radically wrong with the flier was evident
from its lack of buoyancy, and the further fact that though Thurid
had turned twice to the starting lever the boat still hung motionless
in the air, except for a slight drifting with a low breeze from
the north.

Now Matai Shang was close to the gunwale. A long, claw-like hand
was reaching up to grasp the metal rail.

Thurid leaned farther down toward his co-conspirator.

Suddenly a raised dagger gleamed in the upflung hand of the black.
Down it drove toward the white face of the Father of Therns. With
a loud shriek of fear the Holy Hekkador grasped frantically at that
menacing arm.

I was almost to the trailing rope by now. The craft was still
rising slowly, the while it drifted from me. Then I stumbled on
the icy way, striking my head upon a rock as I fell sprawling but
an arm's length from the rope, the end of which was now just leaving
the ground.

With the blow upon my head came unconsciousness.

It could not have been more than a few seconds that I lay senseless
there upon the northern ice, while all that was dearest to me
drifted farther from my reach in the clutches of that black fiend,
for when I opened my eyes Thurid and Matai Shang yet battled at the
ladder's top, and the flier drifted but a hundred yards farther to
the south--but the end of the trailing rope was now a good thirty
feet above the ground.

Goaded to madness by the cruel misfortune that had tripped me when
success was almost within my grasp, I tore frantically across the
intervening space, and just beneath the rope's dangling end I put
my earthly muscles to the supreme test.

With a mighty, catlike bound I sprang upward toward that slender
strand--the only avenue which yet remained that could carry me to
my vanishing love.

A foot above its lowest end my fingers closed. Tightly as I clung
I felt the rope slipping, slipping through my grasp. I tried to
raise my free hand to take a second hold above my first, but the
change of position that resulted caused me to slip more rapidly
toward the end of the rope.

Slowly I felt the tantalizing thing escaping me. In a moment all
that I had gained would be lost--then my fingers reached a knot at
the very end of the rope and slipped no more.

With a prayer of gratitude upon my lips I scrambled upward toward
the boat's deck. I could not see Thurid and Matai Shang now,
but I heard the sounds of conflict and thus knew that they still
fought--