of Fragoni's palace.

It trembled and quivered, as if endowed with some uncanny life and
power, as it remained there against the darkness, throwing a weird,
green tinge over the water and up into the skies.

Blue waves of light could be seen pulsing and racing along the terrible
beam and there, where it had fastened itself, they seemed to disappear
in the vast and crumbling structure.

For four seconds that destructive streak of light, one end of which was
lost back in the mists that concealed Manhattan, tore at the proud
pile.

And, as the stone crumbled and the steelite fused under the mighty
assault, an ominous roar swept through the night. The air was so
violently agitated that the plane, miles away, tossed up and down like a
tiny boat on a stormy sea.

Then suddenly the bolt was gone, but its livid image still burned in the
eyes of those who had been watching it.

Once more, it came hurling out of the west and, like the fang of some
great and deadly serpent, darted into the monster that lay in the waters
of the Sound.

Dirk and his companions could see plainly, by the light of the bolt
itself, that it had crashed into the well from which the Lodorians first
had appeared, and that it was beating and hammering its way into the
very vitals of the craft.

* * * * *

Dazzling, blinding fire seemed to pour from the aperture through which
the bolt had passed. The clamor that arose was deafening.

Then again the streak of fires was withdrawn, leaving the night
intensely black until, in a moment more, it came thundering out of the
west again and, with an impact that made the land and the sea and the
very heavens tremble, hurled its way into the depths of the doomed
leviathan.

Twice again it fell, a fiery scimitar out of the darkness, and twice
again it careened at the vitals of the stricken monster.

Then, after the assault was over, the ship still floated on the surface
of the Sound and its shell, as far as Dirk and the others could judge,
still was unscathed.

"We will soon know our fate," remarked Steinholt calmly. "If that didn't
kill those beasts we might as well give up our ghosts."

"I'll drop the plane a little lower and a little nearer to the ship,"
said Dirk. "I don't believe that any life is surviving in that thing."

"My beautiful palace is nothing but dust," sighed Fragoni, mournfully.
"And all my beautiful treasures, too."

"And that beautiful Zitlan," Laza