now it was she who exclaimed.

“You know not what this means to us—to me, Herr Hill! It means release from that odious social democracy. It means that we, who are entitled to the highest places in the scheme of things, shall once more come into our own!” She laughed, almost girlishly. “Where is the money, Herr Hill? Which bank?”

He strode to the window, and peered through the glass in the direction of the Zollverein Internationale. “Put out the light, fraulein,” said he. “You shall see for yourself.”

She extinguished the red light, and started towards the American’s side. At the same instant, there came a peculiar sound from without. It was a mumbling roar, like that of a distant surf. Simultaneously the house trembled and shook, as though in the grip of an earthquake. It was over in a moment or so; everything was quiet and still inside two minutes.

“What was that?” sharply, from the woman. And she darted to the window, where the American, who had managed to open the window, was leaning half out the room in the intensity of his gazing.

The woman caught his shoulder, and held him fast. “Look out!” she whispered. “You’ll be seen!”

And then, on the instant, the American gave a queer exclamation, as of fear. He caught a hand to his throat, tottered, and collapsed. The German woman bent over him.

His heart had failed him.

The woman straightened. She turned at once to the window. What had caused the tragedy? She stared with all her eyes in the direction the American had gazed, towards the spot where the great bank had stood, a few blocks away.

The bank was no longer there. It had disappeared as completely as though swept from the face of the earth. Nothing was left save the foundation walls and the cellar; money, watchmen, walls and roof, had vanished from the sight of man. A small crowd of gaping citizens was already collecting. But the bank—was not there.

As for the American, Hill, he was never heard from again. He was buried by the anarchists, who saw no other way of escaping publicity and persecution.

And to this day, not the slightest trace has ever been found of the building or the contents of the Zollverein Internationale.

CHAPTER V

Where Nothing Grew Before

So far, the performances of the Nth Man have lacked the quality of constructiveness. That is to say, the miracles have never been more than corrective, in their effects upon man. In fact, some of the incidents have been almost mischievous in their nature; the stunts bear many of the earmarks of youthful destructiveness.

So the next mystery—the last but one before the stupendous climax to the series—shows a decided change for the better in the mentality of its perpetrator. Perpetrator, however, is a hard name for the unknown Benevolence which resurrected a dead continent. There are a hundred million people in this world who are, practically, worshippers at the shrine of the Nth Man, because of what was done for them on the seventeenth day of December, 1928.

The circumstances will be easily understood by any who have passed through an East Indian hurricane. Typhoons, the natives call these storms; the name is of small consequence. Everyone knows that the stoutest of ships never deliberately face one of them. And the electric freighter, Mammoth III, which sailed from Vancouver on the tenth of that month, was commanded by as cautious a sailor as ever handled a crew.

But not even Captain McTavish could know, as he passed the Marshall Islands west-bound, that a hurricane was raging with such violence, only a hundred miles ahead, that both of the Philippine weather-planes had been put entirely out of commission by the suddenness of the onslaught; so that some six or seven freighters, like the Mammoth III, were steadily and confidently forging ahead into an area of extreme danger. McTavish only knew that he was making good time.

The storm struck when the ship was yet a thousand miles from New Guinea. There was, of course, the usual low-pressure warning; but it gave the captain scarcely more time than to realize that he could not hope to make Gilolo Passage. Not in such a sea; the wind, too, was sure to become a thing to run away from, not to bargain with.

And an hour later saw the ship, her decks as bare as a plate, scuttling before a wind that mocks all description. McTavish was glad that he had a freighter; in the old days, before aircraft absorbed all passenger traffic, the steamer might have carried a thousand passengers, each of them an enormous problem in the presence of such a turmoil. But the two dozen people aboard the huge freighter were seafarers.

“A rare experience, captain,” came a hail from the wireless room, as McTavish passed beneath the companionway. It was the voice of young Sanson, the day-shift radio man. “Picked up five others, so far; all in the same fix!”

McTavish inwardly marveled that Sanson’s voice could carry above the racket. He could not know that the radio man had been yell-leader for the Cardinals, in many a desperate football game between Stanford and California. The captain merely said:

“Looks as if the weather-planes have got theirs, Sanson. Else we should ha’ heard from them, by now.”

“Too bad. I pity anybody up in the air on a day like this.” At which the captain went away, smiling grimly to himself. Even the radio man was a true son of the sea! Wherever the captain went, it was the same; all hard at their tasks, if anything, more earnestly engaged than usual. For all that any man knew, the ship might be in momentary danger of going to pieces; certainly every joint in the steel-braced structure was complaining of the extra duty. But the humans made no complaint.

Only one man down below was even curious as to what was going on in the world outside. He was a young preternaturally serious chap who sat in the midst of a wilderness of dials, indicators, meters, levers and handwheels. The control of the ship was at his fingers’ tips. A telephone was clamped to his head; also, in case of accident to the wires, the good old gongs were also ready for use.

“Where’s Irons?” McTavish inquired, noting that the assistant engineer held the post. There were two engineers, of course, and Irons was supposed to be on duty. “Nothin’ serious, Cooper?”

“I think not, sir. He said he had got very little sleep last night, due to an uneasiness which he always feels when a storm is brewing. I fancy he expects to relieve Mr. Seymour from time to time during the night.”

“I see.” McTavish started to go. “Of course, suppose anything happens, my lad, lose no time in callin’ him.”

“No, sir.” A slight hesitation, then: “Is there reason to expect anything to—to happen?”

“Always, in a starm like this!” But the captain’s face was not at all anxious. “Ye mus’ know, m’ lad, that we canna see a knot ahead, from th’ bridge. ’Tis a matter only o’ keepin’ our wits; for no mon knows which way we go.”

The youngster’s eyes opened wide. “Is it true, then; the compass is worthless in this sort of a storm?”

“Weel, suppose we ca’ it, unreliable. At least, it tells us we’re headin’ mare sou’ than narth. That’s somethin’, isn’t it?” And the captain’s grim smile brought an answering curve to young Cooper’s mouth. He did not know that McTavish spoke the literal truth.

Back on the bridge, the captain surveyed one of the windows. The steersman’s coat was thrust into the place where the glass had been. McTavish mentally added ten miles an hour to his previous estimate of a hundred for the wind’s velocity; and, securing a spare jacket, he started to fit it about the shoulders of the man at the wheel.

Instead of submitting, however, the sailor shook off the captain’s hands. “I’m half roasting, as it is,” he explained. He glanced at the figure of his mate, dozing precariously in a chair at the other end of the “coop.” Every half minute his head would droop, whereupon the ship would hurl him half out of the chair; and back he would crawl again, all without opening his eyes. “I hate to bother Billy, sir; but if you don’t mind—”

McTavish took the wheel. The sailor staggered down to the cabin, there to stand in front of a forced draught, and to revive. Within ten minutes he was back, much refreshed.

“Thank you, sir. By the way”—for he was a cultured young Canadian, that sailor—“by the way, what’s our cargo, may I ask?”

“Ye dinna know? Mon—ye should na’ come aboard a craft except ye know her cargo! ’Tis”—McTavish stopped, remembering that seamen were no longer slaves of superstition, but of science. Instead of finishing what he had started to say, the captain answered the question:

“’Tis a curious bit o’ freight, lad. The ship’s a travellin’ nursery.”

“Nursery!”

“Aye. Th’ horticultural variety, lad; not th’ kind ye were raised in.

“We’re carryin’ near to ten million trees, an’ every one is two parts grown, a’ready. All bound for th’ Narthern Territory.”

“Ah!” with a flash of understanding. “So Australia has finally come to her senses, captain!”

“Ye seem to know mare about it than mesel’” cautiously. “Seems, ye can tell me somethin’, noo.”

“I don’t know the whole affair, sir. But I’ve always understood that the Northern Territory is rich in possibilities; only, it hasn’t had a chance. For years it was at a standstill, due to the Commonwealth refusing to allow private enterprise to open a suitable railway into the district.

“Lately, however, a syndicate has extended the line north from Adelaide, past Owen’s Spring and Woods Lake, all the way to Palmerston.”

“Which same is our port,” interjected the other.

“I knew that much, anyhow, sir. Well, they also built another line from Perth north-east into the Kimberley country, and from there over to Palmerston. The work is barely finished. To encourage the syndicate, the Commonwealth had to donate every third section; but it will probably be worthwhile, in the long run.”

“So, these trees o’ ours be destined t’ build up th’ country,” commented the captain.

“Yes; and I shouldn’t wonder, sir, but that the future of the country depends largely upon this one ship. Now that I have started thinking about it, I recall having read that this shipment was raised, partly under cover, at a cost of some fifty million pounds. These trees are—let me see—four years old, sir. The syndicate is really banking on them, if I understand the thing rightly. Unless, by transplanting these trees, it can get immediate results along horticultural lines, it forfeits contracts of some sort with settlers upon whom the syndicate is absolutely dependent for future support.”

“Queer,” muttered the captain. “I know, now; someone told me about it, an’ I ha’ forgot. I was worrit at th’ time, by hearing’ that th’ cargo were so heavy insured.”

“I dare say,” rattled on the sailor. His memory of what he had read was now thoroughly awakened. “It seems that the syndicate went to great expense to duplicate the exact climatic conditions, in their hothouses, which these trees must encounter when they are placed in Australian soil. The idea is, of course, to take advantage of the recent rains and secure a foothold before the dry season comes.

“By doing this, you see, the desert will have something with which to hold the moisture. The trees have a headstart. Hitherto, it has been a hard matter to grow things, on account of occasional droughts; dry spells, such as in the past, have driven the settlers into considering imported labor. The climate, of course—”

“’Tis na place for a white mon,” evidently quoting someone in whom McTavish had confidence.

“But these trees will make it very different, sir! Once let them get a fair start—and there’s thousands of settlers on the spot, now, fairly itching to get their hands on this nursery—and the climate will become as good as any in the same latitude.”

“I believe ye’re right,” responded the other. “In fact, I know ye are; I’ve heard a’ this before, but I’ve had ither things t’ think about. Th’ Commonwealth will lose th’ only chance it ever had, should anything happen—” He closed his mouth firmly, and turned to go. At the same instant the sailor, peering sharply into the wilderness ahead of the ship, gave a startled exclamation. The captain wheeled, and looked.

“Breakers!” he roared. “Put her over—quick!”

The sailor was already twirling the wheel. Down below, the ship’s marvelous machinery was responding perfectly. Under ordinary circumstances, nothing wrong could have happened.

But a wind like that is not ordinary. Like a seaplane approaching a beach, the giant ship rushed headlong towards the reef. And before the vessel could answer to her rudder, before any human power could prevent, the stern of the ship was smashed. Smashed, with a jar that shook the freighter from end to end, just as she swung past the west end of the reef. And the captain did not need the report that was shouted up to him from the engine-room:

“Great God, sir; the stern’s a wreck! Half the propellers, and the rudder—all gone, sir!”

The captain merely bit his lips. Next moment, however, he was hanging on for his life as the huge boat, helpless as a cockle-shell in the grip of that raging fury, thrashed about wildly, her head totally lost, and nothing but a miracle to intervene between her and utter destruction.

“God save us,” solemnly pronounced the Scotchman. “We canna last anither hour!”

The three men quit the bridge. There was no use in remaining there any longer. And when they reached the cabin, they found most of the ship’s company there ahead of them. Only the radio man remained at his post.

“’Tis a thousand t’ one against us,” McTavish calmly announced to the silent group that faced him. “My best guess is that we’re nearing’ th’ Solomons, wi’ no ship closer than two thousand mile, good enough t’ help us.

“What say ye t’ a wee bit o’ somethin’ t’ eat?”

And supper was eaten quite as though none realized that the longer the ship remained whole, the smaller her chances became. It had been a question of hours; now, it was a matter of minutes. But not a nerve showed a sign of giving way, although the strain of waiting is the hardest strain of all.

It was, each knew, a waste of time to even think of taking to the boats. Fine affairs though they were, they could not live ten seconds in such a sea. No; they could do nothing but wait, and make the most of such additional life as might be granted them.

The radio man joined the group. “Mate is fixing up the reserve equipment,” he reported, through a sandwich. “The regular outfit is gone west.

“The last message, captain, was from the Control at Manila. Said that my stuff had been received at six different places, and the resultant figures out at very nearly 165 east longitude, and practically on the equator.”

“Just what I guessed!” triumphantly, from McTavish. He had dropped all idea of discipline, in the face of what was coming. “Mare than two thousand from port! Pass th’ bread.”

Already darkness, with the swiftness of equatorial regions, had dropped around the craft. If her course had been erratic before, it was now unknowable.

A half hour passed, with everyone wondering how the ship could stand it another second. She had sprung a leak, and was badly canted to the starboard. Presently the captain cast an appraising eye at the wall, estimated that list, and sighed.

“Weel, ma friends, if she holds togither that long, she’ll capsize inside o’ ten minutes. Has anybody got one o’ those triflin’ cigarettes? I’m out o’ tobaccy.” And it was then, with the disaster practically in sight, that the Mammoth III ended her cruise, and at the same time gave to the world the fifth of the Colossal Mysteries. It happened while the captain, striving to hold on to a rail, was maneuvering to light a cigarette for the radio man.

The ship gave a tremendous lurch. Down went her nose; the captain held his breath; she was going to founder, right then! But next second he was staring in wonderment at his friends.

The sea, like a flash, had gone still. No longer did the ship toss and shiver in the grip of the waves. Along her sides the wind still shrieked, as hellishly as ever. But—the sea was still!

“By the Lord!” swore McTavish, reverently. “We’ve been washed ashore, high and dry!”

He ran to the bridge, with most of the crew at his heels. There, they looked out upon—not the island that the captain had expected, but the sea. Nothing else! On every side, as far as the searchlights could reach, only the raging waters could be seen. Except that these seemed, in that peculiar glare, somewhat further below deck than they had been before, the appearance was just the same as had met their eyes during the day. And yet, the ship was still.

“Strange!” muttered the Scotchman. “Have we landed on th’ top of a moontain?”

Before he had ceased speaking, the ship began to move. It was a gentle motion, from side to side and up and down, rhythmical, regular, systematic. It was not like the toss of a boat in water; it was more like the swaying of a locomotive, together with the rise and fall of a horse. But it was smooth, for all that no man could remain upright an instant without a stiff grasp of something solid. It was like no motion that any seaman ever experienced before.

Not a soul got a wink of sleep that night. That inexplicable, steady motion continued until dawn, with perhaps half a dozen intermissions during which the ship was motionless. Was it in the grip of some unguessably big aircraft?

But the searchlights showed nothing but clouds aloft. There was no explaining the mystery. The storm, they could understand; but a thing like this, that baffled all understanding. Every man was sorely afraid.

Just before dawn came the crash. The ship struck with such terrific force that everything breakable which still remained whole, was shattered into fragments. This included every electric light. The crew, hurled to the floor, remained for some time helpless and unmoving, waiting for the dawn to become a little less gray.

The ship was strangely quiet. The roar of the sea, after the last thunder when the crash occurred, had subsided altogether. Only a little wind remained. What had happened?

Finally, some went to the bridge. It was getting light enough to see. And as they looked, the truth, very gradually indeed, dawned upon their incredulous minds.

And staring up at them, just as incredulously, all about the ship, were several thousand people whose thoughts will have to be imagined; they cannot be described. However, there must have been some who realized, as they read the name of the supposedly lost freighter, that the future of Australia had become miraculously secured.

These people, today, are among the hundred million who are the Nth Man’s worshippers. Today, Australia is a close rival to her older sisters among the nations, and it is due solely to the amazing fact which faced McTavish and his crew when they looked around the ship.

