ands, glanced to
windward. He walked to the rail and threw the cover and contents into
the sea. A full-rigged ship was bearing down upon them a short mile
away. So occupied had they been with the deed just committed, that
none had had eyes for a lookout. All hands watched her coming on--the
brightly coppered forefoot parting the water like a golden knife, the
headsails flapping lazily and emptily at each downward surge, and the
towering canvas tiers dipping and curtsying with each stately swing of
the sea. No man spoke.

As she hove to, a cable length away, the captain of the Francis Spaight
bestirred himself and ordered a tarpaulin to be thrown over O'Brien's
corpse. A boat was lowered from the stranger's side and began to pull
toward them. John Gorman laughed. He laughed softly at first, but he
accompanied each stroke of the oars with spasmodically increasing glee.
It was this maniacal laughter that greeted the rescue boat as it hauled
alongside and the first officer clambered on board.

A CURIOUS FRAGMENT

[The capitalist, or industrial oligarch, Roger Vanderwater,
mentioned in the narrative, has been identified as the ninth
in the line of the Vanderwaters that controlled for hundreds
of years the cotton factories of the South. This Roger
Vanderwater flourished in the last decades of the twenty-
sixth century after Christ, which was the fifth century of
the terrible industrial oligarchy that was reared upon the
ruins of the early Republic.

From internal evidences we are convinced that the narrative
which follows was not reduced to writing till the twenty-
ninth century. Not only was it unlawful to write or print
such matter during that period, but the working-class was so
illiterate that only in rare instances were its members able
to read and write. This was the dark reign of the overman,
in whose speech the great mass of the people were
characterized as the "herd animals." All literacy was
frowned upon and stamped out. From the statute-books of the
times may be instanced that black law that made it a capital
offence for any man, no matter of what class, to teach even
the alphabet to a member of the working-class. Such
stringent limitation of education to the ruling class was
necessary if that class was to continue to rule.

One result of the foregoing was the development of the
prof