as some
mysterious glimmer was produced by the weird machinery of the air. He
could hear the roar of the mighty waves, could feel the uplifting power
and the dash downward from seemingly improbable heights, but he could
not see the cauldron in which they were dancing.

It was fortunate that he could not, for a single glimpse of that sea in
all its fury would have terrified him beyond control. In sheer despair
he would have given up the infinitesimal claim he had for salvation and
welcomed death from the smothering tons, now so bravely battled against.

The girl to whom he clung and whose rigid clasp was still about his neck
had not spoken, and scarcely breathed since the plunge into the sea. At
times he felt utterly alone in the darkness, so death-like was her
silence. But for an occasional spasmodic indication of fear as they and
their spar shot downward from some unusual elevation, he might have
believed that he was drifting with a corpse.

Rolling, tossing, dragging through the billows, clinging to the friendly
spar, Hugh Ridegway sped onward, his body stiff and sensationless, his
brain fogged and his heart dead with that of the girl to whom he clung
so desperately. At last the monstrous waves began to show their
outlines to his blinding eyes. The blackness of the dome above became
tinged with a discernible shade of ever-increasing brightness. A thrill
shot through his fagging soul as he realized that the long night was
ending and day was dawning. The sun was coming forth to show him
his grave.

Slowly the brightness grew, and with it grew the most dreadful aspect
that ever fell upon the eye of man--the mighty sea in all its fury.
Suddenly, as he poised on the summit of a huge wave, something ahead
struck him as strange. A great mass seemed to rise from the ocean far
away, dim, indistinct, but still plain to the eye. With the next upward
sweep he strained his eyes in the waning darkness and again saw the vast
black, threatening, uneven mass.

An uncanny terror enveloped him. What could the strange thing be that
appeared to be rushing toward him? As far as the eye could see on either
side stretched the misty shape. The sky grew brighter, a faint glow
became apparent ahead, spreading into a splendor whose perfection was
soon streaked with bars of red and yellow, racing higher and higher into
the dome above. His dull brain observed with wonder that the brightness
grew, not out of the sea, but beyond the great objec