The Mammoth III had reached Port Darwin. More; she stood, almost exactly upright, in an open space about a half mile from the sea. Palmerston lay almost within hailing distance.

In some inexplicable way or other, the giant freighter had been transported through that awful storm, a distance of over two thousand miles, since nightfall the day before. And now she lay, high and dry, on the soil which was to flourish because of her cargo.

The Mammoth III will never go to sea again. But Australia has been raised from the dead.

CHAPTER VI

The Greatest Mystery

The sixth and last in the series of the “Colossal Mysteries” takes our attention to China, in the year 1930. The date is December 31, which is, of course, the day before New Year’s Eve, as now observed by the Chinese in addition to their own holiday. This fact, by the way, may prove more significant than it at first appears.

And, although the incident has nothing whatever to do with religious affairs of any kind, except very indirectly, the setting of the phenomenon is to be found in the “compound” of the Congregational Mission at Lin Ching, near the crossing of the Great Wall and the river, Hoang-Ho.

In the “office” of this mission, which was perhaps more a hospital than a religious school, sat Miriam Osborn, a Californian, temporarily in sole charge of the post. Surrounded by some half dozen Christianized Chinese girls and aided from time to time by men of the same conversion, she was doing her best until the return of her superior, Mrs. Walsh. And there could be no mistaking the immense relief in the young woman’s face as, after binding a dress upon a particularly disagreeable sore, such as many Chinese are afflicted with, she dismissed the “case” with a hurried wave of the hand and eagerly turned to the girl who had just entered.

“Well, Nama?” knowing that the young Chinese would stand there till doomsday without speaking, unless first spoken to. “What is the new—good?”

“Yes—yes, Miss Doctor,” rattled forth the girl. “Song Fow, who is up a—mong the tree, is have seen the Missus Doctor’s cart, now com—ing!”

Miriam Osborn’s natural impulse was to dart out of the office, through the gate of the compound and out into the road, there to leap into Mrs. Walsh’s cart and overwhelm that lady with tears and affection. But dignity, in the presence of these grave, decorous people, forbade any demonstration. Instead she waited with an air of great patience until, all formalities over, the two women were finally alone in an inner room.

“Oh, I am so discouraged!” Miss Osborn burst out, her mouth trembling as no Chinese had ever seen it tremble. “I seem to get nowhere, Mrs. Walsh! Not one in ten remembers the simplest rules of hygiene; and some of the cases I’ve had to handle lately—well, I thought I had seen the worst, a year ago, but these are just simply—” And the girl shuddered.

Mrs. Walsh was not in the least surprised. She understood the delicate, high-strung girl quite well, and the Chinese, even better. And she knew that the young doctor had been shocked too deeply to feel much relieved by sympathy alone. Mrs. Walsh wisely put another problem into her assistant’s mind, instead. Her voice was very sober as she spoke:

“I know exactly how you feel, dear. I had to go through with it all, you remember, several years ago. It is an old story to me now; and lately I have come to look deeper than those awful sores, deeper than their superstition and ignorance. There is something that is to blame for it all. And—I think I have an inkling of the truth!”

Miriam Osborn’s personal troubles were instantly forgotten. “You have? You really think you know, at last?” And the girl paused, breathlessly. She had always felt, somehow, that the Chinese mystery was explainable. If only she could understand these people! “What have you found out?”

“Merely an inkling, as I said.” Mrs. Walsh sat on the edge of a bed. Miss Osborn remained standing. “But I think it may prove the key to the whole riddle.

“You know that I stayed over at Yokahama, on my way here.” She paused significantly. “Well, by good fortune I met Viscount Soraki at the hotel!”

“Viscount Soraki? The liberal whom you have always wanted to meet?”

“He. And he told me things—not too much, for he is a cautious man—but enough to let me form my own conclusions. As to just what he said, I shall have to give it to you from time to time as it occurs to me; it amounts to a great deal. But my conclusions, as gathered from what he told me, are these:

“A certain well-known Oriental government,” purposely speaking guardedly, “is now an openly autocratic one. To put it in a word, all our difficulties here—all our problems of superstition, ignorance and vice—are due to the deliberate interference of that country!”

“You believe that?” Miriam’s eyes narrowed with anger. “The Chinese are being kept back, in order that—these other people may dominate them?”

Mrs. Walsh nodded, gravely. “Through bribery of the native teachers, and in other ways, the Chinese ancestor-worship is being kept alive. Were it not for this, our Christian and scientific truths would soon be adopted everywhere; for the Chinaman is a lover of the truth, and quick to change his ways, once he is convinced. We are fighting—this other nation’s money!” That night, seated in the little garden around which the buildings of the compound were placed, the two women discussed the facts that the progressive Japanese viscount had confided to Mrs. Walsh. In the end, Miss Osborn asked her superior if there was any hope that the situation would change for the better. Mrs. Walsh looked dubious.

“There is just one possibility. And that, I am afraid, is very remote indeed. I mean this: If something tremendous, something in the nature of a national miracle, should occur, the Chinese might lose faith in ancestor-worship and all the anti-progressiveness that goes with it. For example, suppose some strange malady should wipe out all the school-masters in every province. Such an event would destroy confidence in these men, and therefore in what they taught. And the way would then be open for truth, the truth of Christianity and of science, to reach the hearts of—”

“Hush!” whispered Miss Osborn, clutching her companion’s arm. The young woman’s eyes were dilated with a curious fear. “Hush, Mrs. Walsh!”

The older woman, without moving, cast a keen glance about her. And in a whisper as guarded as her assistant’s, she inquired: “What was it? Did you hear something, or—”

“Yes! Outside the compound! A queer noise, like—like the thunder of a distant waterfall!”

The oddity of the comparison struck Mrs. Walsh with peculiar force. She gave the girl a sharp glance.

“You saw nothing?”

“No; but”—The girl paused as though aware that there was something very lacking in what she had said. She threw back her head, and managed to speak in her natural voice as she added: “Never mind! Probably—my nerves! Go on with what you were saying, please!”

“Well, I haven’t any more thoughts on the subject. As I say, unless something happens to change the other nation’s policy towards China, something must happen to change the Chinese policy towards its ancestors. Otherwise, the future is even blacker than the past!”

“What do you mean by that?” in sudden anxiety.

Mrs. Walsh bent and whispered in her assistant’s ear. The girl’s face went white. Her lips moved convulsively, and a single word escaped her:

“War!”

“Yes,” from the older woman, with quiet certainty. “And conceive, if you can, of great hordes of well-armed, obedient Celestials, under the control of that emperor—overrunning the Anglo-Saxon world!”

Once more that strange feeling of conviction, of moral assurance that the truth had been spoken, gripped and chilled the heart of Miriam Osborn. And a great wave of grief, as for the lives to be lost, the misery to be suffered, surged over her and left her sobbing hysterically. Mrs. Walsh, strong woman that she was, stopped and lifted her assistant and carried her bodily into her room.

About eleven o’clock that night, following the usual custom, the two missionaries held a simple watch-night meeting. There were none but the half dozen girl converts, however, to share the experience with them. Most of the Chinese were making the darkness hideous with the usual Celestial methods, from firecrackers to gongs. Fortunately, the compound was located far enough away from the racket, not to be disturbed by it.

But just after midnight, as the little Christian band prepared to disperse, it seemed to them that the noise in the village was inordinately great. To the mechanical noises were added the mingled shouts, wails, screams and chanting of a populace that seemed to have suddenly gone mad. Never had the natives been so noisy.

At the same time, the missionaries became conscious that the earth was trembling. It was far from being a serious earthquake; but it continued, almost without ceasing, for nearly half an hour. At the middle of that period it was severe enough to shake all loose articles down from the walls.

Accompanying it was a very peculiar sound. It reminded Mrs. Walsh of a great storm, as heard through tightly barred windows and doors. It reminded Miss Osborn of something else.

“Like what I heard early this evening!” she exclaimed. “Only, ever so much louder!” But she admitted that this time there was a rumbling, crashing undercurrent which was missing in the first place.

When it was all over, having felt very little alarm about the matter, both women went to bed and slept soundly. In fact, they did not arise till an hour later than usual, the next morning. They ate breakfast without the slightest notion of what had happened.

About eight o’clock, one of the teachers of the village, a “wise man” of whom Mrs. Walsh had spoken as being in the pay of the foreigners, arrived at the head of an extraordinary procession. It comprised several hundred men, women and children; they seemed to have been gathered together within the past few minutes, as though on the spur of some mighty, unseen impulse. And there was something so helpless, so bewildered and uneasy in their attitudes, down to the last soul, that neither of the missionaries thought to feel any misgivings. Time was, when such a horde, descending upon the compound, would have meant a massacre. That morning, however, both women instinctively felt that the mission was a place of refuge, not of mischief, to the crowd that was gathering outside.

“I wonder what it can be,” breathed Miss Osborn, as she hurriedly got together all the available surgical dressings. She gave another glance through the window. “They are so quiet! Can it be some new epidemic, Mrs. Walsh!”

The older woman could not say. “Somehow—I don’t know why—I think we won’t need our kits today.” There was a queer look in her eyes. “It is a hunch, if you will pardon the word. Leave your supplies where they are!”

Wondering, the young doctor obeyed. The two stepped side by side into the door-yard. And they marveled to see that every Chinese who could do so, was crowding into the gate which had always been shunned by more than half the population. What could it mean?

“Missus Doctor, and Miss Doctor,” began the teacher, as though badly pressed for time; “we come—you make him Chlistian. Light away!”

Both women stood, rigid with astonishment, and stared at one another with unbelieving eyes. Mrs. Walsh was first to recover speech.

“What means this, Sing Fo Tan? You want to be Christian? Just you?” pointing directly at him.

“Me!” He waved a hand to include the crowd behind and about him. “All mes! Want—all Chlistian!”

Something must have happened! Something, perhaps a change in the plotters’ attitude towards such as this teacher. Mrs. Walsh could not know that a similar scene was being enacted at that moment in each of two hundred other compounds in that part of China. She merely stepped close to the Chinaman, and searched him through and through with her eyes.

“I believe you,” said she, suddenly stepping back. There was nothing but eager helplessness in the Celestial’s wide open eyes. “Come in then! Everybody—all come in!”

The crowd swarmed into the compound. Miriam Osborn took a deep breath, and signaled to her half dozen converted helpers. If only each were a hundred times as efficient, now!

But the enormous task was not begun before Mrs. Walsh, herself dealing first with Sing Fo Tan’s case, demanded what had caused the strange affair. He had no objection to answering, but he stuttered lamely in a pitiful attempt to find the English for his thoughts. Finally he gave up and resorted to his own tongue, speaking very slowly so that Mrs. Walsh could understand.

“We have come to you because there is no one else to whom to go. My people have come to me, seeking that which I cannot give; and you must help us, because we cannot help ourselves.

“The wisdom of our fathers is no more, Missus Doctor. That which occurred last night has destroyed the faith of my people in the things I have taught them. It has destroyed my own faith, Missus Doctor. None but your faith can be strong enough to withstand this dreadful thing.”

“What dreadful thing?” demanded the missionary, a vague feeling of wonder creeping over her. “Speak up, Sing Fo Tan.”

“Do you not know?” in surprise. “Surely the Missus Doctor has eyes with which to see!”

And he rose and stepped to a window, and pointed to the north. Mrs. Walsh started to follow him, but before she could leave her chair one of the Chinese girls came running in. It was the girl who had been charged with the care of the wireless telephone, the station being provided with enough apparatus to enable the receiving of any messages from Pekin, or thereabouts. The girl was too excited to use English.

“Quick, Mrs. Doctor! The voice machine is talking! It is from the mission headquarters, in Pekin!”

Sing Fo Tan must wait. Mrs. Walsh hurried into the little room where the instruments were kept. And the moment she adjusted the headpiece, she heard the familiar voice of the missionary who superintended the district.

“Go outside, everybody, and take a look at the Great Wall! And don’t show the least astonishment, no matter what you see!”

Half understanding, Mrs. Walsh ran back, and called to her assistant. The two rushed to the window where the old Chinaman still stood. And each saw that which made her doubt her senses, and wonder if the day of miracles had come once more.

The Great Wall of China, that massive barrier against the Tartar tribes, and equally massive barrier, in the minds of the Chinese, against the idea that anything new could possibly be good—that tremendous, and perhaps unequalled work of armies of coolies, fifteen hundred miles long and composed of mountains of stone—the Great Wall of China that had, by its very immensity, blocked the way of progress in the Chinese mind for seventeen centuries, was gone. It was effaced—annihilated.

The day before, it had stood there, a few miles north of the mission. Overnight, it had disappeared. The Great Wall was gone!

CHAPTER VII

From 1920 to 1933

When detectives and others began to investigate the extraordinary events of which the Chinese Wall incident was the last, they invariably made a list of the phenomena and carefully compared them, in the hope of deducing an explanation. Such a list, covering the six episodes in their chronological order, would read something like this:

First, in 1920, the rescue of Florence Neil, then about nine years of age. As said before, this incident was destined in time to exert a profound influence upon a great many people. Its sequel begins in the next chapter.

For the time being, it is enough to point out that this rescue, utterly inexplicable by any stretch of the imagination, being quite beyond the powers of any known agency, whether of land, sea or air—this rescue showed no particular amount of intellect behind the unknown Thing that performed it. A child’s mentality, given the physical power, could have done the stunt.

As for the second incident—the placing of that fifteen-ton “nugget” on the deck of the “Cristobel,” off the coast of Chile, in 1922—a similar deduction might be made. A mature mind need not have been behind that. In fact, one might say that the stunt was the work of a boy, who would naturally have a passion for privacy, buried treasure and the like.

But the affair in Egypt, in 1924, when the head of the ancient Sphinx was broken from its place and transferred to the top of the pyramid—that is not so easy to analyze. There is, of course, something childish about it; but there is also something decidedly pat in that stunt. It fitted the case astonishingly well. Was it not like some schoolboy’s prank; does it not remind one of the ridiculous but clever things that sophomores in high schools are forever doing?

The fourth episode, when the bank was stolen from Hamburg under such extraordinary circumstances, bears out this theory. It shows, of course, more maturity of thought and, as in the preceding case, it certainly was pat. One is irresistibly reminded of high school seniors and their dignified, but distressing escapades.

Thus these four seem to indicate a progressive relationship, as though their unknown perpetrator were steadily developing during the years that passed.

Moreover, the stunts themselves show a certain progressiveness in the matter of mere size. Each miracle is correspondingly more difficult, more terrific in dimensions, more incomprehensible in the light of ordinary knowledge. In fact, it was the stealing of the bank which led to the series to be called “The Colossal Mysteries.” But the fifth event leaves the investigator wondering whether this “progressivism” theory is worth much. Certainly the rescue of the Mammoth III, and its puzzling transposition from a spot in mid-Pacific to an inland resting-place, two thousand miles away—overnight!—this challenges the mind to the utmost, to even comprehend the vastness of the Thing whose powers were thus made manifest.

Finally, when the incident of the Chinese Wall, in 1930, and its absolutely incomprehensible annihilation between the setting and the rising of the sun, is considered calmly and in the light of the perfectly indisputable evidence—for where is the wall today?—when this staggering miracle is weighed in the scales against the products of reason, it seems to overbalance all that man can offer. Apparently it is beyond explanation. How can any theory possibly account for a display of energy so terrific, so nearly instantaneous, and so intelligently calculated to get net results? What becomes of the notion that these mysteries are due merely to progressive development on the part of the powers controlled by their unknown author?

Still, astounding though the facts may be, and unsatisfying though the “progressivism” theory may seem, no other theory fits the facts so well. One cannot conceive of any human agency developing such powers as are indicated by such results. And yet, one is equally unable to conceive of any other than a human agency behind them. The works are Brobdingnagian—yet human.

