“Look here,” said Arthur incisively.  “You’ve a family, and so have a great many of the others in the tower, but your family and everybody else’s family has got to wait.  As an inside limit, we can hope to begin to work on the problem of getting back when we’re sure there’s nothing else going to happen.  I tell you quite honestly that I think I know what is the direct cause of this catastrophe.  And I’ll tell you even more honestly that I think I’m the only man among us who can put this tower back where it started from.  And I’ll tell you most honestly of all that any attempt to meddle at this present time with the forces that let us down here will result in a catastrophe considerably greater than the one that happened to-day.”

“Well, if you’re sure—­” some one began reluctantly.

“I am so sure that I’m going to keep to myself the knowledge of what will start those forces to work again,” Arthur said quietly.  “I don’t want any impatient meddling.  If we start them too soon God only knows what will happen.”

VIII.

Van Deventer was eying Arthur Chamberlain keenly.

“It isn’t a question of your wanting pay in exchange for your services in putting us back, is it?” he asked coolly.

Arthur turned and faced him.  His face began to flush slowly.  Van Deventer put up one hand.

“I beg your pardon.  I see.”

“We aren’t settling the things we came here for,” Estelle interrupted.

She had noted the threat of friction and hastened to put in a diversion.  Arthur relaxed.

“I think that as a beginning,” he suggested, “we’d better get sleeping arrangements completed.  We can get everybody together somewhere, I dare say, and then secure volunteers for the work.”

“Right.”  Van Deventer was anxious to make amends for his blunder of a moment before.  “Shall I send the bank watchmen to go on each floor in turn and ask everybody to come down-stairs?”

“You might start them,” Arthur said.  “It will take a long time for every one to assemble.”

Van Deventer spoke into the telephone on his desk.  In a moment he hung up the receiver.

“They’re on their way,” he said.

Arthur was frowning to himself and scribbling in a note-book.

“Of course,” he announced abstractedly, “the pressing problem is food.  We’ve quite a number of fishermen, and a few hunters.  We’ve got to have a lot of food at once, and everything considered, I think we’d better count on the fishermen.  At sunrise we’d better have some people begin to dig bait and wake our anglers.  They’d better make their tackle to-night, don’t you think?”

There was a general nod.

“We’ll announce that, then.  The fishermen will go to the river under guard of the men we have who can shoot.  I think what Indians there are will be much too frightened to try to ambush any of us, but we’d better be on the safe side.  They’ll keep together and fish at nearly the same spot, with our hunters patrolling the woods behind them, taking pot-shots at game, if they see any.  The fishermen should make more or less of a success, I think.  The Indians weren’t extensive fishers that I ever heard of, and the river ought fairly to swarm with fish.”