order that Ostrog might escape by it. He saw a
blue haze climbing out of the gulf, perceived that the people below him
were now firing up at the projecting stem.

A man beside him cheered hoarsely, and he saw that the blue rebels
had gained the archway that had been contested by the men in black and
yellow a moment before, and were running in a continual stream along the
open passage.

And suddenly the aeropile slipped over the edge of the Council House
and fell. It dropped, tilting at an angle of forty-five degrees, and
dropping so steeply that it seemed to Graham, it seemed perhaps to most
of these below, that it could not possibly rise again.

It fell so closely past him that he could see Ostrog clutching the
guides of the seat, with his grey hair streaming; see the white-faced
aeronaut wrenching over the lever that drove the engine along its
guides. He heard the apprehensive vague cry of innumerable men below.

Graham clutched the railing before him and gasped. The second seemed an
age. The lower fan of the aeropile passed within an ace of touching the
people, who yelled and screamed and trampled one another below.

And then it rose.

For a moment it looked as if it could not possibly clear the opposite
cliff, and then that it could not possibly clear the wind-wheel that
rotated beyond.

And behold! it was clear and soaring, still heeling sideways, upward,
upward into the wind-swept sky.

The suspense of the moment gave place to a fury of exasperation as the
swarming people realised that Ostrog had escaped them. With belated
activity they renewed their fire, until the rattling wove into a roar,
until the whole area became dim and blue and the air pungent with the
thin smoke of their weapons.

Too late! The aeropile dwindled smaller and smaller, and curved about
and swept gracefully downward to the flying stage from which it had so
lately risen. Ostrog had escaped.

For a while a confused babblement arose from the ruins, and then
the universal attention came back to Graham, perched high among the
scaffolding. He saw the faces of the people turned towards him, heard
their shouts at his rescue. From the throat of the ways came the song of
the revolt spreading like a breeze across that swaying sea of men.

The little group of men about him shouted congratulations on his escape.
The man in yellow was close to him, with a set face and shining eyes.
And the song was rising, louder and louder; tramp, tramp, tra