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Show X-llHy:'Ki:TCI lit XWI:BSTr:R V ( f3.r.r.;.iiimvniN liv.cius w.kossek .v, t Cw.- x,.r !vM- -m-'c orv-KioHf into ov t Mr crmrnny co He Heard a Little Surprised Cry. Cayley Wheeled Sharply Up Into the Wind. every way to convey the Impression it having rumu more recently from the civilized, habitable portion or thu world than hlit companions. Ha curried cur-ried a rifle slung by a strap over his shoulder, evidently foreseeing no Immediate Im-mediate list? fur It, and a flask. t'uyh y was too far aioft for their conversation to be audible to him, but he cotiM luar that they were talking. The leather clad uian appeared to tie doing the inont of it, and, from the Inflection of his voice, he seemed to be speaking in Kngllsh. Presently he noticed that the leather leath-er clad man had forged a little ahead of his companions, or, rather like a flash, this Idea occurred to Cayley that tho others were purposely lagging lag-ging a little behind. And then, before that sinister Idea could formulate Itself Into a definite suspicion, his eyes widened with amazement, and the cry bo would have littered died In his throat; for this man, who had so Innocently allowed al-lowed tho others to fall behind htm, suddenly staggered, clutched at something some-thing it looked like a thin Ivory dart that had transfixed hi throat, tiiKKOtl It out In a sudden flood of crluihon, reeled a little and then went backwards over the glassy edge of a fissure In tho Ice, which lay just to the left of tho path where he had bet n walking. From the instant when Cayley had noticed tho others dropping behind, to j tho last glimpso he had of the body of the murdered man could hardly have been five seconds. The Instant the murdered man disappeared, dis-appeared, another, who had not prevl j ously been with the party, It seemed, appeared from behind a hummock of j Ice. There could be no doubt either that he wan the assassin, or that he was the commander of the little group ' of skin-clud figures that remained. I The ambush appeared to have bet n perfectly deliberate. Thero had been no outcry, not even a gesture of surprise sur-prise or of remonstrance. i Cayley looktd at the assassin curiously. curi-ously. He was dressed exactly like the others, but seemed very much bigger; seemed to walk with less of a slouch, and had, even to Caylcy's limited view of him. an air of audibly. audib-ly. Cayley was surprised at bis not being armed with a bow, for ho knew of no other way In which a dart could have been propelled with power enough, even at close range, to have transfixed a man's throat. The assassin's assas-sin's only weapon, except for a quiverful quiver-ful of extra darts, seemed to be a phort blunt stick, rudely whittled, perhnps ten Inches long. Obedient, apparently, to the order of the new arrival, the party changed Its direction, leaving what was evidently evi-dently a well known path to them, for a seemingly more direct but rougher route. And they moved now with an appearance of hasto. Presently they scrambled over a precipitous ledge of Ice and, In a moment, were lost to Caylcy's view. The world was suddenly empty again, as If no living foot had ever trodden It; and Cayley, hovering there, a little above the level of the Ice. rubbed his eyes and wondered whether tho singular, silent tragedy he had Just witnessed were real, or a trick the mysterious nrctlc light had played upon his tired eyes. Hut there remained upon that vacant scene two material reminders of the tragedy to which It had afforded a setting. One was smudge of crimson on the snnw; the other, a little distance off, Just this side of the Icy ridgo over which the last of the party hail gone scrambling scram-bling a moment before, was the strange looking blunt stick which he had seen In the assassin's band. Cayley flew a little lower, his wlnge almost skimming the Ice. Finally, reaching the spot where the thing had fallen, he alighted and ptcked It up. Whether Its possessor had valued It, or not, whether or not he might be xpeeted to return for It. Cayley did not know, and did not much care. He stood for some time turning the thing over In his hands, puzzling over It, trying to make out bow It could have been used as the Instrument of propulsion to that deadly Ivory dart. There was a groove on one side of It, with a small Ivory plug at the end. The other end was curiously shaped, misshapen, rather, for, though It was obviously the end one he!d. Cayley could not make It fit his hand, whatever what-ever position he held it In. C.lvlr. up the problem at last, he tucked the stick into his belt, slipped hlit arm through tne strap In the frame-work of his aeroplane and pre-psted pre-psted for fl ght. He had a little difficulty diffi-culty getting up. on lug to the absence of a breeze at this point. Finally b was obliged to climb, with a good deal of labor, the Icy ridge up which he had watched the little