All of which leaves us free to consider the events of 1933, when everything came to a climax, and when the world was treated to something even more astounding than the six Colossal Mysteries.

Nineteen-thirty-three! What a year that was!

CHAPTER VIII

Ambition and the Man

The magnificent residence of Daly Fosburgh, in Casawaya, has recently been purchased by the state, and from now on the estate will be a public monument. The reason for this will soon be perfectly obvious.

Even back in 1933 the mansion was the chief pride of the town. It belonged to the most important citizen of that exclusive little town of important citizens, the home of wealthy Californians who were desirous of getting away from Burlingame and other places once considered “high-toned.” But the common people had begun to invade these towns; so they had to be abandoned, just as the game of golf had to be abandoned by the elite as soon as ordinary folk took it up. But the year 1933 saw Casawaya ranked even above San Diego.

The mansion of Daly Fosburgh, on the evening of April 30, was the scene of a very extraordinary conference. Three people faced each other in one of the drawing rooms; and such was the tenseness of their attitudes, neither noticed the lateness of the hour—it was long past midnight—nor any other fact than the topic which gripped their attention.

The younger was a girl of perhaps twenty-one, slender, piquant, even elegant, despite her conventional black-and-white costume, which proclaimed that she was one of the many maids employed in the house. Had she been attired in the fashion of the day’s bon ton, one would have admired her without reserve for her daintiness, her clear, unspoiled gaze, and the intelligent resolution in the set of her exquisite mouth and chin.

She contrasted sharply with the young fellow at her side. He was big, and his complexion as slightly blond as hers was a trifle dark. His good looks lay less in his eyes than in the remarkable regularity of his rather large features. A six-footer in perfect condition, he seemed about twenty-two. He and the girl resembled one another only in the attitude and expression of high resolution, which appeared to be directed against the third person in the room.

This was a man, nearly sixty years of age, and bearing upon him all the marks of aristocracy. From his tall, slender figure to the way he fingered an unlighted cigar, his looks and manner proclaimed the out-and-out patrician. There was no mistaking the high forehead, the proudly arched eye-brows and the delicately modeled white moustache and imperial. Had he been dressed in any other garb than the conventional evening dress, he would still have been distinguished.

“You do not seem to understand,” he was saying, his tones as distant and cultivated as one would expect. “I am not questioning this young woman’s probity, my son; I am merely forbidding you to have anything further to do with her.”

“Pardon me, dad, but I do understand!” rejoined the young fellow. “I understand that you expect me to forget all that I have just told you, and, in a word, discard Florence from my mind as though she had never entered it.

“But the thing is quite out of the question. What I have been trying to tell you, all along, is that my regard for her is just as high, just as noble—as your regard for my mother!”

“What!” in a shocked voice, as though blasphemy had been uttered.

“Just that, dad! This affair isn’t what you think it, at all. Florence and I—”

“Nonsense!” The aristocrat had regained his poise. “There can be no such thing as a desirable union in this case! No one would ever believe that an affair between a gentleman of your breeding, and this poor child”—

“Child!” exclaimed the girl. She drew herself up to her full sixty-two inches. “I am old enough to be held legally accountable for my actions! And Bert is right when he says that nothing out of the way has occurred!”

The older man simply ignored her. “Such cases have been numerous enough, Bertram. And they have inevitably ended in disaster for all concerned. At present, your set absolutely will not tolerate even the suggestion of the idea. You must drop it.”

“Must?” The young man seemed to be having a little trouble with his temper. “That is a poor choice of a word, dad!”

“It is not my word, alone, but that of a thousand or more families which constitute the most cultivated element of this country.” The patrician now held the situation firmly in hand, and realized it, and was at ease. “Let me remind you of your position in society, Bertram.

“You are descended from a long line of the finest people who ever lived. Your money—my money—was not created in any vulgar fashion; it was not secured by speculation during the Great War. It was got together by sound, legitimate investment over a period of many generations.

“None of your ancestors has ever held himself inferior to the highest ranks of England. If we chose, we could have a title of our own, even now. Instead, for diplomatic reasons, we prefer to let our caste be manifest in other ways.

“Your station in the world is at the top, Bertram. The world was built, as I have told you many times, primarily for the benefit of such as you and me. Those who are so unfortunate as to be less well-born, are entitled to no consideration whatever at your hands; and when you talk of marrying one of the servants in your own household, you are merely absurd, Bertram; merely absurd.”

Bert Fosburgh seemed to have been expecting something like this. “You could say nothing else, dad. I know you well enough for that.

“But it is only in your opinion, that this marriage is undesirable. I happen to entertain a different notion!”

As before, Daly Fosburgh carefully avoided so much as looking at the girl. Now, however, he spoke in a peculiarly impersonal tone, such as he reserved for his servants, meanwhile keeping his eyes intent upon the task of lighting his cigar. “For the sake of argument, we will assume, my child, that you think you love my son sincerely; that your affection is as noble as you claim it to be. We will take all that for granted, if you insist.

“But you forget that in the nature of the case, my child, you are quite incapable of appealing to the higher side of Bertram’s character. Appraising all your assets at your own valuation, you are still, you must admit, far short indeed of the kind of a girl that you would honestly want him to marry.

“Is this not so?”

“It is not!” flashed the girl. She thrust an arm through her lover’s. “Perhaps I haven’t been educated in art and music, but at least I’ve been taught the things that really count!

“I feel absolutely sure, Mr. Fosburgh, that I can make Bert happy!”

The aristocrat nodded. “For about a day and a half,” sardonically.

The girl started to make a sharp retort, then, with a sudden effort, she recollected herself and kept silent. Bert saw, and instantly exclaimed:

“Did you notice that, dad? She can hold her temper! And that’s just the kind of a girl she is all the way through—restrained, controlled and dignified!

“I’d be proud, dad, to marry her! It isn’t a question of disputing your judgment; neither do I disregard all that you have said about society’s claims upon me.

“It’s simply this: Do I love her? Well enough to give her my name? And is she—Florence herself, not her station in life—is Florence ‘worthy’, as you say? Well, sir, my judgment says that she is! And my judgment will have to stand above all else!”

Daly Fosburgh let his cigar die out. He sat down, and in silence studied the tips of his faultlessly manicured fingers. When he was finally ready to speak, however, there was no sign of whatever may have passed through his mind.

“Bertram, my boy, you are stubborn. I suppose you come by it honestly; all the Fosburghs have had wills of their own. I find fault only with your judgment.

“Now, my boy, I am so thoroughly convinced of this, that I am going to prevent you from acting as you wish. You are not to marry this child. You are going to remain single until a wife is found for you among the people who—”

“Not going to marry Florence?”

“No. If you will not listen to reason, you at least will pay attention to something more effectual.”

The boy gave an easy laugh. “I have the law on my side, dad. You can’t prevent me from doing as I please. If I can’t marry with your consent, why, then, I’ll marry without it!”

“You are mistaken,” imperturbably. “Doubtless you are thinking that, having come of age and therefore nominally into possession of your uncle’s legacy, you are now independent of me, financially?”

“Quite independent, dad!”

“That is an error.” The cigar was lighted again. “I shall contest your uncle’s will, and see to it that you are cut off without a cent.”

Again the boy laughed, but this time uneasily. “The court will have something to say about that.”

“Yes. Everything. As it happens, the judge who will pass upon the case is a personal friend of mine. A word from me, and the matter is settled, my boy.”

“I’ll appeal the case!” with sudden heat.

“It will do you no good!” also showing a touch of temper. Mr. Fosburgh hesitated a moment, then: “And I may as well tell you something now, rather than wait until later, Bertram, that will save you the trouble of telling me that you are prepared to leave me, rather than accept my dictation.

“But before I tell you, this child must leave the room!”

For a moment there was a clash of wills. Florence’s eyes flashed forth what she had schooled her tongue not to say. But Bert himself gently urged:

“Better do what he says, Flo. See you afterwards.” The girl left. Immediately, Daly Fosburgh resumed, exactly as though the butler had opened a window in order to drive out a fly. He said:

“My boy, you do not know your father.” At this, Bert looked up in some slight anxiety. Was—confession coming? “You doubtless consider me to be little more than a capitalist, a dabbler in politics and a connoisseur of rare books.

“In reality, I have as high ambitions as any man who ever lived! I have had these ambitions ever since you were born. And one of these ambitions, my boy, is to see you rise higher than anyone else in America!”

“Well?” after a breathless pause.

“For years I have worked and planned, always entirely under cover, towards this end. My financial operations have extended much further than any of my contemporaries ever suspected. And it so happens that your foolish affair with this nobody of a Florence Neil—is that the right name?—your affair came just in time to see my ambitions realized!”

“Go on!”

“A few days ago I should have hesitated to confide in you. Today, it is well that you should know what is about to happen; it will make it easier for you to appreciate why I expect certain things of you.

“Bertram,” leaning forward, and sinking his voice to a whisper—“Bertram, your father is—tonight!—the secret dictator of the United States! I am its money lord!

“And you—you are to become its emperor!”

CHAPTER IX

The Coming of the Nth Man

The foregoing took place about midnight of April 30. At dawn the very next morning, May Day of 1933, the Nth Man first set foot upon the soil of North America; and today the nation observes the date as a general holiday, of as great significance as the Fourth of July itself.

The Nth Man reached San Francisco at exactly six o’clock. A great many people claim the honor of being first to see him. In all likelihood, the number of these people will increase with each generation, until a time may come when several million children shall be told that “your great-grandpa saw him before anybody else did.” However that may be, San Francisco gets the distinction.

The first official news of the newcomer was telephoned by a patrolman whose beat was on the heights north of Sutro Baths. This patrolman’s name was Sullivan.

“All quiet,” was his report, “but there’s a big man, standing out in th’ Golden Gate. Whot shall I do wit’ him?”

“A big what? Standing where?”

“A big man, sor, standin’ in th’ Golden Gate.” The Irishman was evidently on the point of exploding with excitement, but he was determined that his captain should not guess it. “Whot shall I do wit’ him?”

“For God’s sake! What a hell of a joke! Go back to your beat, and quit your foolery!”

“Beg pardon, sor,” insisted Sullivan. “’Tis no joke. There’s a huge giant of a fella jist where I’m tellin’ you he is. He come out av th’ sea, about five minutes ago,’ an’ he’s been a-standin’ there iver since!”

And thus, in the matter-of-fact words of a policeman, the world was apprised of the most surprising event in all history, ancient or modern. The Nth Man had come!

The city awoke. Mostly the news spread by word of mouth; for the soldiers at the Presidio, as well as numerous fishermen and others whose duties took them to the neighborhood of the Gate in the early morning, had lost no time in telling all who would listen. And long before any newspaper could put an extra on sale, the population of the city was pouring over the hills towards the mouth of the bay.

Oakland, which by that time had outstripped San Francisco and had become the first city of the west, was slower in getting the news, but just as quick to act upon it. Every available cross-bay craft was pressed into service, the Goat Island Bridge being not half commodious enough to accommodate those who had no planes. And by half-past six, the greatest marvel on the face of the globe was fairly surrounded by sightseers.

The Nth Man hardly moved from his position for the space of the first hour. He seemed to be waiting for something. And presently, when a large helicopter arose from the grounds of the university in Berkeley, and made its way over towards the Gate, the visitor’s purpose in waiting became clear.

The helicopter contained most of the faculty of the college. They comprised the most advanced minds of the west, and the world would believe what they said. And well indeed might the world wish to be assured.

“Gentlemen,” said the dean of the college, leaning over the forward rail of the airship and giving the Nth Man another scrutiny; “Gentlemen, I am very glad indeed to have you with me on this occasion. Otherwise, I should think I had taken leave of my senses.”

And then he fell silent. So did the rest of the faculty. And in stupefied wonder they gazed upon what stood before them.

Standing exactly in the middle of the channel, his left foot near the Sausalito shore and his right leg looming within fifty yards of Fort Point, stood the vast figure of the Nth Man. From time to time he moved his prodigious head, so as take in his surroundings the better; otherwise, he strongly reminded one of the ancient Colossus of Rhodes, the statue that stood astride the entrance to the harbor of that name. But instead of standing a mere ninety feet in height, this wonder of the twentieth century stood inconceivably higher, and—he was alive!

It was difficult for the eye to appraise him at his full value. He was too immense. He was so enormously large, that it was a problem to find any other large objects, with which to compare him.

Was he taller than the Spreckles Building? Yes; much taller! But—how much? The eye could not answer.

It was the people in the helicopter, the professors, whose minds were somewhat more flexible than those of the millions of gaping sightseers round about, that finally saw the newcomer in his proper perspective. Comparison again; it was the only way to appreciate him. And the dean himself must be given the credit for being the first to approximate the staggering truth.

“Good God!” he gasped. His face whitened, and he shook like a leaf, as the stunning fact was hurtled into his consciousness. “Men—the giant—he’s taller than Tamalpais!”

It was true. The Nth Man overtopped the highest mountain in sight!

Of course, the world today knows the precise figures. There he stood, towering into a sky which, for once in the history of San Francisco, was entirely free of fog. His whole figure, except for that part of his feet that was covered by the waters of the bay, was clear to the vision of all those millions. And they overlooked not one detail.

Especially did they note the curious thing which he carried in his hands. At first no one believed what they saw; then, finally, it dawned upon them that this whole affair was real, and that the giant was actually holding an ordinary battleship in his arms. Not till several hours later was it known that this ship was the Pan-Asiatic super-dreadnaught, “Siamese Twin II,” a vessel of some 80,000 tons, armed with the usual twenty-five inch guns of the day. As for the story of its crew, taken by surprise, driven from the vessel and put ashore on the Farallones—that would make a whole book in itself, and should not halt the progress of this little account.

And so, perhaps, one hour was too short a time in which to appreciate the marvel before the eyes of the west. The thing could only be understood piece meal. It was too vast to comprehend as a single entity. It was the professors in the helicopters who, hovering within a half mile of the giant, decided among themselves to appraise the newcomer in just that fashion; bit by bit, they could reduce him to understandable terms.

The dean elected to examine the giant’s eyes. He found them to be slightly small, in proportion to the rest of his features; and while the balls were bluish white, the pupils seemed pure black. The dean was reminded of a poetic expression—“twin lakes of fire”—and was startled to see a wonderful likeness. Those prodigious pupils, sparkling and flashing with some hidden emotion as the giant glanced this way and that, were certainly no smaller than small lakes.

But they were devoid of brows or lashes. And the lids, instead of resembling those of humans, were like two tremendous shields of some hard, brown material. When the giant winked, which he did as often and as naturally as any of those who eyed him, these shields dropped down in front of the pupils and, of course, flashed back up again into a recess in the eye socket. It was odd, but not disagreeable to watch. The lids were merely hard, not soft; otherwise they differed from the rule only in size.

Meanwhile other professors were examining his ears. These were found to be shaped like most people’s, measuring about as much, from top to lobe, as the height of an ordinary thirty-story building. They, too, seemed made of that hard, dark-brown substance.

The men who were examining the giant’s nose afterwards wrote a treatise in which “a combination of Roman and aquiline, with a projection of fifty yards in front of the upper lip” was the way they summed the matter up. The outer covering was the same as the rest of the face, that unknown, rigid material of chocolate hue.

The mouth was said, by the men delegated to pass upon it, to be the most agreeable feature of the face. Of course, humans prefer that the lips be flexible and curving, whereas the Nth Man’s were rigid and straight. Whenever he opened his mouth to yawn—he seemed nervously excited—his lower jaw merely dropped away from the upper, there being some sort of a sliding joint in the hard substance at the corners of his mouth. Nevertheless, the net expression of his lips was good-humored, curious though that may seem. He was not grim, at all.

