his jacket smoldering
in a circle about the neat bullet hole on his chest. Close beside him a
wounded man, with a leg swathed about, sat with an expressionless face
and watched the progress of that burning. Gigantic behind them, athwart
the carrier lay the captured aeropile.

"I can't see him now," said the second man in a ton of provocation.

The marksman became foul-mouthed and high-voiced in his earnest
endeavour to make things plain And suddenly, interrupting him, came a
noisy shouting from the substage.

"What's going on now," he said, and raised himself on one arm to stare
at the stairheads in the central groove of the stage. A number of blue
figures were coming up these, and swarming across the stage to the
aeropile.

"We don't want all these fools," said his friend. "They only crowd up
and spoil shots. What are they after?"

"Ssh!--they're shouting something."

The two men listened. The swarming new-comers had crowded densely about
the aeropile. Three Ward Leaders, conspicuous by their black mantles and
badges, clambered into the body and appeared above it. The rank and file
flung themselves upon the vans, gripping hold of the edges, until the
entire outline of the thing was manned, in some places three deep. One
of the marksmen knelt up. "They're putting it on the carrier--that's
what they're after."

He rose to his feet, his friend rose also. "What's the good?" said his
friend. "We've got no aeronauts."

"That's what they're doing anyhow." He looked at his rifle, looked at
the struggling crowd, and suddenly turning to the wounded man. "Mind
these, mate," he said, handing his carbine and cartridge belt; and in a
moment he was running towards the aeropile. For a quarter of an hour he
was a perspiring Titan, lugging, thrusting, shouting and heeding shouts,
and then the thing was done, and he stood with a multitude of others
cheering their own achievement. By this time he knew, what indeed
everyone in the city knew, that the Master, raw learner though he
was, intended to fly this machine himself, was coming even now to take
control of it, would let no other man attempt it. "He who takes the
greatest danger, he who bears the heaviest burden, that man is King,"
so the Master was reported to have spoken. And even as this man cheered,
and while the beads of sweat still chased one another from the disorder
of his hair, he heard the thunder of a greater tumult, and in fitful
snatches the beat and impulse of t