“My lord, do you accept?”

Watson had no idea what the “ordeal” might be, nor what might be the significance of the day.  But he could not very well refuse.  He spoke as lightly as he could.

“Of course.  I accept anything.”  Then, addressing the prince:  “One word, O Senestro.”

“Speak up, Sir Phantom!”

“Bar Senestro—­what have you done with the Jarados?”

An instant’s stunned silence greeted this stab.  It was broken by the prince.

“The Jarados!” His voice was unruffled.  “What know I of the Jarados?”

“Take care!  You have seen him—­you know his power!”

“You have a courageous sort of impertinence!”

“I have determination and knowledge!  Bar Senestro, I have come for the Jarados!” Chick paused for effect.  “Now what think you?  Am I of the chosen?”

He had meant it as a deliberate taunt, and so it was taken.  The Bar shot to his feet.  Not that he was angered; his straight, handsome form was kingly, and for all his impulsiveness there was a certain real majesty about his every pose.

“You are of the chosen.  It is well; you have given spice to the taunt!  I would not have it otherwise.  Forget not your courage on the Day of the Prophet!”

With that he stepped gracefully, superbly from the dais beneath his throne.  He bowed to the Aradna, to Geos, to Chick and to the assembly—­and was gone.  The blue guard followed in silence.

The rest of the ordeal was soon done.  Nothing more was said about the Jarados, nor of what the Bar Senestro had brought up.  There were a few questions about the world he had quit, questions which put no strain upon his imagination to answer.  He was out of the deep water for the present.

When the assembly dissolved Chick was conducted back to the apartments upstairs.  Not to his old room, however, but to an adjoining suite, a magnificent place—­that would have done honour to a prince.  But Chick scarcely noted the beauty of the place.  His attention flew at once to something for which he longed—­an immense globe.

Chick spun it around eagerly upon its axis.  The first thing that he looked for was San Francisco—­or, rather, North America.  If he was on the earth he wanted to know it!  Surely the oceans and continents would not change.

But he was doomed to disappointment.  There was not a familiar detail.  Outside of a network of curved lines indicating latitude and longitude, and the accustomed tilt of the polar axis, the globe was totally strange!  So strange that Chick could not decide which was water and which land.

After a bit of puzzling Chick ran across a yellow patch marked with some strange characters which, upon examination, were translated in some unknown manner within his subconscious mind, to “D’Hartia.”  Another was lettered “Kospia.”

Assuming that these were land—­and there were a few other, smaller ones, of the same shade—­then the land area covered approximately three-fifths of the globe.  Inferentially the green remainder, or two-fifths, was the water or ocean covered area.  Such a proportion was nearly the precise reverse of that obtaining on the earth.  Chick puzzled over other strange names—­H’Alara, Mal Somnal, Bloudou San, and the like.  Not one name or outline that he could place!