The teeth were large, white and in perfect condition. He looked competent to chew an ordinary oak tree with greater ease than most people chew celery. And the interior of his mouth, as revealed by those nervous yawns, was red and clean, just like a mammoth edition of any human’s.

Those of the professors who were elected to examine his facial expression, however, were obliged to admit that they were baffled. They agreed upon only three points: The colossus was intelligent, he was not ill-natured, and he was resolute.

His eyes certainly were those of a well-informed, self-controlled person, despite their terrific size and lack of regulation setting. His mouth, as already said, was anything but fearsome. But his chin, a square, straight-cut promontory of unmistakable strength, told instantly of his will-power.

“His neck,” certain professors later reported, “was about two hundred yards in diameter, possessed of a large ‘Adam’s Apple,’ and remarkable chiefly for its covering. This was an extension of the rigid material which coated his face; but on the neck this material was formed in three rings, or layers, which overlapped like the plates of a coat of mail. But we are sure that the material was not metal. It was either bone, or leather of unexampled hardness.”

The people who were examining his mighty torso, and his terrific arms and massive legs, came to the same conclusion about the substance which coated these parts. Except for the flattened steel hull of some ship or other, which he wore in lieu of a breech-cloth, the giant was unprotected by any other than this many-jointed coat of scale-like, bony, brown-colored armor. Its true nature will be disclosed in due course.

Thus, perhaps, one gets some idea of the Nth Man. The battleship in his hands made him somewhat more comprehensible even though it did remind one of a toy in the grasp of a child. For the ship was nearly a thousand feet long, and the giant carried it with as much ease as most men would carry a gun.

Again, his fingers might make him more understandable to those who cannot grasp the other details. His hands were perfectly formed, the fingers nicely proportioned. On the backs they were protected by that unknown material; inside, the “skin” seemed much like elephant’s hide. His nails were dark, closely trimmed, and ranged in extent from one to two acres.

“The colossus is devoid of hair,” was another of the bits of description that have been handed down. “At least, none was observed by reliable witnesses. This armor of his seemed to have taken the place of hair.”

And so there you have the picture of that stupendous man—for, all in all, he was merely a man on an unprecedented scale, nothing else—towering into the sky, overlooking the bay and the hordes of curious people who were fighting to see him. Conceive of his head, surrounded by planes, like that of an ordinary man in a flock of pigeons. His mighty form rose to that incredible height, with not one deformity to break the symmetry of his figure. Straddling—the Golden Gate!

His sheer immensity was overpowering. Small wonder that so few have attempted to describe him; the normal vocabulary had never been strained as it was on that day. Words must necessarily fail to convey an idea which, in itself, transcends mere language. Language is based upon experience, and no experience had ever before equaled this. The Nth Man, even as he towered above the rest of man’s works, towered also above man’s power to describe.

One little thing, more than all else, will help to bring the Nth Man within the comprehension of ordinary mortals. Like most evidence of great value, it is indirect; it is a statement of what the giant did, not of what he was.

It occurred just at the end of the hour. At exactly seven o’clock, when the sensation-proof clock in the tower of the university campanile was sounding the time, the giant moved from where he stood. And two million hearts all but stopped as the hitherto motionless colossus lifted first his right foot, then his left, and started forward.

The airplanes scattered like frightened birds. A dreadful sound arose—the mingled screams and shouts of that suddenly terrified mob. But, before panic could spread, the giant turned around and took four tremendous strides through the water towards the ocean.

There he paused, looking down. The crowd watched in stupid, anxious wonder, as the giant keenly inspected the waters about his feet. Then, he stooped and care-fully placed the battleship upright in the sea; and from underneath one plate of his armor he plucked a brown object which he shook to the breeze.

It was a fisherman’s net, or rather, several of the largest size, fastened together. The giant handled it gingerly, as though fearful of breaking it. And when he had got the fabric shaken out to his satisfaction, so that it hung from his fingers like a square of brown lace, he gathered the four ends together, two into each hand, and bent down and dragged the net through the sea.

Next moment he stood upright, with his net full of fish. A squirming, flashing, silvery mass, there could not have been less than fifty tons in that single haul. And the giant, holding the catch above his head, opened his lips and poured the net’s contents into his mouth.

He chewed, noisily, for about three seconds. Then, one huge swallow; and a quantity of fish, sufficient to feed a village for a week, was gone down his gullet.

He repeated the operation. Again and again the net was emptied, while the people stood and gaped in helpless wonder. What if the Nth Man should fancy a mouthful of them!

But nine nets-full seemed to satisfy him. He put the net back into its place, and stooped to retrieve the ship, which had floated off a half mile or so. At the same instant the giant saw something a little further out to sea.

It was the dorsal fin of a shark. Like a flash the giant dove, as a football player might tackle a runner, and the ground shook with the impact as transmitted through the water. At the same time, the splash sounded with such amazing loudness that it was heard as far south as Casawaya. Also, the action created waves of such height that every seal was washed off the rocks at the Cliff House.

The Nth Man drew himself to his feet, dripping but triumphant. He had the shark by the tail. He held it high in air, darting and twisting in his grasp; it was like a minnow in the grasp of a boy. And the giant laughed.

“Ha, ha, ha!!!!”

A terrific bellowing of mirth, which thundered from up there in the sky; a sound which took almost ten seconds to reach the people on the ground. And the echo lasted over sixty seconds.

But the colossus, with a swiftness incredible in so huge a bulk, although proportionately no speedier than that of any other man, flipped the shark into his mouth, as though the fish were a sardine. One bite, a swallow, and the shark was gone to join the other inmates of the Nth Man’s stomach.

And then, still having uttered no sound other than that overwhelming laugh, the giant motioned for the airplanes to get out of his way. They scattered, and the giant started towards the east.

Past the Presidio he strode, his feet stirring up rollers that threatened destruction to wharves and all sizes of craft. He noticed this, and moved more slowly and carefully. Presently he stood opposite Oakland, and halted, staring down upon the city.

Next second he stooped; and resting the tips of two fingers in the space opposite the city hall, the tips of two others on a hill in Piedmont Park, the giant leaned far over and thrust his face towards Lake Merritt.

There were a number of small boats around the edge of the lake. These, the giant brushed ashore with his chin. Then he sank his mouth into the middle of the lake, and drank it up.

And next moment began his extraordinary march across the continent of North America.

CHAPTER X

Gulliver II

Up San Francisco Bay he strode, coolly stepping over the Goat Island Bridge and bearing northward, so as to pass Berkeley and Richmond. At every step his unbelievable legs covered over half a mile; but the giant walked slowly, considering his proportionate height. His gait was hindered, not only by the ten fathoms of water in which he stepped, but by sheer air resistance.

As he passed the campanile at the university, the Nth Man, almost without halting, leaned over and playfully twitted the uppermost tip of the beautiful structure. The monument shuddered throughout its length; every bell was thrown from its place. The giant drew back, as though surprised and regretful of the mischief he had done; then went on.

When he reached Richmond, however, his spirits seemed to have fully returned. Bending over, he scooped a double-handful of water—perhaps half a million gallons—up into the air, as one playful swimmer might “shove” water at another. And Richmond was treated to an unexpected cloudburst, which left its streets astonished, but clean.

On marched the giant, past various small towns along that part of the bay and not pausing until he reached Port Costa. There, two huge train-ferries were at work, carrying freight from Benicia to Port Costa. The Nth Man, after an instant’s survey of what was being done, reached down and gently picked up both boats; after which he set them down, each in the slip towards which it had been heading. By so doing, he cut five minutes from their time across, and incidentally made a mess of their schedules.

Still keeping to the water, which by now had narrowed considerably, the giant stepped past Suisan Bay and Collinsville, his immense height enabling him to easily distinguish the Sacramento from the San Joaquin river. He bore steadily upstream until almost to Isleton, where the river channel became too narrow for his enormous feet. Then he took to the land.

Wherever he threw his weight, there resulted a certain characteristic depression in the earth. Sometimes it was only a few feet deep, where the soil happened to be packed hard; in other places his weight pressed the ground to a depth of ten yards. The shape of these astounding pits is fortunately preserved intact in many places, so that we know the Nth Man’s feet were above five hundred yards long and nearly two hundred across the ball, with toes and other details quite in proportion to those of an ordinary adult’s. But his toenails were exceptionally long, and curved.

Perhaps it was this experience of sinking with each step, that made the colossus walk so slowly. Again, it should be remembered that, as soon as he took to land, he immediately had to watch every move he made, in order to avoid doing damage. This took time; otherwise, considering that he was over fifteen hundred times the height of a six-footer, he should have walked that much faster, which would have made his speed six thousand miles per hour, instead of the even one thousand to which he actually attained.

But he took the most painstaking care with every step, frequently stopping short to inspect his surroundings the better that he might make no blunders. His eyes, located about a mile and two-thirds from the surface, were able to cover a great deal of territory; and he had picked a clear day. On the whole, he did not lose as much time as one would suppose, in his search for the safest route.

Ignoring the state capital altogether, the Nth Man headed straight for Placerville. He kept away from the roads, usually planting his weight where the results would work the least harm to crops. It was better to harm vegetation than to interfere with traffic, as a pit in a road would have done. Inevitably, however, a good deal of damage was done to cultivation; a matter which the giant seemed to carry in mind, for just after reaching the foothills he did a characteristic thing:

He stopped and built a dam. The location was at the foot of a small canyon, fed by a creek near Placerville. Engineers had despaired of building a dam in that spot, for it had seemed to be too expensive a job. But the Nth Man simply broke the tip off a nearby peak, shoved it down into the narrowest part of the canyon, and walked on. Today, that dam conserves millions of dollars’ worth of water, which is used by the valley that bears the giant’s footprints.

Presently he reached Lake Tahoe. He stopped there a full half minute, squatting in order to see the place the better. Apparently he enjoyed the view as much as any other tourist; and, like many of them, he decided he needed a drink of the famous waters. So he bent down and sucked up a few gallons.

“Ah!!!” he observed, with monstrous satisfaction.

But his drinking had caused a disturbance on the lake, such as threatened to swamp some of the steamers along its shores. Not letting go of his own pet, the “Siamese Twin II,” the great man from the sea carefully steadied the steamers with a touch or two, until the waves subsided.

He had been on the march less than fifteen minutes, and already had reached the eastern border of California. Now, he set foot upon Nevada soil.

First circling past Carson, so as to cast an interested glance or two at Virginia City—apparently its history was just as romantically interesting to him as to anybody else—the giant bore off towards Carson Lake and from there straight on towards the fast-rising sun. He must have known that Austin was an absolutely dead town, devoid of a single soul, now that its mines were finally exhausted, for he planted one foot precisely in the center of its deserted shacks. But he avoided Eureka and the many other well-settled localities along his route, and hurried on towards the next state.

Fifteen minutes after leaving Tahoe, he was in Utah. He seemed eager to reach the Great Salt Lake; for he almost ran while crossing the desert west of it, and shortly stood in the middle of the water. Thereupon, seeming to take great delight in the action, he lay down and rolled over and over in the lake; and when he got up he went on with visibly renewed vigor.

Bearing now to the south-east, the Nth Man picked his way as gingerly as ever past Salt Lake City, through the Blacktail country and thence along the Bad Land Cliffs. At the Green River canyon he paused, gazing southward as though longing to follow its course; but he pushed on towards Colorado, reaching the border line at 8:47, Mountain time.

His twenty-one minutes in that state was marked by no particular happening, except that, while crossing the backbone of the continent near Leadville, the giant was seen to stoop quite low. Evidently he did this in order to keep his head out of the rarefied upper regions of the air. This problem of an air supply must also have acted to keep his speed below what it might have been.

Reaching Kansas, the giant made good time. The air was not as transparent as that through which he had just come, or else he would have proceeded faster. As it was, he passed Kansas City at 10:20, Central time, just a third of an hour after entering the Sunflower State.

And so the giant marched. It wasn’t practicable for him to pay for such damage as he did; it wasn’t even possible to avoid imperiling human life. But there were very few lives lost that morning on his account; for, swift as were his motions, the action of the wireless was swifter.

Presently the giant encountered the first of the Federal forces. This consisted of a fleet of two hundred battleplanes, rushed north from Oklahoma to intercept him. The machines were provided with the most up-to-date equipment, and armed with orders from the president himself. This fleet met the giant as he was striding over Missouri, near Chillicothe.

The commander of the fleet boldly drove his plane close to the Nth Man’s right ear. And with the aid of a megaphone, the commander was able to make himself heard.

“In the name of the government of the United States of North America,” he shouted, authoritatively, “I command you to halt!”

The giant heard and turned his head. But he kept on marching. The commander shouted again.

“I command you to halt! Don’t you understand?”

Whereupon the Nth Man smiled broadly and nodded, as though it were all a huge joke. And he kept right on.

The commander’s orders did not state what he should do in case the giant refused to halt. The orders merely advised him to “use his own discretion.” So the aviator gave the giant another inspection.

That tremendous battleship, snuggling in the grasp of the man from the sea, probably decided the matter for the airman; this, and the fact that the very air was in a turmoil, so violently was it agitated by the movements of this modern Gulliver. It would be hard to do good target work, with the air so unsteady.

So the commander decided that he had best follow the giant. When he looked back, however, he saw that his plane was the only one of the fleet that had kept up with that thousand-mile-an-hour gait. His had been drawn along, it seemed, by some sort of a vortex that surrounded the Nth Man’s head. Once out of that swirl, and the commander’s five-mile-a-minute machine was hopelessly left behind.

At the Mississippi, the giant stopped for a sip of the muddy but historic waters. Veering sharply to the north at this point, he crossed Illinois without incident, reaching Chicago—or rather, its environs—at 10:45. There he stepped into Lake Michigan with unmistakable relief.

“Whee!!” he shouted, boyishly, as he splashed in his Gargantuan fashion through the cold waters of the lake. “Whee!!”

Hurrying past Kalamazoo, the giant soon reached Detroit, where he paused and stared in apparent astonishment at the vast expanse of factories, where, all passenger traffic having now gone into the air, the product was already simplified to trucks and planes. But the Nth Man had no time to spare.

Leaving just two footprints in the soil of Ontario, formerly a province of a separate commonwealth but now one of the States of the North American Union, the giant plunged in his business-like fashion into the waters of Lake Erie. The vast amount of traffic, however, impeded his progress almost as much as on land; so that it was 12:08, Eastern time, when the man from the sea emerged dripping from the lake and started across New York State.

At every step he met Federal aircraft loaded with ordnance, some only with authority. One and all demanded that he stop, and one and all, after a second or two in the giant’s proximity, were forced to fall back, unable to keep up with his terrific pace. As yet, no demonstration was made against him.

But the further he went, and the longer he remained upon land, the larger the crowds grew. Planes, rushing up for a fleeting glimpse of him, flew over mobs as dense as the land could hold. The giant, however, made a practice of walking where the ground was least crowded; hence, most people saw him at a considerable distance. Those who were nearer, were those who had to flee as he approached.

Everywhere, it must be remembered, his tread shook the earth as it had never been shaken before. His progress across the continent was marked by one continuous earthquake. Even when he strode in deep water, the earth trembled steadily.

And every second that he was in motion, the air was reverberating with the hurricane produced by his passage. Hurricane, however, is a mild term for a disturbance that would make a cyclone seem like a gentle breeze. Such was the howling of that gale, and the shrieking of the wind, it drowned out even the muffled thuds of the giant’s steps. The world had never heard its like before.

Presently the man from the sea stood within a few miles of Albany, at the bank of the Hudson. He stared southward for a few seconds; and the word shot through the air to thousands of vessels along the river:

“The giant is coming! Clear the way!”

