Bohannan, still a bit confused, noted the absence of any exhaust from the speeding engines. This, too, gave a sense of vast, self-contained power. He saw stupendous propeller-blades, their varnished surfaces flicking out high-lights as the incandescents struck them. Motionless these propellers were; but something in their tense, clean sweep told of the raging cyclone to which they could whip the air, once the spinning engines should be clutched in on their shafts. The captain's eyes wandered over the whole enormous construction, towering there above him. He saw rows of lighted windows, each cased in shining metal; a V-pointed pilot-house--the same where the still figure had dropped over the sill of the open window--a high-raised rudder of artful curve, vast as the broadside of a barn; railed galleries running along the underbody of the fuselage, between the floats and far aft of them. Everything gleamed and flickered with bright metal, varnish, snowy celluloid. The body of the machine looked capable of housing twice as many men as the Legion numbered. But everything, after all, was quite shrunk by the overpowering sweep of the wings. These dwarfed the fast-gathering group that stood peering up at them, like pygmies under the pinions of the fabled roc in Sinbad the Sailor's story. These stupendous wings, the captain now saw, were not braced together by hampering struts and wires, but seemed cantilevered into position, giving a clean run to the structure, great simplicity, and the acme of mechanical beauty. This giant bird of heaven lay in its nest, free of pattern, powerful beyond any air-mechanism ever built by man, almost a living thing, on whose back its captors might ride aloft defying man and nature, to whatsoever goal they chose. "Everything is ready," said the Master. "That is quite obvious. Let us get aboard now, with no further delay, and be off!" He drew a little notebook from his pocket, took a pencil, and faced the gathering group inside the second stockade. "Stow your equipment," he directed "according to your orders. Ten minutes will be enough for you to unload your machine-guns and all gear, each in the assigned space. Bring out all the sleeping men and lay them down along the stockade, here. Injure no man. Valdez, are the take-off gates, over the Palisade, correctly opened?" A dark, thin man saluted, as he answered with a Spanish accent: "Yes, sir. Everything is ready, sir." "Very well. Now, all to work! And then, each to his place, in engine-room, cabins, or however and where assigned. Come, come!" As the men trailed up the gangplank, that steeply rose to the sliding door in the fuselage, the Master checked them on his list. Not one was absent. He shut the notebook with a snap, and slid it back into his pocket. "This goes on well," he commented to the major. "So far, we are within three minutes, eighteen seconds, of schedule."