fingering insinuation of something agreeable had begun to waken in
him. The Master, not understanding it at all, or being able to analyze
sensations so foreign to all his previous thought and experience, cut
the Gordian knot of puzzlement by roundly cursing himself, by Allah
and the Prophet's beard, as a fool. And with a vastly disturbed mind
he returned along the white, gleaming corridor--that dipped and swayed
with the swift rush of _Nissr_--back to his own cabin.

There he found the buzzer of his little desk-telephone intermittently
calling him.

"Yes, hello?" he answered, receiver at ear, as he sat down in the
swivel-chair of aluminum with its hydrogen cushion.

The voice of the wireless man, Menendez, reached him. In a soft,
Spanish-accented kind of drawl, Menendez said:

"Just picked up two important radios, sir."

"Well? What are they?"

"International Air Board headquarters, in Washington, has been
notified of our getaway. They have sent out calls for all air-stations
in both America and Europe to put up scout-squadrons to watch for us."

"What else?"

"Two squadrons have been started westward across the Atlantic,
already, to capture or destroy us."