Immediately the march was resumed. Past the numerous villages along the “American Rhine,” paying scant attention even to the Palisades, much less the works of man, the giant proceeded in his careful, thorough fashion down towards New York. He reached the city about 12:35; but, to the intense disappointment of the Gothamites he did not pause, save to snip the flagstaff from the new two-hundred-story Sanger building. He used this flagstaff, curious though it may seem, as a toothpick.

Taking care to avoid placing his weight on any of the tunnels that lay under the bottom of the river, the Nth Man waded on past the Battery. At the Statue of Liberty he halted, long enough to take the torch out of the hand of the figure, and to replace it with a small rapid-fire gun, carefully abstracted from the battleship in his arms. The substitution gave the statue a very different appearance.

As though the action were a signal, Fort Hamilton opened fire on him. The shot passed above his head, and was meant to bring him to a summary halt. He did pause, as though astonished, but most certainly did not halt. On he went; and next moment came the second shot.

This struck him full in the stomach, a tremendous three-ton projectile which burst upon impact. Not a tremor was seen to pass through the goliath’s body. It was just as though an egg had smashed against a barn door. The hard, brown armor was absolutely undamaged.

For the next twenty minutes, as the giant covered the remaining distance between New York and Washington, he was subjected to a continuous bombardment. From battleships, forts and aircraft, thousands of tons of shells, bombs and armor-piercing shot were hurled against that two-mile-high, human tower. And not once did he so much as falter.

For, although the most powerful weapons in the whole world had been turned against that chocolate mail, not one projectile was able to get through. Here and there, where high explosive had detonated just right, a dent or a slight pit was to be seen in the stuff. Some of the plates were made ragged on the edges. That was all.

As for the giant’s eyes—the aircraft directed their efforts against these. If his sight could be destroyed, he would be made helpless. Each machine that could get near him, if only for a second, discharged every available piece towards those oddly hooded orbs.

But the giant merely closed his enormous, bone-hard lids over his pupils, and waded on. Afterwards it was learned that these lids had been artificially pierced, in their exact centers, with tiny holes. Too small for any projectile to get through, these apertures allowed the giant to pick his way just as readily as ever. And he still took the utmost care with every step, while cannons roared from every side, and the steel rattled from his armor like hail from a roof.

Could nothing stop him? It seemed impossible. Certainly no ordinary warfare could get results against a body whose weight, as the world now knows the figures, ran up to a third of a billion tons.

But how about gas-attacks? They were tried, with equal lack of success. If a bomb exploded very near the giant’s face, he merely waved a hand, as though some evil-smelling insect were bothering him, whereupon the air was sweet once more to his nostrils, clear once more to his gaze. A single drop that oozed from beneath one of those shielding lids, showed that the tear-gas had had some trifling effect.

And thus it came to pass that, when the Nth Man stood in the Potomac opposite the capital of the nation, the bombardment came to a sudden end. The city would be endangered by continuing the attack. The gun-fire ceased; the aircraft drew away from the now stationary colossus; and comparative quiet settled over the spot.

Down on the lawn in front of the White House the president of the country stood, an insect of a figure, surrounded by equally insect-like guards. In the streets and on top of buildings, stood the greatest crowd of people that the world has ever seen. In the air, close to a million machines circled and hovered. A hush of expectancy, and then—Somewhere a bell sounded the hour. It was just one o’clock Washington time. The giant had crossed the continent in exactly three elapsed hours, having left the Pacific Coast at seven o’clock by Berkeley time, or ten o’clock on the Atlantic. It was incredible—but there he stood. And the waiting mob asked itself just this:

“What is he going to do?”

And so they watched and waited. The giant stood motionless. Perhaps he was tired from his three-hour walk; perhaps he was forming a plan. At any rate he made no move or sound for the space of over a minute.

Then, without the slightest warning, he stooped and grasped Washington Monument. A gentle jerk, and the famous obelisk was uprooted; whereupon the Nth Man most carefully planted it upright on the other side of the river, in Arlington Cemetery.

As though satisfied with this display of his powers, the giant straightened up. And he looked right down at the White House lawn as, for the first time speaking an intelligible word, Gulliver II thundered forth:

“Well!! Now—it’s my turn!!!”

CHAPTER XI

The Nth Man Speaks

A shudder of apprehension ran through the crowd, as the bellowing tones of the monster crashed down from the skies. A shudder, not without reason. The giant could speak English!

This made him, curiously enough, a far more terrible object. If only this barbarous apparition from the sea were ignorant, stupid, unthinking, he might be trapped in some manner or other. But—he was intelligent!

So reasoned most of the millions who heard. To others, however, the fact meant just the other thing. They viewed the colossus with relief. For, it seemed to them, if this towering human mountain were a rational, well-informed being, there was less to fear from him. He could be reasoned with.

However, the monster waited about a minute before making any sort of a move. Presumably he knew that everyone was watching his mouth, and so he purposely waited until his exclamation travelled down to those on the ground. Thus they might be the more impressed with his size. For, as soon as the people at the White House showed that they had heard, the giant knelt; and by placing his knees where the monument had been and resting his finger-tips near the executive offices, he was able to bring his tremendous face to within a hundred yards of the president’s. All with the utmost care, and in respectful silence.

The president found his voice. Like any man with nerve enough to assume such an office, the gentleman then president of North America was not to be outfaced by even this prodigious thing.

“Who are you?” he demanded, nervously, of the giant. “What is the meaning of this outrage? Explain yourself, at once!”

The monster smiled. It was an amused, tolerant, self-assured smile, which had the effect of further disconcerting those who feared his intelligence, and of further relieving those who welcomed it. He made no reply.

“You must explain yourself!” repeated the president. The sound of his own voice braced him considerably; he was a noted orator, and quick to adjust himself to his hearers. “The mere fact that you disobeyed the order to halt, and were not harmed by cannon, is no proof that you can work your own free will with us!

“If you have any case to make for yourself, state it at once! You shall be dealt with fairly! But—you shall be dealt with; rest assured of that!”

A brave speech, under such circumstances. Those who heard knew that it deserved applause, and several were courageous enough to start a vigorous handclapping.

Whereupon the giant, smiling broadly now, leaned back on his haunches and joined in. The blasting thunderclaps of his huge palms effectually drowned out all other sound, just as the roar of cannon drowns out musketry.

Down came the monster to his kneeling position again. He was quite at ease. Apparently he realized that, so long as he kept in proximity to the president, he himself was immune from attack of any kind. And he waited patiently until comparative silence was secured, before making any response. Then he said:

“Glad to meet you, Mr. President!” He spoke in an extremely gentle voice, compared with his previous tones. It was all but a whisper; what ordinary folks call, “sotto voce.” Yet the sound carried that hundred yards between him and the president, and filled the poor gentleman’s ears with thunder. A little louder, and his hearing would have been destroyed.

“As for my name, and the explanation of how I came to be what I am, there is no time to go into that now.” He plucked something from beneath a joint in his armor. It looked like a tiny affair, there in his huge fingers, but when laid on the lawn it appeared to be an immense metal chest, bound round with seaweed. “That contains my history. Let it speak for me later.

“Just now, mr. President, I have come to make a demand. If you like, you may call it an ultimatum!”

The crowd gasped. So it was true! This monstrous thing came to force his will upon America! And, so far as they could see, he was practically certain to have his own way. How could they prevent him?

But the president’s nerve, outwardly, at least, was not at all shaken. His voice rang as courageously as ever, when he replied:

“This government, my huge friend, will never submit to dictation from such as you!

“This demand of yours, whatever it may be, will have to be something self-evident, something that can be granted without the slightest objection from America, or else you may consider it refused before it is stated! And I may as well say, first as last, that I cannot conceive of any such demand!”

As the president finished this speech, he advanced towards that gigantic face; and with his final words, he raised his fist and shook it, defiantly, indignantly. For sheer stout-heartedness, the president’s action probably stands without equal in the annals of man.

The giant seemed to appreciate this. He moved his head ever so slightly, in an unmistakable bow of respect. Then he reached out one hand, as though to motion the president back to his former position. It was a gentle move, but the president misunderstood; and, his nerve suddenly gave way; he turned and bolted impotently to the steps of the White House. Not till then did he recollect that the dignity of a nation depended upon him. He halted, wheeled, and drew himself once more into an attitude as defiant as he could make it. And the giant spoke again:

“When you have examined my history, Mr. President, you will readily understand why I am making this demand. You will also understand why, if you refuse it, I shall have to take measures to force you to grant it. Right now, I had better state my ultimatum as briefly as possible:

“Nominally, the United States is a republic. She is supposed to be ruled by her citizens, each having an equal voice in her affairs.

“Practically, however, America is ruled by one man. And that man’s name I am prepared to state!”

“That is not true!” shouted the president, instantly. “This is a government of, for and by the people!”

“Good for you, Mr. President. I expected you to make such reply. The man who financed your election would be surprised if you said anything else.

“But the simple truth is that you, and everyone else in this country, are subject to the dictation of a single man!”

“That is false!” shouted the president, louder than before. This time he spoke mainly for the benefit of the surrounding crowds. “Each American is a free agent, in every sense of—”

“Nonsense,” remarked the giant, his voice effectually throttling that of the president; “not sense-nonsense! It has been repeated once too often. I shall not allow you to hoodwink these people any further, Mr. President. And it is high time that they knew the facts.

“But I cannot trust you, Mr. President, to tell the people what they ought to know. I am not asking for a promise from you. I trust only the power of sensation, of sensation such as I am now creating, to awaken America to its peril.

“I am now almost ready to state my demands.”

The monster paused, and waited. He fixed his great eyes upon the president; and immediately, as though the man could not help himself, the chief executive took a step forward and said, in a wonderfully gentle voice:

“Well? What is this demand? Let us have it, my friend!”

“I demand this: that your government shall pass laws of such a nature that they will reform the country’s financial system; the purpose of these laws being, to forever put an end to the dictation of any one man!”

The president looked around, helpless. This was too much of a load for even his shoulders. And yet, he must make some sort of a reply.

“Such a proposal as this,” he finally retorted, “cannot be settled off-hand. It would have to go through the usual channels, before it could become law. And there is not the slightest doubt but that the people will refuse—”

“The people will have nothing whatever to do with it,” coolly, from that enormous mouth. “Mr. President, you will immediately proceed to draft such a set of laws, and rush them through congress in the usual manner when you want quick action. Also, you will take care to make these laws absolutely constitutional.

“Moreover, they must go into effect at once!”

This was a poser, and no mistake. However—“I see no reason,” tartly, from the president, “why I should pay the slightest attention to your absurd demand. Not the slightest, my enormous friend!

“But, assuming that Congress should consider this proposition, suppose it refuses to pass such laws? Or, supposing they are passed, what if I refuse to enforce such laws on the grounds that they are unconstitutional or discriminating? What then, Mr. Giant?”

The colossus slowly lifted himself to an upright position. Had he moved at all quickly, he would have smashed innumerable planes that were hovering over his huge bulk. When he was finally upright again, he waved everybody aside while he moved back to his former location in the middle of the Potomac.

He opened his mouth and made reply. Then he turned on his heel, and strode seawards. Ten seconds later, these words rolled down from the heavens:

“You can do as you please about it, Mr. President. I am going back to the sea, and shall not return for six months. At the end of that time I shall reappear.

“In the meanwhile, these financial reform laws must go into effect. No one man shall be able to control the country again. I leave it up to you, Mr. President, to pass and properly enforce these laws.

“But if, when I return, I find this country still dominated by Daly Fosburgh—Mr. President, I shall have to declare war!!!”

CHAPTER XII

America Decides

The giant was gone. By the time his final words reached the ground, his enormous form had disappeared beneath the waters of the ocean. Back to the sea he had gone, and the world breathed freely once more.

Who was he? Was he really a human being, like any other man on earth save in the matter of size and covering? Or was he, as others thought, simply a huge machine of some kind, manipulated by a hidden intelligence?

On the White House lawn still lay the great metal chest that he had left. He had said that it would “speak for him.” The people eyed it eagerly.

But the president’s wits were still intact. He pointed to the chest.

“Take that into the executive offices,” he ordered, “and begin at once to decipher whatever you find. But, on no account shall you make your findings public, until I give the word!”

His secretaries hurried to obey. And, as will shortly become clear enough, there is small wonder that the extraordinary message in that chest was kept from the people for a long time. Only in the end was it feasible to make the truth known.

“There is only one question of any particular importance, just now,” the president told America, in a speech made that night. “That is, the proposition which the giant has placed before us. What are we to do with it?”

That was the question! What was America to do with the startling proposal of the man from the sea?

Informal investigations, carried forward by indignant citizens who disregarded all injunctions, uncovered some highly disagreeable truths. The giant had been right! One man was in control! The rest of the country was dominated by Daly Fosburgh!

What to do about it? A determined band of liberals, their sense of liberty thoroughly aroused by these disclosures, energetically set to work to enlighten the masses. Their efforts were astonishingly successful. The president, through autocratic agencies, tried in several ways to provoke these workers to violence, but without results. Inside of two months, the membership of the Financial Reform League—committed to the giant’s proposition—had grown to amazing size. Three months passed before it could even be counted, and by that time over fifty-five per cent, of the population was enrolled!

The government viewed this league in alarm. And when, despite all that could be legally done to prevent it, the League presented an absolutely unanswerable petition at the White House, the president could do no more than to ask twenty-four hours time.

He called his cabinet. He minced no words. Like himself, his advisers were all secret members of the Heavy Hand. And, on the morning of August first, the people of America were told just what to expect.

The news reached Casawaya about five in the morning. Before six o’clock, every person in the Daly Fosburgh establishment, from its aristocratic head down to the last footman, knew what the government had decided.

And so it came about that Florence Neil knew, almost as soon as Bert and his father, that the United States had decided to refuse the giant’s proposition, to turn down the Financial Reform League. The girl immediately sought Bert.

“Bert! It means war! War—with that awful monster!”

Bert looked more or less indifferent. “To tell the truth, Flo, I’m not very much interested. I don’t care which way it turns out; I’ll have something to be thankful for, and something to regret.”

“I don’t understand,” drawing him down beside her, on a settee. “I mean, I want you to tell me again, dear.”

“That’s all I can tell you now, sweetheart. If the giant wins out, then I can go right ahead and marry you. And if he doesn’t, then”—he suddenly drew her very close—“then I’ll have to get what satisfaction I can from the situation into which my father intends to force me!”

She already understood that he could not divulge his father’s secret plans to make him emperor. And she did not try to make him break his promise. She merely said:

“What did you say you could do, if—if the giant wins?”

“I can marry you!”

“Then”—tremulously—“I hope he wins, war or no war!”

And then, because she was a woman, and because she loved Bert very dearly, she turned unexpectedly and buried her head on his shoulder. While he, because he was the right sort, let her cry as much as she liked, and comforted her. It did them both good.

In the meantime, the government declared the country to be in a state of war, and appointed a censorship. By this device, the Financial Reform League was silenced. Its activities were officially condemned, its leaders thrown into prison, its propaganda destroyed as “seditious.” All of which is very easy to get away with, when a country is at war.

The giant had said that he would reappear in six months. He had come on May Day; he was due to return on November first. There were just three months in which to get ready for him.

For one thing, the government tried to bring pressure upon various foreign countries, to aid in combating “this peril to civilization, this horrible monster from the sea.” But, with one accord, each and every nation refused to give any help whatever to the one country that had failed to progress. She must fight the giant—alone!

