ere bent and cracked and twisted; two of her doors, warped and
battered, hung awry from their broken hinges. Not a shell had struck
her: all this damage had been done by flying fragments of the guns and
of the dock itself; and Seaton and Crane, who had developed the new
explosive, stood aghast at its awful power.

They hastily climbed into the vessel, and Seaton assured himself that
the controls were uninjured.

"I hear battleships," Dunark said. "Is it permitted that I operate one
of your machine guns?"

"Go as far as you like," responded Seaton, as he placed the women
beneath the copper bar--the safest place in the vessel--and leaped to
the instrument board. Before he reached it, and while DuQuesne, Crane,
and Dunark were hastening to the guns, the whine of giant
helicopter-screws was plainly heard. A ranging shell from the first
warship, sighted a little low, exploded against the side of the dock
beneath them. He reached the levers just as the second shell screamed
through the air a bare four feet above them. As he shot the Skylark into
the air under five notches of power, a steady stream of the huge bombs
poured through the spot where, an instant before, the vessel had been.
Crane and DuQuesne aimed several shots at the battleships, which were
approaching from all sides, but the range was so extreme that no damage
was done.

They heard the continuous chattering of the machine gun operated by the
Kofedix, however, and turned toward him. He was shooting, not at the
warships, but at the city rapidly growing smaller beneath them; moving
the barrel of the rifle in a tiny spiral; spraying the entire city with
death and destruction! As they looked, the first of the shells reached
the ground, just as Dunark ceased firing for lack of ammunition. They
saw the palace disappear as if by magic, being instantly blotted out in
a cloud of dust--a cloud which, with a spiral motion of dizzying
rapidity, increased in size until it obscured the entire city.

* * * * *

Having attained sufficient altitude to be safe from any possible pursuit
and out of range of even the heaviest guns, Seaton stopped the vessel
and went out into the main compartment to consult with the other
members of the group, about their next move.

"It sure does feel good to get a breath of cool air, folks," he said, as
he drew with relief a deep breath of the air, which, at that great
elevation, was of an icy temperature and v