party cf murderers mur-derers scrambling. At the crest be cast a glanee around. lookirg for them, but saw bo s!cns of them. Then, getting a favorable favor-able slant of the wind, he mounted spaln Into the element he now called his own. Five years before Philip Cayley would have passed for a good example exam-ple of that type of clean limbed, clean-wluded. clean-wluded. likable young man which the best of our civilization seems to bo (lowering Into. Physically, It would have been hard to suggest an Improvement Improve-ment In him, he approached so nt ar the Ideal standards. He was fine grained, supple, slender, small jointed, thorough bred from lit ad to heel. Intellectually, he had been good enough to go through the academy at West Point with credit, and to graduate grad-uate high enough In his class to be assigned to service In the cavalry. His standards of conduct,-his Ideas of honor hon-or and morality had been about the same as those of the best third of his classmates. If his fellow officer In (he Philippines, during the year or two he spent In tho service, had been asked to pick a flaw In him, which they would have been reluctant to do, they would have said (hat ho seemed to them a bit too thin-skinned and rather fastidious; thai was what his 1 chum and only Intimate friend. Perry Hunter, said about him at any rate. Hut he could afford (o be fastidious, fastidi-ous, for he had about all a man could j want, one would think. For three generations they had taken wealth for granted In (he Cayley family, and with It had come breeding, security of social position, simplicity and ease In making friends, both among men and women. Jn abort, (here could bo no doubt at all that up to his twenty-ninth twenty-ninth year Fate hod been Ironically kind to Philip Cayley. She had given him no hint, no preparation for the stunning blow that was to fall upon him. suddenly, out of so clear a sky. I When It did fall, It rut bin life clean across; so that when he thought back to that time now, It seemed to him that the Lieutenant Cayley of the Vnlted States army had died over there In the Philippines, and that he, the man who was now soaring In those great circles through the arctic sky. was a chance Inheritor of his nauio and of bis memory. He had sit out one day at the hend of a small scouting party, the best-liked best-liked man In the regiment, secure In the respect. In (he almost fatherly regard, re-gard, of his colonel, proudly conscious if the almost Idolatrous admiration if his men and the younger officers. He had gone out believing that no one ever had a truer friend than he possessed In Perry Hunter, his classmate class-mate at West Point, his fellow officer in the regiment, the confidant of all his hopes and Ideals. He had coiuo back, after a fortnight's fort-night's absence, to find his naino smeared with disgrace, himself Judged and condemned, unheard. In the opinion opin-ion of the mors. And that was not the worst of It. The same blow which bad deprived him of (he ngard of the only people In the world who mattered matter-ed to blm, destroyed, also, root and branch, his affection for the one man of whom he had made an Intimate. The only feeling that It would bo possible pos-sible for him to entertain for Perry Hunter again must be a half pitying. hnlMncredulous contempt. And If (hat was his feeling for the man ho had trusted most and loved the most deeply, what must be It for the rest of humankind? What did It matter what they thought of him or what they did to him? All he wanted of human society so-ciety was to escape from It. He fell to wondering, as he hung, suspended, over that rosy expanse of fleecy fog, whether, were the thing to do over again, be would act as he had acted five years ago; whether he would content himself with a single disdainful denial of the monstrous thing they charged him with; whether he would resign again, under fire, and go away, leaving his tarnished name for the daws to peck at. Heretofore he had always answered that question with a fierce affirmative. affirma-tive. Today It left him wondering. Had he stayed, had he paid the price that would have been necessary to clear himself, he would never have found bis wings, so much was clear. He would never have spent those four years In the wilderness, worWing. experimenting, taking his life In his hands, day after day, while he mastered master-ed the art that no man had ever mastered mas-tered before. He had set himself this task because It wifs the ouly one he knew that did not Involve contact wlih hi fellow-beings. fellow-beings. He must have something that be could work at alone. Work and solitude were two things that he had felt i.n overmastering craving for. And the possibility he had faced with a light heart every morning the possibility possi-bility of a sudden and violent death before night, bad been no more to him than an agreeable spice to the day's work. It was not until he had actually