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when we got the destroyer and now look at us."
"Well, I'm willing to try an attack, or at least a reconnaissance of them,"
said the captain. "Just now we're in the position of an armed exploring party.
The Australian government has sent out several ships to see what it could find
on the other continents.
"After the comet struck all the cables went dead. We got into radio
communication with the Dutch colonial stations at Baravia and later with South
Africa, but the rest of the world is just being re-explored and my commission
authorizes me to resist unfriendly acts. I think you could call an incendiary
bomb an unfriendly act."
HIS eyes twinkled over this mild witticism and the party broke up with a
scraping of chairs. A couple of hours later the blue line of Sandy Hook was
visible, then the vague cliffs of the New York skyscrapers. The clouds had
cleared away after the rain of the last few days. Not even a speck of mist
hung in the air and everything stood out bright and clear.
The colonists felt a pang of emotion grip them as they watched the tall towers
of the city rise over the horizon, straight and beautiful as they had always
stood, but now without a sign of life or motion, all the
busy clamor of the place hushed forever.
Of the tetrapteryxes or "dodos" as the Australian had called them there was no
sign. The sky bent high, unbrokenly blue, not a flicker of motion in it.
Murray Lee felt someone stir at his side and looked round.
"Oh, blast!" said Gloria Rutherford. "It's so beautiful that I want to cry.
Did you ever feel like that?"
He nodded silently. "And those birds isn't it a shame somehow that they should
have the most beautiful city in the world?"
The shrill of a whistle cut off his words. With marvelous, machinelike
precision, the sailors moved about the decks. The
Brisbane lost way, came to a halt and there was a rush of steel as the anchor
ran out. Captain Entwhistle came down from the bridge.
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"I don't see anything of your dodos yet," he said. "Do you think it would be
wise to send out a landing party, Mr. Ruby?"
"Most certainly not," said Ben. "You don't know what you're up against yet.
Wait till they come
around. You'll have plenty to do."
The captain shrugged. Evidently he was not at all unwilling to match the
Australian navy against anything the dodos might do. "Very well, I'll accept
your advice for the moment, Mr. Ruby. It is near evening in any case. But if
there is no sign of them in the morning I propose to land and look over the
city."
The landing was never accomplished.
In the middle of the night as Ben, Murray and Gloria were seated in the
chartroom of the ship, chatting with the young lieutenant on duty there, there
came a quick patter of feet on the deck, and a shout of "Light, ho!"
"There are your friends now, I'll wager," said the lieutenant. "Now watch us
go get 'em. If you want to see the fun better go up on the bridge. All we do
here is wrestle slide-rules."
Hastily the three climbed the bridge, where a little group of officers were
clustered. Following the direction in which they were looking they saw, just
above the buildings on the Jersey shore, what looked like a tall electric
sign, burning high in the air and some distance away with no visible means of
support.
"What do you make of it?" asked Captain Entwhistle, turning and thrusting a
pair of glasses into Ben's hands. Through them he could read the letters.
Printed in capitals, though too small to be read from the ship with the naked
eye, he saw:
SOFT MEN EXIT. HARD MEN ARE WORKERS BELONGING. MUST RETURN. THIS
MEANS YOU.
"Looks like a dumb joke by someone who doesn't know English very well," he
opined, passing the glasses to Gloria. "I don't think those birds would figure
that out anyway."
"Wait a minute though," said Gloria as she read the letters. "Remember they
caught Dangerfield and
Farrelly and the rest. Maybe they taught them how to speak."
"Yes but those two didn't know anything about 'soft men.' It's all crazy, like
tweedledum and
, tweedledee. And what do they mean by 'belonging?' None of our gang thought
up that bright remark.
"Look, sir," said one of the younger officers, "it's changing."
Abruptly the lights were blotted out, to reappear amid a swimming of colors,
nearer and larger.
WARNING, they read this time, FLY AWAY ACCURSED PLACE. "What beats me," said
Ben, "is what makes that light. I'll bet a dollar against a dodo-feather it
isn't electrical and fireworks wouldn't hang in the air like that. How do they
do it?"
"Well, we'll soon find out," said the Captain, practically. "Mr. Sturgis,
switch on searchlights three and four and turn them on the source of that
light."
A FEW quick orders and two long beams of light leaped out from the ship toward
the source of the mysterious sky-writing leaped but not fast enough. For even
as the searchlights sought for their goal the lights were extinguished and the
long beams swung across nothing but the empty heavens.
Gloria shivered. "I think I want to go away from this place," she said.
"There's too much we don't know about around here. We'll be getting
table-tappings next."
"Apparently someone wants us to clear out," said Captain Entwhistle
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cheerfully. "Mr. Sturgis, get steam on three boilers and send the men to
reserve action stations. We may have something doing here before morning."
Orders were shouted, iron doors slammed and feet pattered in the interior of
the warship. From their station on the bridge Ben, Gloria and Murray could see
the long shafts of the turret guns swing upward to their steepest angle, then
turn toward the Jersey shore. The
Brisbane was preparing for emergencies.
But there was to be no fight that night, though all night long the weary
sailors stood or slept beside their guns. The dark skies remained inscrutable.
The mysterious lights did not reappear.
At four o'clock Captain Entwhistle retired, reappearing at eight, fresh as
though he had slept through the whole night. The colonists, of course, did not
need sleep but while the sailors stared at them, submitted themselves to an
electric meal from one of the ship's dynamos.
Morning found them gathering about the upper decks, eager for action,
particularly McAllister, who had spent most of the night engaged in highly
technical discussions of the
Brisbane's artillery with one of
the turret-captains.
"What do you suggest?" asked the captain. "Shall we land a party?"
"I hate to go without taking a poke at those birds," said Ben, "but still I
don't think it would be safe."
"What's the matter with that airplane?" asked Gloria, pointing to the catapult
between the funnels, where a couple of blue-visaged sailors had taken the
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