seemed to be the graven image of
Roger Seaton. No effigy of stone ever looked colder, harder, greyer
than this inert figure of man,--uninjured apparently, for there were no
visible marks of wounds or bruises upon his features, which appeared
frozen into stiff rigidity, but a man as surely dead as death could
make him! Morgana heard, as in a far-off dream, the Marchese Rivardi
speaking--

"I have done your bidding because it was you who bade,"--he said, his
voice shaking with the tremor and excitement of his daring effort--"And
it was not so very difficult. But it is a vain rescue! They are past
recall."

Morgana looked up from her awed contemplation of Seaton's rigid form.
Her eyes were heavy with unshed tears.

"I think not,"--she said--"There is life in them--yes, there is life,
though for the time it is paralysed. But"--here she gave him the
loveliest smile of tenderness--"You brave Giulio!--you are exhausted
and wet through--attend to yourself first--then you can help me with
these unhappy ones--and you Gaspard,--Gaspard!"

"Here, Madama!"

"You have done so well!" she said--"Without fear or failure!"

"Only by God's mercy!" answered Gaspard--"If the rope had broken; if
the ship had lost balance--"

She smiled.

"So many 'ifs' Gaspard? Have I not told you it CANNOT lose balance? And
are not my words proved true? Now we have finished our rescue work we
may go--we can start at once--"

He looked at her.

"There is more weight on board!" he said meaningly, "If we are to carry
two dead bodies through the air, it may mean a heavenly funeral for all
of us! The 'White Eagle' has not been tested for heavy transport."

She heard him patiently,--then turned to Rivardi and repeated her
words--

"We can start at once. Steer upwards and onwards."

Like a man hypnotised he obeyed,--and in a few moments the air-ship,
answering easily to the helm, rose lightly as a bubble from the depths
of the canon, through the fiercely dashing showers of spray tossed by
the foaming torrent, and soared aloft, high and ever higher, as swiftly
as any living bird born for long and powerful flight. Night was
falling; and through the dense purple shadows of the Californian sky a
big white moon rose, bending ghost-like over the scene of destruction
and chaos, lighting with a pale glare the tired and haggard faces of
the relief men at their terrible work of digging out the living and the
dead from the vast pits of earth into which the