learned to fly. had literally shaken the dust of the earth from his feet and taken to the sky ss his abode, that his wound had healed. The three months that he had epent In this upper arctic , air. a wing for U hours out of 21, had calmed Mm. put his nerves In tune again; given him for men and their affairs a quiet indifference. In p'ace of the smarting contempt he had been hugging to his breast before. Three months sgo, at stgat of those little human dots crossing the glacier, he would bave wheeled aloft and gone sailing away. Even a month ago be would hardly bave hung, soaring there, above tho fog, waltlrg for It to lift again tho veil of mystery which It had drawn across the tragic scene ho had Just witnessed. Tho month was August, and tho long arctic day had already begun to know its diurnal twilight. A fortnight fort-night ago the sun had dipped, for tho first time, below the horizon. I!y now (here were four or five hours, out of every 25, (hnt would pass for night. Tho sun set while ho hung there In the air. and as It did so, with a new slant of the breeze the fog rolled itself up Into a great violet-colored cloud, leaving the earth, the Ice, the sea unveiled un-veiled below him. And there, In the open water of tho little bay, he saw a ship, and on the shore a cluster of rude huts. It struck him, even from the height at which he soared, that (he ship, tied to an Icefloe In the shelter of the great headland, did not look like a whaler, nor like the sort of craft which an arctic explorer would have selected for his purposes. It had more the trim smartness of a yacht. They were probably all asleep down there, he reflected. It was nearly midnight mid-night and he saw no signs of life anywhere. any-where. He would drop down for a nearer look. He descended, with a sudden hawk-liko hawk-liko pounce, which was one of his more recent achievements In the navigation navi-gation of the air. checked himself ag:iln at about the level of the masthead, mast-head, with a flashing, forward swoop, like a man diving In shallow water; then, with n sudden effort, brought himself up standing, his planes marly vertical, and. with a backward spring, alighted, clear of his wing, on the Ico-floe Ico-floe Just opposite the ship. As he did so. ho heard a little surprised sur-prised cry. half of fear, half of astonishment, aston-ishment, tt was a girl's voice. CHAPTER II. The Girl on the Ice Floe. She stood there on the floe confronting confront-ing him, not ten feet away, and at sight of her Philip Caylcy's eyes widened. "What In the world!" ho gasped. Then stared at her speechless. speech-less. She was clad, down to the knees. In sealskin, and below Its edge he could see the tops of her small furtilmmeti boots, t'pon her head she wore a little turban like cap of seal. The smartly tailored lines of the coat, emphasized em-phasized her young slenderness. Her bootmaker must have had a reputation reputa-tion upon some metropolitan boulevard, boule-vard, and her head gear came clearly under the category of what Is known a modes. Her eyes were very blue and her hair was golden, warmed, he thought, as she stood there In the orange twilight, with a glint of red. Cayley gasped again, as he took In the detail of this vision. Then collected col-lected himself. "I beg your pardon." ho stammered. "I don't mean to tie rudely Inquisitive, but what. In th world, is a person like you doing In this rift of it that Is, if you are real at all? This Is latitude Tfi, and no cartographer who ever lived has put that roast line yonder Into his maps Yet here. In this nameless bay. I find a yacht, and on this Ice floe, In the twilight, you." She shook her head a little Impatiently, Impa-tiently, and blinked her eyes, as If to clear them of a vision "Of course," she said. "I know I've fallen ssleep and this Is a dream of mine, but even for a dream, aren't you a little unreasonable? un-reasonable? Yachts are a natural mode of conveyance across the oct-an. You find them In many bays sometimes some-times In nameles one and they always al-ways have reople on them. Put you you come wheeling down, out of a night sky. like some grest noctnrnal bird, and alight here on the floe beside be-side me. And then you change your self Into a man and look nt tne In surprise, sur-prise, and nsk me, In Kngllsh, what In the world I am doing here I had the yacht; and ask me If I'm real." There was a moment of alienee after aft-er that. I'nconsiiously they drew a little nearer together. Then Cayley spoke. "I'm real, at any rate," he said; "nt least I'm a tax payer, and I weigh 101 pounds, and I have a name and address. It's Philip Cayley, If that will make me seem more natural, and my headquarters this summer are over on Point Harrow." "I'm not dreaming, then?" she asked dubiously. "No," ho said; "If either of us Is dreaming, It's not you. Mar I furl up my wings and talk to you for awhile?" Her eyes were on the broad-spread, shimmering planes which