r me. If not one, why then obviously another, 'tis the only rational
way to think, and at all events there is the magic globe. That may
tell us something." And slipping my arm round the waist of the first
disengaged girl--we were not then, mind you, in Atlantic City--I kissed
her dimpling cheek unreproached, and gaily followed in the drift of
humanity, trending with a low hum of pleasure towards the great white
terraces under the palace porch.

How well I knew them! It was just such an evening Heru had consulted
Fate in the same place once before; how much had happened since then!
But there was little time or inclination to think of those things now.
The whole phantom city's population had drifted to one common centre.
The crumbling seaward ramparts were all deserted; no soldier watch was
kept to note if angry woodmen came from over seas; a soft wind blew in
from off the brine, but told no tales; the streets were empty, and,
when as we waited far away in the southern sky the earth planet
presently got up, by its light Heru, herself again, came tripping down
the steps to read her fate.

They had placed another magic globe under a shroud on a tripod for her.
It stood within the charmed circle upon the terrace, and I was close
by, although the princess did not see me.

Again that weird, fantastic dance commenced, the princess working
herself up from the drowsiest undulations to a hurricane of emotion.
Then she stopped close by the orb, and seized the corner of the web
covering it. We saw the globe begin to beam with veiled magnificence at
her touch.

Not an eye wavered, not a thought wandered from her in all that silent
multitude. It was a moment of the keenest suspense, and just when it
was at its height there came a strange sound of hurrying feet behind
the outermost crowd, a murmur such as a great pack of wolves might make
rushing through snow, while a soft long wail went up from the darkness.

Whether Heru understood it or not I cannot say, but she hesitated a
moment, then swept the cloth from the orb of her fate.

And as its ghostly, self-emitting light beamed up in the darkness with
weird brilliancy, there by it, in gold and furs and war panoply, huge,
fierce, and lowering, stood--AR-HAP HIMSELF!

Ay, and behind him, towering over the crouching Martians, blocking
every outlet and street, were scores and hundreds of his men. Never
was surprise so utter, ambush more complete. Even I was transfixed
with a