rters. They mean business.
It's capture or kill. They're rating us as pirates."

"Very well. Anything really important?"

"Nothing else, sir."

"Keep me informed, if any real news comes in. But don't disturb me
with trifles!"

The Master hung up the receiver, sat back in his chair and stretched
his long, powerful legs under the desk. He set both elbows on the arms
of the chair, joined his finger-tips and sank his lips upon them.

"I'd better be rigging that vibratory apparatus before long," he
reflected. "But still, there's no immediate hurry. Time enough for all
that. Lots of time."

His thoughts wandered from _Nissr_ and the great adventure, from the
coming attackers, from the vibratory apparatus, yes from the goal of
all this undertaking itself, back to "Captain Alden." The _who_ and
_why_, the _whence_ and _whither_ of this strange woman urgently
intruded on his mind; nor by any effort of the will could he exclude
these thoughts.

For a long time, while _Nissr_ roared away eastward, ever eastward
into the night, he sat there, sunk in a profound revery.

"A woman," he whispered, finally, the words lingering on his lips. "A
woman, eh? Strange--very strange!"

Resolutely he forced himself to consider the plans he had laid out;
his success thus far; the means he meant to take with the attacking
squadrons; the consummation of his whole campaign so vast, so
overpowering in its scope.

But through it all, persisted other thoughts. And these, he found, he
could not put away.

The buzzer of the desk-telephone again recalled him to himself.
"Hello, hello?"

"I have to report that a third squadron has been ordered into the air,
from Monrovia," announced Menendez.

"Very well! Anything else?"

"No, sir."

The Master hung up the receiver, arose, and seemed to shake himself
from the kind of torpor into which his thoughts of the woman had
plunged him.

"Enough of this nonsense!" growled he. "There's work to be
done--_work_!"

With fresh energy he flung himself into the task of planning how to
meet and to repel the three air-fleets now already on the westward
wing to capture or annihilate the Flying Legion.

CHAPTER XIV

STORM BIRDS

The first slow light of day, "under the opening eyelids of the morn,"
found the Master up in the screened observation gallery at the tip of
the port aileron. Here were mounted two of the six machine-guns that
comprised _Nissr's_ heavier armament; and here, too, wer