lay on the Ice behind hltn. She seemed hadly to have heard his question, though she answered It with an almost voiceless voice-less "yes." Then she approached, half fearfully, tho thing he called his "wings." "It la made of quite commonplace materials," be said with a smile "split bamboo and carbon and catgut and a fabric of bladders, cemented with fish glue. And folding It up Is rather an ungainly job. Tho birds still have the advantage of me there. In a strong wind It's not very easy to do without damaging something. Would you mind slipping Hint Joint for tne (hat one right by your hand? It's Just like a fishing rod." She did ns he asked, and her smll convinced him that she had at least half guessed his purpose In asking lh service of her. The next moment her words confirmed It. "You wanted me to mnko sure, I suppose, that It would not turn Into a ' great roc when I touched It and fly away with tne to the Valley of Iln monds." She patted th" furled wing gently with both hands. "I suppose,'' she continued, "one could dream as vividly as this, although I never have utiles, of course, this Is a dream, lint " and now she held out her hand to him. "but I hope I am nwake. And my name Is Jeanne Fielding." Ho had the hand In his. and noticed how live and strong and warm It was. before she pronounced her name. Al the sound of It, he glanced at her curiously; curi-ously; but all he said Just then was. "Thank you." anil busied himself immediately im-mediately with completing the process of furling his wings. When h hail finished, he tossed the sheep-skin down in a little hollow in tho floe, and with a gesture Invited her to be seated. "Oh, I've a great 'pile of bear skins out here." fhe said, "quite a ridiculous pile of them, considering it Is not a cold night; and we can make our stives comfort sMe here, or go aboard the yacht, just as you please" Thev were seated side tiy side In the little tiest she bad trade for her self, before he rt verted to the Idea which had strung up In his mind upon hearing her name. "There was a 'Captain Fielding once." be said slowlv. "who set out from San Francisco Fran-cisco half a dozen )eam ten, In the hope of discovering the kiIh by the way of Pehrlrig strait. His ship was I never seen again, nor was any word received from him. Finding you here and hearing your name, I wondered " "Yes," she said gravely, "he was my father. We got news of him last winter. win-ter. If you could call It news, for It was four years old before It reached us. A whaler In the arctic fleet plrked up a floating bottle with a message mes-sage from him telling where be waa. So we have come here to And blm at least to find where be died, for 1 suppose there Is no hope never s much as a grain of hope of anything better." (TO BE CONTINt TO ) I CHAPTER I. The Man With Wings. For many hours Cuyley wus too much of a god today to bother with tho exact number of them he had been flying slowly northward down u mild southerly breeze. Ilundrtds of feet below him was tho duzzling. terrible ter-rible expanse of tho polar Ice park which shroudii tho northern limits of tho Arctic oct nil in Its Impenetrable veil of mystery. A compass, a sextant, a bottlo of milk and a revolver comprised, with the clothes ho wore, and with tho shimmering silken winga of his areo-plaue, areo-plaue, his wholo equipment. His nearest near-est base of supplies, If you could call tt that, was a 20 pound (In of pemttil-can, pemttil-can, hidden under a stone on the north east extremity of Herald Island. 100 miles away. The I nlted Stales rescue station at Point Harrow, the extreme northerly point of Alaska, the place which ho bad called homo for tho punt three months, was possibly, pos-sibly, half as far again away, somewhere some-where off to tho southeast. I Hut (or theso past weeks of unbroken un-broken arctic sunshine, ho had fairly lived a wing. Tho earth had no obstructions ob-structions and tho air no perils. Today, To-day, with lila great broad fan tail drawn up arc wise beneath blm, his planes pitched slightly forward at the precise and perilous angle that only Just did not send hi in plunging, headfirst, head-first, down iiMn the sullen masses of Ice below, he lay there, prone, upon the sheepskin sleeping bag whleh padded (ho frame-work supporting bis two wings, as secure as the great fulmar ful-mar petrel which drew curiously near, and then, with a wheel and a plunge, fled away, squawking. For all practical purposes Cajiey bad learned to fly. Tho great fan-driven fan-driven air ship, 100 ftet from lip to tip, which had long lain Idle on his ranch at Sandoval, would probably never leave Its hou.i again. It had done yeoman service. Without its powerful propellers, for the last resource, re-source, Cayley would never have been able to try the experiments and get the practise which had given him the air for his natural element. Ho had outgrown it. He had no inure need of motors or whirling fans. The force