All this while, the Nth Man had remained totally out of sight. He seemed to keep to the deep seas around South America, Africa and Australia. Enormous fleets of airplanes were kept constantly on the wing, day and night, with orders to report any sight of the monster. But he managed to evade them all. Not till later was it easy to understand how he did it.

The secretary of war was an exceptional politician. He had not waited for war to be declared, before going ahead with his plans; but, seeing that this was no time to listen to precedent, he concentrated on producing something new in warfare, something that could operate successfully against an opponent such as no secretary of war had ever before dealt with.

How best to fight the giant? Certainly not with an ordinary army of infantry, no matter how well equipped with machine-guns and flame-throwers. Such would have no effect against the man from the sea. Neither was it any use to consider the navy; ships could not operate against a Thing that could create enough waves to swamp every ship afloat. Similarly it seemed that aircraft—ordinarily considered the main fighting branch—was useless in dealing with a monster who could move faster than wings, and who could turn the air into a cyclone with a few waves of his arms.

As for electricity, or magnetic waves, the idea was not even mentioned. The giant’s armor was obviously an insulator.

No; the only hope lay in artillery. Not in ordinary explosive shells, either; nor yet in gas bombs. The giant was too bulky to be concerned with any concoctions that might be hurled at him. All he needed to do was to agitate the air a bit, and thus relieve his eyes and nose of the most deadly gas.

What sort of projectiles would get results? Obviously, just one: the remaining possibility and nothing else. And the secretary of war, maintaining the utmost secrecy, rushed work along that line and no other.

As for men to wage this new kind of warfare, men who could operate the hastily designed apparatus which was to conquer the colossus—the government tried its best to secure them by the usual drafting method. The method failed, so far as the common people were concerned. The average American now fully realized that he would be a fool to fight Daly Fosburgh’s battles. So, without any violence or disorder, each and every draftee who would not be a beneficiary to Daly Fosburgh’s success, coolly and quietly marched straight to prison, a conscientious objector, rather than be forced into the ranks. No amount of official propaganda was able to inject patriotism into a people who saw that this patriotism would benefit only a single man, and his favorites. They were willing to fight for their country; they weren’t willing to fight for Daly Fosburgh’s privately owned nation.

So, in the end, mainly it was his friends and mercenaries who did the actual fighting. There was no one else to do it. And when all is said and done, the arrangement worked very well.

The actual chief of staff was, of course, the great financier himself. But certain infirmities kept him from the field. He supervised operations while remaining quietly in his own home, surrounded by wireless.

As for his son, Bert—“My boy,” said General Fosburgh, when Bert had come into the library in response to his father’s request—“my boy, the time has come for the Fosburghs to show what they are made of. The world is waiting to see whether we are entitled to the respect we have always demanded. And you see for yourself”—displaying his handsome uniform—“that I have made my choice.

“Will you follow my lead, Bertram?”

There was an anxious appeal in the man’s voice. For the moment he was not merely the man of ambition, with a longing to rule the world. He was a proud father, anxious to see his son make good.

Bert took a firm grip upon himself. He longed mightily to show his dad just how much he loved him. But this, as the general had said, was a time to show just what sort of stuff was in him.

“I’m going to disappoint you, dad,” gazing steadily into his father’s eyes. “As a Fosburgh, I consider it my duty to respond only to the highest impulses within me. By nature, I dearly love a scrap; I should like nothing better than a part in the fight. And I’m as proud as anybody.

“But I want none of this giant’s blood on my hands. He is right! I’m in favor of the reform, dad.

“And while, rather than offend you, I shall do nothing at all to help the giant, at the same time I cannot fight him!”

Daly Fosburgh’s thin lips twitched, ever so slightly. Otherwise he gave no sign. He merely said, in a low voice:

“I shall try—to appreciate your position from your viewpoint—Bertram. You may go.”

And Bert went, and immediately told Florence. This time it was she who did the comforting. The next day, Bert claimed exemption as a C.O., and went to jail.

And, exactly six months after his first appearance, exactly as he had promised, Gulliver II came out of the sea again and stood for the second time on the soil of North America.

CHAPTER XIII

The One Day’s War

There had been a great deal of speculation as to where the colossus would emerge from the sea. Would he come straight back to Washington? Or would he follow his former procedure, and make an overland march from west to east? If neither of these, then which, of the various other possible points of entry, would he choose?

“Puget Sound,” many predicted. “He could work more havoc there, before being molested, than at any other point.”

Others considered that he might come up the St. Lawrence, and commence operations around the Great Lakes. Still others, remembering how unexpected all the monster’s actions had been, insisted that the authorities keep a close eye on the Gulf of California. “He’ll wade up the Grand Canyon, and reach the heart of the country before we know it.”

But few believed that the giant would do what he actually did. It seemed as though he had used the least possible cunning, in entering at such a point. Surely the forces of the nation could be more readily concentrated upon the Mississippi Valley than anywhere else on the continent.

So there was surprise, followed by elation and relief, when Gulliver II was reported, at seven o’clock on the morning of November first, to have shown himself in the river opposite New Orleans. He would be able to do very little harm, before an end was put to him!

The population of the southern metropolis was, to the last soul, out of doors to gape at the monster and to see the beginning of his campaign. They noted that he seemed little changed. Some thought he looked a trifle larger; but this, of course, is a matter not open to discussion. Certainly there was no change in the details of his horn-armored, enormously large limbs and torso, no reduction in the awe-inspiring appearance of this apparently irresistible Goliath.

He stood only for a second or so, gazing down upon the city. Then he spoke a few words and, as he had done when last seen, he turned and marched upstream without waiting to see the effects of his remarks. Presently these words thundered down:

“I know the government’s decision. I have no alternative than to declare war. From now on, if I do any damage, it must be blamed entirely on the administration.

“I shall march slowly northward. If your government still wishes to resort to force, i shall have to reply in kind.”

That was all he said at New Orleans. Its import was certainly clear, and decidedly disturbing. The monster seemed to feel that he would succeed. And there was no denying that the government had not thought to apologize in advance for whatever destruction might ensue; but the giant had thought.

Immediately, of course, the news of his arrival was flashed through the air to the various authorities. Without an instant’s delay—for all was in readiness, and waiting—the engines of the new warfare were started on their errands of destruction, each manned by determined, desperate but thoroughly competent though hastily trained men. And the world had never before seen the like of that attack.

Moving inwards upon the Mississippi Valley, from all points of the compass, surged a fleet of three hundred “battle type” dirigibles. They flew from strategic points along both seaboards, from New Foundland to Tampa, from Acapulco to Sitka. Capable of two hundred miles per hour and sailing at full speed, they closed in steadily upon their moving target.

As for the giant, he continued his quiet saunter up the Mississippi, taking all his former care to avoid doing any damage. Upon reaching St. Louis, he paused and observed, with evident interest, the construction of the new bridge at that point. The piers had just been finished when the monster’s first visit cut operations short, leaving the nine sections of the bridge all assembled but still on the banks, awaiting the time when the workmen would come back from on strike and shift the steel to the piers. All of which may have amused the giant; for the people of St. Louis heard him utter a chuckle, a deep, reverberating note that shook every window in town. Then, stepping carefully past the piers, he reached over and picked up the bridge sections; and after fumbling with them in the fashion of a child assembling a puzzle, he placed them carefully in position on live piers. Thereupon, having accomplished more in one minute than the builders could have done in a month, the giant moved quietly on.

Coming to the forks above Alton, he took the left hand branch without any hesitation, having evidently made up his mind on this point beforehand. On he waded, now in the bed of the Missouri, still taking great care to step over bridges, avoid all wharves and shipping, and to keep clear of almost all power lines. A few of these, however, he broke, seemingly having overlooked them and apparently being quite unconscious either of the strong, copper wires, or of the thrashing, sputtering menace of the heavily charged conductors.

In this manner he ran away, so to speak, from the dirigibles that were rushing from the east and south; but at the same time, he was going out to meet those that were coming from the west and north. And so it came about that when, after leaving the Missouri at Kansas City and proceeding up the Kansas past Topeka, the colossus finally stepped out of the water and strode for a few minutes northward, he stood at last not far from the geographical center of North America.

And it was there the dirigibles found him. Erect in the cornfields of Kansas, with Atkison on the east and Nebraska a few miles to the north, Gulliver II waited for nearly two hours for his attackers to gather. And meanwhile he made just one more statement:

“I would rather have picked a more barren spot, my Kansas friends, for this battle; but I decided that the affair had best occur under such circumstances as to make it decisive. Your government will not be able to claim that it was caught unawares. It can have no excuse whatever for attacking me again.”

He raised his voice; and for the first time, humans realized what sounds this monster could make. Remember that he was more than fifteen hundred times the height of an ordinary man, and his vocal powers—since sound varies as the square root of the distance—his vocal powers were almost forty times as great as normal. That is his voice could carry forty times as far. And it did.

“We shall need a space about a hundred miles in diameter! Clear the way at once!”

It was more of a hint than an order. The Kansans took it without question. And thus we owe it to the giant’s thoughtfulness that there was no damage to non-combatants, and so little to civil property.

The dirigibles, swiftly tightening their circle about the colossus, were, of course, in constant communication with each other. The secretary of war himself was in command. And when a distance of fifty miles separated each ship from the central target, the signal was given to drop cargo.

Down on to the Kansas soil, each alighting squarely upright and all in position for operation, landed three hundred of the world’s most terrific engines of war. Beside them, a moment later, landed their crews, running straight from their parachutes to their posts. So well was the thing arranged, and so carefully practiced, that within a single minute the giant was surrounded by the Cramm guns.

The day was clear. The sun was just past the zenith.

By shading his eyes, the colossus could take in every bit of that ominous circle, could see that he was in for it. But, far from showing the slightest apprehension, he merely opened his mouth and roared:

“Don’t waste time asking me to surrender! I refuse to do so! Go ahead with your fireworks!”

The secretary of war, on the bridge of the flagship, bit his lip in an effort to control himself. He turned abruptly to the radio man at his side.

“His blood be upon his own head! We can take no chances with him! It’s murder—but it can’t be helped! Fire!”

The operator rasped the word into the receiver. And next second the state of Kansas rocked throughout its length, as the earth received the recoil of that massed discharge.

Straight and true went every one of those three hundred projectiles—projectiles, made especially for the purpose, and totally different from anything that had ever been used before.

They were each ten feet in diameter, and weighed ninety tons apiece. They were not shot from ordinary cannon, but from electro-magnetic projectors, gigantic affairs, some five hundred feet in length and enormously powerful. Electricity, fed through a cable from each dirigible, hurled the projectiles from each of these tremendous machines.

Rushing at the rate of a mile a second, these ninety-ton missiles flew intact to a distance of twenty miles. Then, as the secretary of war himself pressed a certain button aboard the flagship, each projectile answered to wireless waves that discharged its mechanism. Whereupon, with a roar that was simultaneous in all the three hundred shells, these missiles became, in effect, aerial cannon; and out of their points shot secondary, armor-piercing shots, each a yard in diameter, and—absolutely unbreakable!

There could be but one result when such missiles struck. No conceivable target could withstand the enormous power of these shots. They had been known to penetrate fifteen feet of steel. The giant’s armor was worthless.

But very few of the three hundred ever struck the mark. For, as though he knew in advance exactly how the attack would be made, the colossus waited expectantly until the instant the aerial cannon exploded. And then—he ran.

If his former movements had seemed wonderfully swift, they now seemed incredibly so. He dashed straight for the north, right in the face of a hurricane of steel; and in exactly forty steps—the marks are there today—in forty steps, inside of twenty seconds, the giant reached the edge of that awful circle.

He had been struck in three places. His leaping, of course, had rendered that careful aiming utterly valueless. Otherwise, he should have been riddled.

One of these chance shots penetrated his right leg, apparently without touching a bone; for it did not interfere with his subsequent actions. Another projectile inflicted a trifling wound in his side, carrying away several acres of his armor, which was buried in the earth when it fell and could not be recovered for some weeks.

But a third shot pierced his neck. It went through his windpipe, narrowly missing a jugular vein and lodging in a joint of his vertebrae. All this, of course, was not known until later.

Yet, the Nth Man, beyond throwing a hand to his neck and uttering an exclamation of pain, did not allow this awful wound to stop him. A great river of blood flowed out, each drop falling like a scarlet cloudburst to the ground, staining the soil to a curious brown and rendering it wonderfully fertile, as afterwards proved. As for the giant, the wound had only the effect of making him mad.

He charged upon the nearest of the Cramms. It was already reloaded—such was the excellence of its system—but the piece was helpless. Its dirigible, tossed about like a cork in the cyclone created by the giant’s leaping, had snapped the electric power cable. The piece was dead.

And the same was true of every other Cramm. Each of those three hundred dirigibles had become like a leaf or a feather, flitting wildly about the heavens, impotent in the grasp of that hurricane. Not a Cramm had any power to use. It was the one flaw in the plan.

The Nth Man may have known this, and he may not. Certainly his rage knew no bounds. Uttering only a stertorous, rattling gasp, as he struggled for breath through his shattered windpipe, he bent and seized the nearest of the Cramms.

Up he straightened. An instant, while he gloated over the huge machine that now resembled a mere trinket in his grasp, and then, putting forth all his prodigious strength, the giant threw the gun into Oklahoma.

Around the fatal circle dashed that raging monster, at every step scooping up one of the ill-fated guns. The second followed the first, far to the south. The third and fourth landed in Nebraska. And when, inside of four minutes, the last of the Cramms was hurled into the air, the monster’s rage was not yet appeased.

He stood there for a moment or so, his chest heaving, looking around for other objects upon which to take revenge. His breath came and went through that horrible gap in his throat, creating a dreadful, wheezing rattle, so loud as to drown out every other sound.

For there were other sounds. From the stricken earth, shivering beneath the Nth Man’s furious tread, there came the united shouts, screams and curses of the giant’s enemies. It was, in the aggregate, more of a wail than a defiance; no one who heard will ever forget the cry that arose from that army of smashed and beaten humanity. It was a cry to heaven, from the depths of hell.

Only for a moment or two did the colossus take any rest. Then, again shading his eyes, he peered around in search of someone with authority. There was none to appeal to. The secretary of war, tangled in the wreckage of his flagship, was at that moment lying dead on the banks of the Platte. To whom should the giant state his demands?

He turned and strode directly east. And presently the terrified people of St. Louis were listening to the tones of his now ghastly voice:

“Where is the president? Tell him to come to me, at once!”

Ten seconds later the demand was flashed into space. At Washington, it evoked an immediate response. The response was made by an official who had just learned of the battle, and who was so badly frightened that he instinctively told the exact truth.

“The president has run away! He left secretly, last night, and is now supposed to be on the Pacific Coast!”

This message was received at St. Joseph, and given to a very brave man to deliver. This man was formerly a sea captain, and possessed of a powerful voice. And as soon as he appeared, megaphone in hand, on the roof of the Santa Fe building, the giant bent down to catch what he said.

He seemed to understand perfectly; for he made no comment. But, without a moment’s delay, he turned and started westward.

This time he took no care at all with his feet. He placed them wherever they chanced to fall; fourteen people lost their lives, through failure to act quickly enough upon receiving the wireless warning. But the giant stopped because of none of that.

He travelled more than twice as fast as he had gone six months previous. He made only three stops, and each of these was barely more than a pause. The first was at a reservoir near Denver. This, he emptied before his thirst was assuaged. The second was at Great Salt Lake, where he indulged in his second roll in the brine. The third pause was the longest, when he stopped at Lake Tahoe to drag nearly every fish from its water, getting barely enough to make a single mouthful.

One hour after leaving the battle-field, the Nth Man stood again in San Francisco Bay. And without any preamble he bellowed again:

“Where is the president?”

