Artoisti will teach you the game he is eternally playing with Dreaisti.” Artoisti was the literary gent, and he of Dreaisti the dramatist. I argued against both gentlemen and the game, and feelingly pleaded to remain with her the afternoon. She laughingly refused to listen to me and made sport of my earnestness. We joined the others. Artoisti called me to the table where he was playing with Dreaisti. I watched the game some time, but was soon convinced that in a hundred years I couldn’t master it. It was tedious, complicated, and played with oblong ivory chips the size of a match ornamented with fine threads of color. The game seemed a mixture of chess, checkers and hop-scotch, played upon a board similar to the chart of the heavens. The splintery chips were twirled in the air and fell upon the chart in squares, triangles, circles. Where the tricks, points, came in I have still to discover. The gentlemen invited me to take a “flip” in the game, but I hastily retreated, amid shouts of derision. We were warned from the deck as the ship suddenly lowered and zigzagged at terrific speed. The great wings fluttered heavily, and frequently the ship crested the turbulent waves like a monster sea-gull. We had reached the danger zone. Safety lay in hugging the water to avoid the fierce wind currents crashing above, but we soon outdistanced danger and gradually floated upward high and higher; by noon we coursed in our accustomed sphere, but speeded on with a hurricane following swiftly. From the little signal house Alpha and I watched the storm gathering and strengthening. “We speed ahead,” she murmured; “but if caught—devotions to Sol, all is over.” I pressed her close to me; at that moment death with her seemed rapture, then she was mine forever. But I shall never forget that frightful night. The din, uproar of thunderous cannonading as great black, red, lightning-pierced clouds met the ocean was terrifying; the ship creaked and groaned threateningly in her wild flight before the hurricane. With ill-concealed alarm I sat up all night, but the others retired as usual. The Centaurian equipoise will remain forever an enigma. Dawn ended our peril. We still traveled before a gale, but had outsailed the tempest. Above was a clear, blue sky, and the soft radiance of the rising sun enveloped the ship. Toward noon we reached the dead calm ocean tropics, the heat flamed upon oily, slothful waters, but we sailed with the swiftness of a bird, and far in the distance a heliotrope ridge met our vision. “The Ocstas!” cried Alpha, delighted. “We shall reach them in the early evening.”