of gravity, the force of tho breeze and tho perfectly coordinated muscles of Ms own bixly gave him all the power bo needed now. Perhaps the succeeding generations of humankind niay develop an eye which ran see ahead when the body Is lying prone, as a bird lies In Its fight Cayley had remedied this deficiency de-ficiency with a little silver mirror, slightly concave, screwed fast to tho rossbrace which supported bis shoulders. shoul-ders. Instead of bending back his l..wJ, or trying to see out through his eyebrows, he simply cast a backward glance Into this mirror whenever he wanted (o look on ahead. It had been little perplexing at first, but he could S'-e better In It now than with bis unaided eyes And now, a minute or two, perhaps, fter that fulmar had gone squaaklng way, ho glanced down Into hU mlr-row, mlr-row, and his olympian calm was shaken with the chock of surprise. For what he mw, dearly reflected In bis little reducing glass, was land. There was a mountain, and a long dark line that must Ik? a dlfTilk oast. And It was land that never had beep marked on any chart. In absolute abso-lute degrees of latitude be was not. from the arctie explorer's view, very far north. Over on the other side of the world they run excursion steamers steam-ers everv summer nearer to the pole Ihao he wa at thla moment. Spits bergen, which has had a permanent population of 15.000 boiiIh, lies 200 miles farther north than this uncharted un-charted coast which Philip Cayley Baw before him. Hut the great ice cap which covers (he top of the wtA Id Is Irregular In shape, and Just here, northward from Aluska, It Juts Its impenetrable barrier bar-rier far down Into the Arctic Bea. Rogers, Cnlllnsnn and the Ill-fated Deling De-ling they all had tried to penetrate this barrier, and had been turned back. Cayley wheeled sharply up Into the wind, and soared aloft to a height of, perhaps, a quarter of a mile. Then, with a long, flashing, shimmering sweep, he descended, In tho arc t)f a great circle, and hung, poised, over (he land Itself and behind tho jutting shoulder of the mountain. The land was a narrow-necked peninsula. pe-ninsula. Mountain and cliff prevented him from siting the Immediate coast on the other side of It; hut out a little way to sea he was amazed to discover opt n water, and the smoke like vapor that he saw rising over the eilffhead made It evident that the opening extended ex-tended nearly, If not qulto, to the very land's edge. It was utterly un expected, for the side of the peninsula penin-sula which he had approached was Ice locked for miles. He would have towered again above tho rocky ridgo which shut oil his view, and gone to Investigate this phenomenon at closer range, had he not. Just then, got the shock of another an-other surprise, greater than the discovery dis-covery of land Itself. The lit t lo valley which he hung poised above was sheltered by a second ridge of rocky. Ice-capped hills to tho north, and, except for streaks, dt noting not-ing crevices, here and there, was quite free- from leu and snow. There were bright patches of green upou It, evidently ev-idently some bit of flowering northern grass, and it was flecked here and there with bright bits of color, yellow poppy, he judged It to be, and saxifrage. saxi-frage. Hugging the base of the mountain moun-tain on tho opposite side of the valley, then notching the cliff and grinding down to sea at the other side of it was a great white glacier, alt tbo whiter, and colder, and more dazzling for Its contrast with the brown mountain-side and the green-dad valley. I'p above the glacier, on the farther farth-er side, were great broad yellow patches, which ho would have thought were poppy field, but for the Impossibility Impos-sibility of their growing In such a place. No vegetable growth was possible, pos-sible, be would have thought, against that clean-cut, almost vertical, rocky face. And yet, what else could have given It that blazing yellow color? Some day he was tt learn the answer to that question. Put the thing that taught his eye now, that made blm start and draw In a little lnoluntary gasp of wonder, was the sIk)i( of a little clump of black dots moving slowly, almost Imperceptibly Im-perceptibly from this distance, acrtiss (he face of (he glac ier. He blinked his eyes, as If he suspecled them of playing play-ing him false. I'nless they had played him false, these tiny do(s were men. All of the party, but one man, were dressed exactly alike. In hooded bearskin bear-skin shirts and breeches, and boots of what he guessed was walrus hide. They moved alorg with the peculiar wary shuffle of men accustomed, by bu g bablt, to the footing and to the heavy cocfinlng garb they wore. So far as he could see they were un-srmed. un-srmed. The other man was strikingly different. dif-ferent. He appeared to be clad much as Cayley was himself. In leather, rather than In uctanned hide, lie seemed slighter, sprtghtller, and la |