The mayor of San Francisco, as courageous a man as ever lived, but also as sensible, knew that the only safe course was to tell this living fort the absolute truth. A lie, and the giant might reduce the city to dust. The mayor decided to sacrifice the president to the greater cause—that of the city’s existence.

“You will find the president,” shouted this official, from a megaphone in the tower of the Spencer Building, “fifty miles south of here, on the coast, in a town called Casawaya! He is hiding with some relatives!”

As before, the giant with the damaged throat made no comment. He strode right through the Golden Gate, turned to the south, and swiftly skirted the shore until he reached Casawaya.

Opposite the town he came to a stop. This time there was no need to demand his quarry. The president, knowing by wireless of the search being made, in despair had resolved to make the most of it; why not, since the game was up anyhow? He showed himself on the lawn in the Plaza of the exclusive little city, and advanced with such boldness as he could muster, out into the open, in plain sight of the man from the sea.

The Nth Man saw him; and, as he had done six months before, he knelt and brought his face to within a hundred yards of the president’s. The effort brought another gush of blood from the giant’s neck; he coughed and half strangled, but managed somehow to whisper with more or less distinctness.

“You were a fool,” he informed the president, “to decide to make war. You ought to have known that I am invincible. Are you satisfied, now?”

“I am satisfied,” answered the president, heavily. “This country cannot conquer such a monster as you.

“There is nothing for me to do but to surrender. What are your—terms?”

The giant paused. He raised his head, and gazed slowly around at the crowd.

It was just noon, there on the Pacific Coast; for the giant had come west at such speed as to make up for the difference in time. He had travelled faster than the sun; he had left the Missouri at twelve-thirty. What, conceivably, would such a creature demand of mere humans?

“I am going to make just one demand,” keeping one hand over his wound so that the escaping air might not confuse what he was saying.

“Just one demand, mr. President. I shall ask for no promises. Promises can be broken. I simply make the demand, and stand ready to enforce it myself, if need be.

“First, i hereby declare that the property of daly fosburgh, with the exception of a hundred thousand dollars, is hereby confiscated. Second, i further declare that the demands of the financial reform league are, henceforth, the law of the land!”

The law of the land! The proposed legislation—it meant the end, for all time, of one-man rule in America!

“And,” went on that remorseless, pain-racked voice, “to prove that my word is law, I make this demand, as a personal tribute:

“I demand, that every man who took part in the battle this morning—such of them as survive—shall come forward and offer himself to me as food!”

CHAPTER XIV

The Turtle Man

“Who will be the first?”

The crowd stood in stunned silence. With the exception of a few, like General Fosburgh, who had remained on the coast to take care of that end of the work, most of the Casawayan male population was scattered over the field of battle. That is, the owners of the town’s magnificent estates.

But their servants were, for the most part, on hand. The jails had not been able to hold them all. Out of the two thousand souls that heard the giant’s final demand, scarcely one out of ten was in sympathy with the government—Daly Fosburgh’s government, so to speak.

The general stood on his own veranda, not far from the spot where the giant’s right hand crushed the earth. Some yards away from the financier, on the lawn, stood Bert, taking in the scene with a curious air of detachment. Although out of prison, he still maintained his original attitude towards the problem. However it ended, he must lose.

Florence, as soon as the giant spoke his ultimatum, as soon as she learned that her former master was doomed to a horrible death, disappeared. She had been standing at Bert’s right; and when he first missed her she was nowhere to be seen.

“I think I saw her run that way,” said the butler, pointing vaguely towards the sea, in reply to Bert’s question. And no one else had noticed her.

Bert let the matter stand for a moment. He asked his father the only possible question.

“Have you made up your mind what you are going to do, sir?” Bert’s inquiry might have related to a golf game, instead of to the most awful act that a man could be asked to perform. To nourish that giant! To feed that huge maw! But—“Are you going to show him what a Fosburgh is made of, Dad?”

The aristocrat’s eyes were heavy with agony. This was the question he was asking himself, as he gazed in horror upon the waiting face of the colossus, looming like a barrier between the house and the sea. What should he, Daly Fosburgh, do in such a case? Presumably, if the commander in chief himself were to volunteer, the giant’s wrath might soon be appeased. Should he, a Fosburgh, be the first to sacrifice himself?

“I—don’t know,” he faltered. “I don’t know, my boy.”

The monster’s voice crashed forth again. “It is up to you—either you volunteer, you who fought me, or I shall run you down!

“You have just one minute to decide, whether you die like men, or—like rats!”

The seconds dragged by. No one could move, or make a sound. From moment to moment Bert glanced at his father; but the patrician, torn between pride and unselfishness, could not decide.

As for the rest of the people of his type, staring there at the giant, they were equally incapable of response. Not one had nerve enough to lead the way, to start voluntarily the process of healing the giant’s sense of outrage. It was the thing to do—but none could do it.

The giant raised his head, and looked around again. “Your last chance,” said he. “One second more.”

A breathless suspense; and then, with a sudden motion, the giant reached out and snatched the president with the fingers of his left hand. The man, helpless as a fly in that terrible grasp, seemed paralyzed with fear. The giant leaned back on his haunches and roared, above the cry of horror and dread that arose from all about him:

“Run, you rats—run! You can’t escape!”

The giant dropped the president from one hand into the other. Out flashed a huge, red tongue, and the next second would have been the president’s last, but for a most extraordinary thing.

An expression of unutterable surprise swept over the giant’s face. He sat stock still, holding his hands before him; and stared in pure astonishment at the tip of the smallest finger of his right hand.

There, crawling out of the crevice between that enormous finger-nail and the leathery skin, was the tiny figure of a woman. She grabbed the edge of the nail; and with a final effort, drew herself up on top of it, as a gnat might balance itself on her own finger-nail.

It was Florence Neil. Somehow, while the giant rested his right hand on the ground, she had contrived to crawl into that gaping crevice. And now she found herself a mile in the air, within hailing distance of the Nth Man’s ear.

“You are making a great mistake!” she screamed. “Don’t make food of these men! It’s the worst possible thing you could do!”

Her voice, shrill as a whistle, carried down clearly to the earth. And her people stared, astounded, as the giant, even more astounded, made a stuttering reply:

“Well! You have a nerve, little one! But—you haven’t said anything worth listening to!

“You just don’t understand!” stormed Florence, finding it difficult to get enough air at that altitude, but desperation lending her extraordinary powers. “Let me tell you—what I mean!

“Most of the men—you propose to eat—are not to blame for their acts! They are—the victims of misrepresentation! You must not punish an army—for the sins of one man!”

“You mean, Daly Fosburgh?” with a curious uneasiness.

“Yes!”

On his veranda, the general stood as though paralyzed. “He is there in plain sight—and it is he, alone, who—should suffer!

“At the same time, I happen to know—that you cannot eat him!”

What did she mean? A pause for breath, and she finished:

“He is my—employer! I have seen—your history, Mister Giant! And I know—you can’t take vengeance upon—his body!

“Don’t enforce your demand! Let things stand—as they are! With that man’s billions confiscated—and the new law—America’s future will be perfectly safe!”

It was the most remarkable speech in all history. The giant knew it. And he knew that the girl had matched sensation with sensation, had appealed to him in a way that none appreciated quite as well as he.

Down on the lawn in front of his home, Bert Fosburgh stared upwards in blank amazement. Behind him, his father stood, just as amazed, but with another and a totally different emotion surging within him, as well.

The giant quit staring at the girl. He looked off towards the south, hooding his eyes with those enormous shields as he thought and pondered over what Florence had said. Presently he turned his head, and looked at Florence once more.

Then, very carefully and with the utmost gentleness, he tilted his finger so that she could slide down, safely, into his other hand. He placed the president on the ground, and then held Florence up even with his own eyes.

“For you, little one; yes! I shall spare these cowards!

“And as for Daly Fosburgh—let him keep his life, and give up his fortune. It is enough.

“You win, little one.”

And he set her down, as though she were a hummingbird’s egg in the hands of a child. She nearly fainted with the sudden change of air; but she looked up, and somehow managed to smile.

The giant smiled in return. “For you!” he cried, heartily. “You nervy little mite!”

And then, with a single warning glance at the crowd, the giant turned and strode west. In two minutes he was back in the sea.

Inside a week, the truth about the Nth Man was told.

The data contained in the metal chest he had left, when compared with certain other information, rounded out his simple history in a manner that satisfied all curiosity. It amounted to this, no more:

Back in 1909, a young man named George Pendleton was attending the California Medical College in San Francisco. He was then within a few months of matriculating, and, being wholly without any independent income, he was still obliged to earn his living while keeping up his studies.

He earned it by driving a car, a fine limousine, which was one of eight possessed by the Parkhurst family. This car was used exclusively by Miss Dorothy, the youngest of three heiresses to the great wealth and enviable social position of Cynthia Parkhurst. And Pendleton was but one of a half dozen chauffeurs.

However, the pay was good enough to enable him, with care and an occasional professional “pick-up,” to put him through school. He had his mornings free, by special arrangement attending only forenoon classes. Afternoons and evenings were at Miss Dorothy’s disposal. He contrived to do his reading at odd moments.

But most certainly his pay was not enough to justify him in considering the notion of marriage, nor even of courtship. Such matters must wait, he had told himself, until he had his diploma and had returned to the little interior town where a practice, made up of a wide circle of friends, was almost eagerly awaiting him.

All he needed was patience, and for nearly eight years his supply had served. And meanwhile he drove that car with all the imperturbable qualities, combined with careful mechanics, that the most exacting mistress could expect. And Miss Dorothy was exacting. But Pendleton really was a clever driver.

There was just one flaw in his plans. He failed to take into account that Miss Dorothy, in the years that he had served her, had been steadily growing out of girlhood and into the full bloom of woman’s estate. So gradually had the change come, Pendleton had not noticed it. Also, he failed to realize that, all in all, he and Miss Dorothy were necessarily in one another’s company more often than either was in the company of any other person of the opposite sex.

Now, Dorothy’s mother was an aristocrat of the aristocrats. Her servants—some thirty in number—were merely so many necessary evils in her sight. She despised them all. And her daughters had the same creed.

That is, all save Dorothy. The younger of the Parkhurst family was proud enough, but she was also farsighted and imaginative. She could see that, in a year or less, her chauffeur was due to become a legally authorized physician, and as such entitled to the respect of society. And she was amazed to discover, upon thinking it over, that of all men who had ridden at her side in her own or any other car, none had a fraction of the manly, intelligent qualities of the fellow on the front seat.

But he seemed totally unaware of her good opinion. She did not know that he, who had first taken the job with some nervousness because of having “to protect a child,” had grown to love her with all his heart. He himself did not realize it. She was, in his preoccupied mind, merely a beautiful child, when one day the inevitable happened.

Dorothy, having instructed Pendleton to drive her to the country, ordered him to stop at a certain spot on the La Honda road. She wished to pick some wildflowers, she said. And, since this was a comparatively informal occasion, there was no footman beside the chauffeur. Man and woman were alone.

Pendleton helped Dorothy over the fence, and stood, respectfully waiting, until she returned from the field on the hillside. It is doubtful if either of them had the slightest inkling of what was about to happen.

When Dorothy returned, her arms laden with flowers, she found it much harder to get over the fence, because it meant going downhill. There was just one thing to do; and Pendleton, climbing part way up the fence, locked his legs around a post and held out his arms, impersonally, to lift this “child” back down to the road.

The spot was deserted, except for these two. And next instant Dorothy Parkhurst, amazed but blissful, was crushed tight to the breast of George Pendleton, equally amazed and equally blissful.

They had a long and a wonderful talk, that afternoon. They agreed that their affair must be kept secret until Pendleton’s graduation. After that, all should be well.

From that day forth Dorothy developed a sudden and devouring interest in nature. She bought a small library of volumes dealing with trees, flowers, birds and even minerals. Her social obligations suffered. But Pendleton didn’t.

Winter passed, and spring came. Pendleton learned that he would have to take some extra work in order to matriculate. And during the summer Dorothy left San Francisco, going far up into Humboldt county, where she became a true woman of the outdoors. For many months the lovers did not see one another; but each wrote every day, without fail.

It was towards the end of October that Cynthia Parkhurst, having written letter upon letter without succeeding in arousing Dorothy to a sense of her social duties, decided that she must visit the girl in person. The visit was planned as a surprise. And it found Dorothy unprepared.

The mother could not be deceived. And, although Dorothy had hoped that she could keep her secret just a little longer—George’s diploma was due within a week—she was obliged to confess to her mother. They had been secretly married. And the child was coming within a very few days.

Mrs. Parkhurst’s pride was cut to the quick. Her Dorothy—and a mere chauffeur! In vain did Dorothy plead that Pendleton’s degree, so soon to be achieved, would alter everything.

But even Dorothy did not know her mother’s heart. Mrs. Parkhurst’s pride was not a pride of intellect; hers was a pride of birth. There were innumerable M.D.’s; there could be only one Parkhurst family. To Dorothy’s mother, a physician was merely a very highly paid and very finely trained servant; much above the average servitor, to be sure, but—a servant, as compared with a Parkhurst.

And the mother, disowning her daughter absolutely, left the place with the spoken vow that George Pendleton would pay heavily for his insolence.

Thus it happened that, on the very eve of his matriculation, George Pendleton was informed that “through charges of irregularity in your private life, which nullify your otherwise excellent ethical standing,” he could not be given his diploma. Also, he would be barred from entering any other college. Mrs. Parkhurst had brought a certain very powerful influence to bear; an influence which will shortly be explained.

Pendleton knew there could be but one reason in the world for such an accusation. Obviously, Dorothy’s secret was out. And he lost no time in rushing north as fast as the transportation methods of that day would allow.

Pendleton reached the little resort on the morning of November first. He rushed straight to the little cottage which Dorothy, in company with a former schoolmate, had been occupying. And when Pendleton knocked at the door, it was opened by the other girl.

“You’re too late,” she told him, in a hushed voice. He dashed inside. And there on her bed lay his wife, dying. She had taken poison, and she expired even as he raised her head.

An opened letter from Dorothy’s mother told what had happened to Pendleton. So Dorothy had known. And a note in her own hand explained why she had taken her life.

She had expected, once she was the wife of Dr. Pendleton, to go back to her people with her pride intact. Now, all this was impossible. Moreover, she could not think of burdening George, whose career had been so utterly blasted on her account, with the care of one to whom life now meant so little.

Pendleton’s training had schooled him, in a measure, to things like this. He recovered rather quickly. It was but a few minutes before he made a great resolve.

He sent Dorothy’s companion in a hurried search for help. As good luck would have it, there were two trained nurses on their vacations at the resort. The most experienced of these was brought; and between her and Pendleton, who was a doctor in every sense except the legal one—between them, the Caesarean operation was performed, and the infant saved.

This child, a boy, was named Park Pendleton. The young doctor brought to bear every device of science and common sense, procuring the services of a foster mother, a Spanish woman who had recently been widowed. The baby progressed quite as well as his normally-born foster-brother.

With his prospects for a professional career completely gone, George Pendleton saw that he must either change his identity or leave the country. In the end he did both; and, after having discounted for cash his share in a certain litigated estate, he took the Spanish woman, together with the two children and disappeared.

Some weeks later a certain Dr. Park, accompanied by his “wife” and two children, arrived in the Galapagos Islands. Perhaps it should be mentioned that these islands are a group of thirteen, located five or six hundred miles west of South America, directly under the equator. Although now internationalized, they at that time belonged to Ecuador. And there the Park “family” made its home.

Being a Californian, the doctor possessed more than a smattering of Spanish, and his Latin served to make him a very welcome and adaptable addition to the Galapagan colonies. None but native doctors were there before him; small wonder, with a population of less than a thousand. But the standard of living was easy, prices low, and the doctor found the place to be ideal for the carrying out of his resolve.

