't know what frenzied courage--if courage it could be
called--was inspiring me. I was wholly confused, but nevertheless I
struck Don and the sergeant aside and rushed at the thing.

* * * * *

It was a sensation most horrible. From the waist up it was still
above the floor of the cell. My wildly flailing arms went through
the chest! But I felt nothing. It was not even like waving aside a
mist. There was nothing. I saw my solid fist plunge through the
leering ghostly face. I fought wildly, with a panic upon me, against
the glowing phosphorescent nothingness of the apparition. My feet
were stamping on its chest and shoulders. Then, as it sank lower,
only the grinning face was down there.

Panting, and with the cold sweat of horror upon me, I felt Don
shoving me aside.

"Too late!"

And then the sergeant's shot rang out. The bullet clattered against
the solid stone floor of the cell. The acrid smoke of the powder
rolled over us; and cleared in a moment to show us the apparition
several feet below the floor level. It seemed to strike its solidity
of ground. I saw it fall the last little distance with a rush; land,
and pick itself up. And with a last sardonic grin upward at us, the
dim white figure ran. Dwindling smaller, dimmer, until in a moment
it was gone into the Unknown.

As though a light had struck upon me came the realization.

"Don, this is rational, this thing! Some strange science!"

All day we had been vaguely realizing it. Intangible, but rational
enemies were stealing white girls of Bermuda. Invaders from another
planet? We had thought it might be that. Certainly it was nothing
supernatural. These was not ghosts.

But now came a new realization. "Don! That's another world down
there! Another realm! The fourth dimension--that's what it is! These
things everybody's calling ghosts--it's the fourth dimension, Don!
People of the fourth dimension coming out to attack us!"

And already the real menace had come! At that moment, half a mile
away across the harbor on the slope of the little hill in Paget, an
army of the White Invaders suddenly materialized, with dull,
phosphorescent-green light-beams flashing around the countryside,
melting trees and vegetation and people into nothingness!

The attack upon Bermuda had begun!

CHAPTER IV

_Ambushed!_

The events which I have now to describe are world history, and have
been written in many forms and by many observe