Then, in the presence of this mighty thing, silence fell on all. The major set hands on hips, blinked, puckered his lips, and silently whistled. His expression was half incredulous, half enthusiastic. What Alden was thinking revealed itself by the sparkle of his eyes through the holes of the mask behind the goggles. Expressionless though that terribly mutilated face had to remain, you could sense in the man's whole attitude the exultation of the expert ace as he beheld the perfect machine. The droning of the engines came distinctly to them all, a low, steady, powerful note, beautiful in its steady undertones of strength. Behind the little group, a few involuntary exclamations of astonishment and joy became audible, as some of the Legionaries came into the second enclosure. Without, blows on metal sharply resounded. The Master smiled again, as he realized his orders were going on with exact precision. "That's the wireless they're putting out of commission," thought he, glancing at his watch again. "No mere untuning of wave-lengths. Good, old-fashioned hammer-blows! This station won't work again for a while!" Bohannan, meantime, was trying to get some general impression of the giant plane. Not all the Master's descriptions of it, to him, had quite prepared him for the reality. Though he well knew all the largest, biggest machines in the world, this stupendous creation staggered him. By comparison with the Handley-Page, the Caproni, the D.H.-4, the Gotha 90-120, the Sikorsky, it spread itself as an eagle spreads beside a pigeon. It lay in a kind of metallic cradle, almost like a ship ready for launching on its ways. Ahead of it, metal plates stretched away like rails, running toward the lip of the Palisades. Its quadruple floats, each the size of a tugboat and each capable of being exhausted of air, constituted a potential lifting-force of enclosed vacuums that very largely offset the weight of the mechanism. It was still a heavier-than-air machine, but the balance could be made nearly perfect. And the six helicopters, whose cylindrical, turbine-like drums gleamed with metallic glitters--three on each side along the fuselage--could at will produce an absolutely static condition of lift or even make the plane hover and soar quite vertically. There the monster lay, outstretching its enormous sextuple wings, each wing with an area of 376 by 82.5 feet. The non-inflammable celluloid surfaces shone white as fresh-cut ivory, clean, smooth, unbreakable. The plane reminded one of some Brobdingnagian dragon-fly, resting for flight, shimmering with power as it poised for one swift leap aloft into the night.