Minos had submerged the fademe, which he had taken, some forty feet. When he reached a point which he thought must be nearly under the first vessel in the southern line, he turned off the power and halted. He fetched ropes and tied them, one to the starting lever and one to that which would stop the fademe. Carrying with him the other ends of the ropes, he climbed the ladders to the pilothouse, which rode like a small tower at the top of the fademe. Here in the pilothouse was a powerful revolving searchlight. Here, also, were the levers which controlled the tubes of glass which projected the deadly light-rays. * * * * * Swinging the searchlight to point upward through the crystal roof of the pilothouse, Minos unhooded it, and its bright, white bar of light thrust upward through the water. By its radiance he saw that he was not yet under the first of the fademes. Its golden hull glittered just a few feet beyond the radius of his light. A twitch of the rope which he had adjusted below sent his own vessel ahead. Under the first fademe he halted; and with a grim prayer that the destroying agency might not be out of order, he pressed the lever that controlled the upper shaft of the glass. With a mighty hissing and seething of the water, the indescribable light-ray leaped upward, so dazzlingly brilliant in its unknown color that it nearly blinded the man who had loosed it. Full on the bottom of the fademe above him the light ray struck and played, with the water boiling around it. The metal hull crumpled away like solder before the tinsmith's point. So swift and furious was its action that in an instant Minos saw the vessel above come sinking down. He had barely time to pull his rope and get his own fademe from under. As it was, the descending wreck grazed the stern of his vessel with a jar that nearly unseated him. Thereafter he went more swiftly. From ship to ship he went down the long line, scarcely pausing under each. Ship after ship he left behind him--sunken and useless wrecks. Minos had finished with the first row of fademes, and was coming back on the second line, when a guardsman on shore saw an upthrust of furious light from the deck of one of the golden ships, and then saw the doomed fademe plunge down. Throwing up his hands, the soldier ran across the harbor court, shouting that some captain had gone mad and was destroying the fleet. Then the harbor that had been still became alive. Lights flashed up. Men ran hither and thither. A messenger was dispatched to Adlaz to report to the king. Some sober-minded and brave men launched small boats into the harbor to go out and warn the engineers of the other fademes.