w--of course I haven't got things as clearly in mind yet,
as you-all have. Now, as I understand it, while we manoeuvre over the
plant, blow up the barricades and, if possible, 'get' the oxygen-tanks,
our men on the ground will pour in through the gaps and storm the place,
under the command of Edward Hargreaves. Is that the idea?"

"Exactly, Comrade Marion," answered Gabriel. "You've hit it to a T."

Craig laughed grimly, as he drew at his pipe.

"Just as we're going to hit those big tanks!" said he. "It's tonight or
never, comrades. They're putting steel nets over them, already. By
tomorrow the whole place will be protected by huge grill-work fully a
hundred feet above the tops of the tanks. Oh, they seem to have thought
of everything, those plutes! But they'll be just a shade too late, this
time; just a shade too late!"

Another silence, broken again by the tall Southerner.

"Just let me get this thing quite clear," said he. "We're to start at
5:30, you say, walk past the Welland Canal Feeder out to the Monck
Aviation Grounds, and find everything ready there?"

"Correct," said Gabriel. "All six of us. That's our part of the program.
Comrades you don't know, out there--comrades in the employ of the Air
Trust itself--will have six machines ready. One of them will be the very
machine that they tried to get us with, in the Great Smokies! So you
see, we're going to use the Air Trust equipment, their field and even
their own telenite, to put them out of business forever and to free the
world!"

"Poetic justice, all right enough!" laughed Marion. "At the same time
that we're attacking from an elevation of perhaps three thousand feet,
the lateral attack will be delivered. About how many men do you count,
on, for that?"

"Well," judged Gabriel, "within a ten-mile radius of the plant, at least
a hundred thousand men are waiting, this very instant, with every nerve
keyed up to fighting tension. Scattered in a vast variety of ingenious
and cleverly-devised hiding places, with their chlorine grenades and
their revolvers shooting little hydrocyanic acid gas bullets, they're
waiting the signal--a rocket in mid-heaven."

"Hydrocyanic acid gas!" exclaimed Marion, forgetting to smoke. "Why, one
whiff of that is death!"

"It is," agreed Gabriel. "Remember, this is a war of extermination. It's
a case of _them_ or _us_! And if we're worsted, the whole world loses;
while if they are, then liberty is born! That's why this gas is