The Master nodded, well pleased.  Bohannan laughed like a boy, and holstered his gun.  He moved over to the starboard window, out of the gale.  With mocking eyes he watched the futile searchlight at the Hook.

“They’ve got as much chance of overhauling us as the proverbial celluloid cat has of catching the asbestos rat,” said he.  “A clean getaway, barring the little damage we’ve taken—­this window, and Alden, and—­”

“Better unpack your kit, and settle down,” the Master dryly interrupted him.  “Take a look around and see that everything’s shipshape.  Be sure the port and starboard watches are chosen.  Everything’s been arranged, already, but in dealing with human beings there’s bound to be a little confusion.  They aren’t automata—­unfortunately.  And, Major!”

“Yes, sir?” answered Bohannan, who despite his familiarity with the Master was now constrained to formality.  Resentment sounded in his voice.

“Send Brodeur to relieve me, in about ten minutes.”

“Yes, sir,” repeated the Celt.  For a moment, standing there in the gloom of the pilot-house, he eyed the dim, watchful figure at the wheel.  Then he turned, slid the door, and disappeared.

As he walked aft, past the aluminum ladder that led to the upper galleries, he muttered with dudgeon: 

“He rates us two for a nickel, that’s plain enough—­plain as paint!  Well, all right.  I’ll stand for it; but there may be others that—­”

He left the words unfinished, and went to do the Master’s bidding.

Alone, the Master smiled.  Wine of victory pulsed in his blood and brain.  Power lay under his hand, that closed with joy upon it.  Power not only over this hardy Legion, but power in perspective over—­

“God, if I can do it!” he whispered, and fell silent.  His eyes rested on the instruments before him, their white dials glowing under the little penthouses of their metal shields.  Altitude now showed 2,437 feet, and still rising.  Tachometers gave from 2,750 to 2,875 r.p.m. for the various propellers.  Speed had gone above 190 miles per hour.  No sign of man remained, save, very far below through a rift in the pale, moonlit waft of cloud, a tiny light against a coal-black plain of sea—­the light of a slow, crawling steamer—­a light which almost at once dropped far behind.

Vast empty spaces on all hands, above, below, engulfed Nissr.  The Master felt himself alone with air and sky, with power, with throbbing dreams and visions.

“If it can be done!” he repeated.  “But—­there’s no ‘if’ to it, at all.  It can be!  It shall!  The biggest thing ever attempted in this world!  A dream that’s never been dreamed, before!  And if it can’t, well, a dream like that is far more than worth dying for.  A dream that can come true—­by God, that shall come true!”

His hands tightened on the wheel.  You would have said he was trying to infuse some of his own overflowing strength into the mechanism that, whirling, zooning with power, needed no more.  The gleam in his eyes, there in the dark pilot-house, seemed almost that of a fanatic.  His jaw hardened, his nostrils expanded.