red at them with a great blazing, blinding eye,
dazzling them and making their horses plunge and rear like things
possessed.

They were not long left in doubt as to the intentions of their new
enemy. Something came rushing through the air and struck the ground
almost at the feet of their first rank. Then there was a flash of
green light, a stunning report, and men and horses were rent into
fragments and hurled into the air like dead leaves before a
hurricane.

Only three or four who had turned tail at once were left alive; and
these, without daring to look behind them, drove their spurs into
their horses' flanks and galloped back to Tiumen, half mad with
terror, to tell how a demon had come down from the skies, annihilated
their comrades, and carried the fugitives away into the clouds upon
its back.

When they reached the town it was a scene of the utmost panic.
Soldiers were galloping and running hither and thither, bugles were
sounding, and the whole population were turning out into the
snow-covered streets. On every lip there were only two
words--"Natas!" "The Terrorists!"

The death sentence on Soudeikin, the sub-commissioner of police, had
been found pinned with a dagger to the table in the room in which lay
the body of the lieutenant, with the bloody *T* on his forehead.
Soudeikin had vanished utterly, leaving only his uniform behind him;
so had the two prisoners for whom he had made himself responsible,
and at the door of their room lay the corpse of the sentry with a
bullet-hole clean through his head from front to back, while in the
snow under one of the windows of the room lay the body of the other
sentry, stabbed through the heart.

From the very midst of one of the strongholds of Russian tyranny in
Siberia, two important prisoners and a police official had been
spirited away as though by magic, and now upon the top of all the
wonder and dismay came the fugitive Cossacks with their wild tale
about the air-demon that had swooped down and destroyed their troop
at a single blow. To crown all, half an hour later three horses, mad
with fear, came galloping up the Tobolsk road, dragging behind them
an empty sleigh, to one of the seats of which was pinned a scrap of
paper on which was written--

"The daughter of Natas sends greeting to the Governor of Tiumen, and
thanks him for his hospitality."

CHAPTER XIV.

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL MOMENT.

On the morning of Tuesday, the 9th of March 1904, the _Tim