Meanwhile, the fame of his works spread far and wide. King Aetes of Colchis ordered the construction of two bronze bulls capable of breathing fire through their nostrils, and when Achilles, the Greek champion before Troy, decided to kill Hector and avenge his friend Patroclus, he went to Hephæstus with an introduction from Thetis, the sea-goddess, and prevailed upon him to make him a marvellous shield on which all heaven and earth were figured in bronze, and which was quite impervious to mortal spear and battle-axe. And so he dwelt and worked on Olympus for three thousand years or so, establishing branch works on Lipari and in Sicily which kept working at full blast until Paul of Tarsus came with his claim to have found the Unknown God who was to establish a new Roman dominion to take the place of the mighty Empire of the Cæsars, and was incidentally to sweep away the gods of Rome and Greece alike and establish the worship of a tripartite God who never smiled. So the light-hearted company of Mount Olympus died, all but Hephæstus, who hobbled through many lands seeking a place where he might work and set his bellows blowing once more. For centuries he wandered, despised and jeered at by monks, hermits, and anchorites. But his courage never failed him. It survived the desolation of the Olympian palaces as it had survived his two falls from the summit. And now he has come back into his own, and his power is spreading like a conflagration. The God of Fire is the supreme master of the earth. His furnaces are roaring. He has dispelled the clouds of Asiatic mysticism which obscured his native mountain. He has girdled the world with hoops of steel. He has found strength “To break this sorry scheme of things entire, And mould it nearer to the heart’s desire.” And his victorious progress is only beginning to take effect. How it has come about, and what will be the eventual result of his domination of our planet, it is the purpose of what follows to elucidate. HEPHÆSTUS I Ethnologists believe that the metamorphosis from beast-like savage to cultured civilian may be proximately explained as the result of accumulated changes that found their initial impulses in a half-a-dozen or so of practical inventions. An Irish poet, disconsolately walking along Fleet Street one day, bethought himself of a small island in an Irish lake, where he could escape from the noise and bustle of the London streets. He wrote a lovely poem embodying that thought, a poem expressing the longing of every sensitive soul to retire within itself for a time and reconstruct its world from within instead of having it impressed from without.