n speed
around four hundred miles per hour. We went down Davis Strait, over
Newfoundland, avoiding the congested cross-traffic of mid-afternoon in
the lowest lanes, and out over the main Atlantic. Night closed down upon
us. It was safer for Argo now. We flew without lights. Outlawed. Had
they caught us at it, we would have been brought down, captured by the
patrol and imprisoned. Yet Argo doubtless considered the chance of that
less dangerous than a reliance upon my ability to trick the succeeding
directors.

[Footnote 8: Hayes Peninsula, Northwest Greenland, near the present site
of Etah.]

With darkness we ascended again to the upper mail lanes. Over the main
Eastern Atlantic now, and out here this night, there was little local
traffic. The mail and passenger liners went by at intervals--the
spreading beams of their lurid headlights giving us warning enough so
that we could dive down and avoid being caught in their light. I prayed
that one of their lights might pick us up, but none did.

North of Bermuda, a division of the North Atlantic patrol circled over
us. The ocean was calm. Argo dropped us to the surface. We floated there
like a derelict--dark, silent, save for the lapping of the water against
our aluminite pontoons. The patrol's searching beams swept within a
hundred feet of us--missed us by a miracle. And as the patrol passed on,
we rose again to our course.

Argo gave us one of the small cabins to ourselves that night. He was
still deferential to Elza, but in his manner and in the glitter of those
little black eyes, there was irony, and an open, though unexpressed,
admiration for her beauty.

We slept little. Georg and I--one or the other of us--was awake all
night. We talked occasionally--not much, for speculation was of no
avail. We wondered what could be transpiring abroad through all these
hours. Hours of unprecedented turmoil on Earth, and on our neighboring
worlds. We wondered how the Central State of Venus might be faring with
the revolution. Would they ask aid of the Earth? This Tarrano--merely a
name to us as yet, but a name already full of dread. Where was he? Had
he been responsible for all this? Dr. Brende's secret was in his hands
now, we were sure. What would he do next?

About three o'clock in the morning--a fair, calm night--our power died
abruptly. We were in the Caribbean Sea not far above the Northern coast
of South America, at 15 deg. North latitude, 67 deg. West longitude. Our pow