ks.

Nat looked at them in astonishment. He had not known whether these
would be Earth denizens or inhabitants of some other planet. But they
were Earth men. And they were old.

Men of sixty or seventy, years, with long, gray beards and wrinkled
faces, and eyes that stared out from beneath penthouses of shaggy
eyebrows. Faces on which were imprinted despair and hopelessness.

Then the first man took off his mask and Nat saw a man of different
character.

A man in the prime of life, with a mass of jet black hair and a black
beard that swept to his waist, a nose like a hawk's, and a pair of
dark blue eyes that fixed themselves on Nat's with a look of
Luciferian pride.

"Welcome, Nathaniel Lee," said the man, in deep tones that had a
curious accent which Nat could not place. "I ought to know your name,
since your teleradios on Earth have been shouting it for three days
past as that of the man who is to save Earth from the threat of
destruction. And you know me!"

"Axelson--the Black Caesar," Nat muttered. For the moment he was taken
aback. He had anticipated any sort of person except this man, who
stood, looked, and spoke like a Viking, this incarnation of pride and
strength.

Axelson smiled--and then his eyes lit upon Madge Dawes. And for a
moment he stood as if petrified into a block of massive granite.

"What--who is this?" he growled.

"Why, I'm Madge Dawes, of the Universal News Syndicate," answered the
girl, smiling at Axelson in her irrepressible manner. "And I'm sure
you're not nearly such a bold, bad pirate as people think, and you're
going to let us all go free."

* * * * *

Instantly Axelson seemed to become transformed into a maniac. He
turned to the old men and shouted in some incomprehensible language.
Nat and Madge, Brent and Benson, and two others who wore the uniforms
of officers were seized and dragged across the bridge to the
landing-stage where the black ship was moored. The rest of the crew
were ordered into a double line.

And then the slaughter began.

Before Nat could even struggle to break away from the gibbering Moon
men to whom he and the other prisoners had been consigned, the aged
crew of the Black Caesar had begun their work of almost instantaneous
destruction.

Streams of red and purple light shot from the ray-pistols that they
carried, and before them the crew of the ether-liner simply withered
up and vanished. They became mere masses of hum