Young Park Pendleton, to give him his true name, was brought up differently from any other infant since the world began. Until one year of age, it is true, he was fed on human milk. But when he reached that age he was weaned. And, while he began to eat and digest his food after the manner of other humans, at the same time certain elements of his nourishment were not assimilated in that fashion, but were injected, in condensed form, directly into his veins.

As for this peculiar food, it is first necessary to describe the thing for which the Galapagos Islands are most widely known. By this is meant the giant turtles, many of which are to be found in zoos throughout the world. These turtles, or rather, land-tortoises, are the largest known to science, growing to such immense size that they will support the weight of a full-grown man.

Moreover, these tortoises, whose food (before they became extinct on the Galapagos) was cacti and coarse grasses, are remarkable in other ways. For one thing, they live to an enormous age; some of those in captivity are known to be over three hundred years old.

Also, it appears that they grow as long as they live. They never seem to stop growing. Nevertheless, longevity and continuous growth are not all.

They possess incredible vitality. The experiments of Sr. Redi, an Italian surgeon, show that a Galapagos Island tortoise can live for months after the brain has been removed! Incredible though this may seem, yet there is a more startling fact: The triple heart of such a tortoise, twenty-three days after the head was cut off, continued to beat!

These experiments were known to Dr. Pendleton.

And he was also aware of certain other discoveries, somewhat in advance of his time. For instance, he knew that the thyroid and parathyroid glands of animals are of vast importance in the matter of growth. The pituitary gland, located at the base of the brain, he also knew to be inseparably connected with the development of great size in animals.

Now, the one-year-old boy became a living experiment. Into his veins was injected the chemical elements which filled the vital glands of the Galapagos tortoise. People used to wonder why these turtles were killed off. Today, they may know.

For Park Pendleton became the Turtle Man. He differed from the unwieldy creatures in almost all respects; he was a finely developed, sturdy baby, with all the intellectual and physical possibilities of the highest type of human. But in one or two respects, he became a tortoise.

For one, he grew much larger than ordinary children. Also—because the glands were used as often as the child’s system could stand the injection—whereas an ordinary turtle would live a lifetime on a single set of glands, the infant was presented with fresh secretions every few days. And consequently the boy grew with much greater speed than any turtle; faster, in fact, than any organism of the globe had ever grown before!

“Doctor,” George Pendleton had once asked a professor, at the college; “Doctor, is it true that the average infant is about seven-and-a-half pounds at birth?”

“Yes; that is the average.”

“Is it also true that the average infant will triple its weight inside of a year?”

“Usually. They weigh around twenty-two, at twelve months.”

“Well—I know it’s a foolish question, doctor, but it may lead to something—why is it that a human infant doesn’t continue to triple its weight every year?”

The professor looked astonished. Then, the novelty of the proposition was borne home to his imagination, and he contemplated the problem in all seriousness. In the end he said:

“There really is no good reason, Pendleton, why an infant shouldn’t triple its weight the second year, the third, and each succeeding year. No good reason, generally speaking; but when you narrow it down to a human infant, then, of course, nature simply will not do it—without assistance.”

And Pendleton never forgot. So, although the boy became a source of amazement and mystery to everyone else, the young doctor was not surprised at what happened.

The boy tripled in weight the first year, quite as the average infant does. That is, he weighed about twenty-two pounds when one year old. But, thanks to the treatment which his father administered, the lad likewise tripled his weight the second year. That made his weight, sixty-six pounds. And the third year his growth proceeded at the same rate, so that he was one hundred and ninety-eight at its close.

As he increased in weight, he also increased in width, thickness and height. He was normally proportioned; he was different only in relative size. At three, his Spanish foster-brother stood just two feet and nine inches; Park was already nearly twice as tall.

The treatment continued. Every available turtle in the islands was sacrificed. To get the glands, the doctor would have been hard-pressed for means, had he not discovered that the creatures yielded an excellent oil. Once a demand for this oil was developed, the natives slaughtered the tortoises right and left, delivering the desired organs to the doctor at the rate of a dozen for a sucre.

At four, Park Pendleton was nearing six hundred pounds. He was not far from a ton, at five, and over ten feet in height. Also, his skin had already begun to harden, like a turtle’s.

Mentally, he was merely a child; that is, so far as his judgment went. But he possessed a prodigious memory, quite in keeping with his enormous skull.

Thus, at six years, we find that the boy must have weighed nearly three tons, so that, at seven, the figure would have been eight tons or more. Already his father had been obliged to lease the smallest of the islands for his exclusive use, keeping the curious away by drastic measures. In this way, the boy’s phenomenal growth was kept from the rest of the world.

Park weighed three times as much, at eight, as he had at seven. This made him about twenty-four tons. At nine, his weight was seventy-two; at ten, two hundred and sixteen. He then stood almost exactly fifty feet tall; it was the year 1920—And this marks the date when the first of the “colossal Mysteries” occurred.

Early in that year the doctor had decided that he must have a reckoning with his boy. The lad realized, of course, that he was totally different from any other. And now, for the first time, he was to be told the reason why.

“You owe your life,” the father began, “to your mother, and to me. To me, however, you owe even more than to your mother, for you would never have seen this world had it not been for my skill.” And he explained the Caesarean operation.

Then Pendleton told his boy of his tragic love affair. As clearly as he could, he explained Cynthia Parkhurst’s tremendous pride, and how it had forced her to disown her own daughter.

“But that is not all,” bitterly. “She prevented me from getting my diploma! She did it, my boy, through the cowardly use of a peculiar influence.

“This influence would be hard for you to understand, at your age. I shall write out an explanation, for you to read when you are ten years older. It is enough to say that Cynthia Parkhurst prevailed upon Daly Fosburgh to bring pressure to bear on the regents of the college.

“This pressure was of a financial nature. And that one word, ‘finance,’ brings me to the point.

“My boy, Daly Fosburgh is a great menace to the United States. Today, he secretly controls enormous amounts of wealth. Year by year his control is being extended, until the time must come when he shall possess a controlling interest in every enterprise in the nation.

“It is inevitable. I have worked it out with calculus. When you are old enough, you shall trace every step of the calculation, and see that I am right. In time, the United States will be dominated by that one man—Daly Fosburgh,—who prevented me from graduating, and who was the indirect cause of your mother’s death!”

The doctor paused for breath, before going on:

“Now, I am going to exact a promise from you, my boy.” The father was standing on top of a high cliff, in order that he might gaze straight into his gigantic son’s eyes, “a promise, based upon the fact that you would be dead, were it not for me, and upon the further fact that your mother would be alive today, were it not for Daly Fosburgh!

“I want you to promise me, that when you grow up—” conceive of it!—“when you reach the age of twenty-three, you shall take vengeance upon the man who caused the death of your mother, and who ruined your father’s life!”

The boy was made solemn by it all. For the first time, his manliness was aroused. From that time forth he was no longer a boy, but a young man, in his viewpoint. And he gave his father the promise.

“I will promise you,” he boomed across to Pendleton. “It shall be my purpose in life, to get even with Daly Fosburgh!

“What do you want me to do?”

And Pendleton went on to outline the plan. It was based upon the doctor’s careful computations. By 1933—when the boy should reach the age of twenty-three—Daly Fosburgh must, inevitably, own a controlling interest in the United States. And it was obvious that he would then be, whether secretly or openly, the dictator of the land.

“Your work shall be, my boy, to put an end to the financial system which has permitted one man to gain such power! I shall write out complete instructions, for you to read later. By following them, you will destroy one-man rule in America!”

And thus the affair really began, thirteen years before the Nth Man first set foot on North America.

The doctor had already found it impossible to any longer use tortoise glands. Enough could not be had. Instead, he had analyzed the food of the creatures, discovered the chemical combination which produced the secretion, and finally traced these chemicals down into the volcanic soil of the islands themselves. Next, by setting up a smelting plant, the doctor was able to separate these elements from the rock, and afterwards duplicate the combinations he required.

So the growing boy was, at the age of ten, already depending directly upon minerals for his development. His diet had even then become reduced necessarily, to sea food almost without exception. And he was beginning to test his powers.

It was the summer of that year when he took his first long trip through the ocean, reaching Santa Cruz, far to the north, in time to effect the mysterious rescue of Florence Neil. Once or twice he was nearly discovered; but he learned to hold his breath even longer than a turtle, and so escaped by diving.

At eleven years, Park Pendleton weighed six hundred and forty-eight tons. At twelve, he weighed almost two thousand, and stood a hundred and thirty-three feet high. No wonder he had little difficulty in placing that huge boulder on the deck of the Cristobel, in 1922.

At thirteen he was about six thousand tons; at fourteen, he was seventeen thousand, and was not far from three hundred feet high. It was child’s play for him to play that trick with the Sphinx; child’s play, in more senses than one.

He weighed more than fifty thousand tons at fifteen. A year later he was over a hundred and fifty thousand, with a height of six hundred and thirty feet. Thus, his chief problem in removing the Zollverein Internationale bank was to avoid detection. The stunt itself was easy.1

At seventeen—when boys are at their most awkward age—Park weighed nearly five hundred thousand tons. This brought him up to a million and a half at eighteen, in 1928, with a height of fourteen hundred feet. It will be noted that his height did not triple; it varied, of course, according to the cube root of his weight, since he grew in width and depth at the same time he was lengthening.

But his size, in 1928, was such that he kept almost entirely to the water, finding relief from observation only on such barren lands as the Australian desert. Small wonder that he was interested in the Mammoth III and her precious cargo; and small wonder likewise, that he was able to perform this feat. Fourteen hundred feet tall! He carried the freighter gripped in one hand, high above his head, as he made his way through the sea.

By the time he was nineteen, he weighed four and a half million tons; by twenty, thirteen and a half million, with a height of three thousand feet. Fortunately, the sea swarmed with food. Otherwise, in that year 1930, he would never have been able to destroy the Chinese Wall overnight, and have thereby relieved the great nation from the thralldom of its past.

During the next three years, he continued to grow as before. At twenty-one he weighed four million; at twenty-two, a hundred and twenty million, with a length of sixty-four hundred feet. Finally, at twenty-three, when a boy ordinarily stops growing—at twenty-three, Park Pendleton also ceased to grow.

He then stood, as the world now knows, very nearly nine thousand, one hundred and ninety-eight feet high,—which is only a little less than two miles—with the inconceivable weight of three hundred and sixty million tons. He was coated all over with the bony armor of a tortoise. In all other respects, he was proportioned to a man of six feet and two hundred pounds.

As for his judgment, that was neither more nor less mature than most well educated young men of that age. But his memory was absolutely unthinkable.

For, in sober truth, the Nth Man knew everything. There was not one fact, of any consequence, which he did not actually know “by heart.” His knowledge was that of every encyclopedia his father possessed, of every textbook, of every possible source of information. His father died; but the son possessed wireless apparatus of his own, set up on the barren snows of Antarctica. He kept constantly in touch with everything that happened. Not one important fact escaped him.

So that there is nothing so very remarkable about him, after all. Considering the circumstances, when all is said and done, Park Pendleton could have become nothing more nor less.

He was omnipotent. Mankind could not prevail against him. It was impossible to plot against him in any way; for, with a mentality so prodigious, he naturally was able to perform psychic feats far beyond the powers of ordinary minds. He knew everything. He could read any mind on earth.

And today, out somewhere in the Pacific, the Nth Man still dwells, an omnipotent enemy of injustice, always “on tap,” as it were, in case humanity fails to do what is right. Human nature must improve; human institutions must reform. The Turtle Man is there to see that they do.

He has never since come back to habitated lands. Almost every day someone reports having seen him, in one or the other of the seven seas. But his mere presence there is enough; it will never be necessary for him to return.

For America is, now and for all time, free from the danger of one-man rule. Things are still far from being perfect; there remains much to be done, before all men are made happy. But—dictatorship is forever at an end; thanks to Park Pendleton!

He will live at least three hundred years; that much is certain. After that—for he has exhausted his supply of chemicals—his fate is problematical. He will never have any progeny; his father denied him the possibility. But he may continue to exist as do such turtles as are in captivity, apparently never growing old, seemingly endowed with immortality. Or, he may possibly deplete the ocean of its fish. But this is unlikely; vast as he is, the ocean is vaster.

There are those who think that the Turtle Man is more of an allegory than a reality. They conceive of him as a promise of a condition yet to come, when the cause of Justice shall grow to such immense proportions that it shall become irresistible. The trifling power of the autocrats will become puny, by comparison. Such people see, in the Turtle Man, a promise of the time when injustice shall be done away with, when all men shall be masters of their own destinies, when the weak shall have been strengthened by the strong, and right is supreme.

Be that as it may, the fact remains that mankind will do well to please the Nth Man. Let progress continue as rapidly as possible, no matter whose pride suffers. Better let a few selfish ones complain, than provoke the Turtle Man to making another visit.

Let him who would bring back the old days, think twice!

* * * *

In the drawing room of the Daly Fosburgh mansion, an hour after the Nth Man disappeared, three people faced each other. Six months before, under decidedly different circumstances and surrounded by an entirely different atmosphere, the same three people had held a similar conference.

But, instead of a boy and a maid facing a haughty and adamantine father, this time it was father and son, side by side, expectantly watching the face of the girl. She stood off by herself. And it was she who was speaking.

“I was scared almost to death!” she declared, upon reaching the end of her account of her unprecedented adventure. “But I was more afraid of failing, than of falling!

“So—I just talked, I guess!”

“You certainly did talk!” agreed Bert, admiringly. There was a new respect, not far short of worship, in his gaze. “It was a wonderful thing to do, Flo!

“There’s only one thing I couldn’t understand. What did you mean, sweetheart, when you told the giant that—he couldn’t eat father?”

Florence hesitated. It was Daly Fosburgh himself who answered :

“Because of something that most people have forgotten, my boy.”

Both young people turned, at the curious change in the tones of his voice. The last few minutes had, in truth, amazingly altered the patrician’s manner, his appearance, his whole outlook upon life. He owed his very existence to the sheer moral and physical courage of the girl who stood before him. And he was only too glad to forget that, by her own admission, she had been guilty of prying into the giant’s history. “In fact, it is something I have never told you before.

“Bertram—you recall your two step-sisters, the Parkhurst girls? Their mother was divorced from me, just prior to my marriage to your mother.

“There was another daughter.” A pause. “Dorothy, was her name. She died before you were born. And—

“She had one son, Park Pendleton. It was he who grew to be the giant! He spared me, because—I am his grandfather!”

For some moments the three stood silent, marveling at the curious ways of Fate. Presently the aristocrat spoke again.

“My child”—earnestly—“do you realize that you are the greatest heroine of all time? No man could possibly have done a braver thing!”

Florence dropped her eyes, too embarrassed to make an intelligible reply. But Bert was able to talk.

“I don’t believe,” positively, “that any man would have had the nobility to go through with it!”

“Oh”—almost wriggling, in her confusion—“let’s talk about something else!”

“Very well.” The older man slowly took a step towards her. “My—my dear,” he seemed unable to speak “my dear, can you forgive an—an old fool?”

The girl faced him, joyous and radiant, as she broke into a shaky little cry:

“You mean—you mean, Mr. Fosburgh,—you mean that you give your consent—to—”

“I crave your consent,” he said, “to become the most honored member of this household.”

From which it will appear that she had to kiss two people, before she was through.

1 As this goes to press, the government reports having received, from the Nth Man, the money which was contained in the stolen hank. It is not known what use will be made of this gold, but since the check-book system has practically abolished the use of specie, in all likelihood the metal will be used for dentistry, and the various mechanical arts.