Pst-pst--pst-pst--Crash! The curved irons of the grapnel tore away the coping--slid, screaming. A jolt all but threw him from his seat. There were running feet somewhere far below him--a battering and shattering of glass in the piazza. He felt a sudden clearance and the big aëroplane plunged sidewise out over the bay, with a black, unwieldy weight, that spun swiftly, hanging on its grapnel. A shout tore its way from his lips. Heedless of direction, he wrenched with his fingers to unship the grapnel chain. At the same instant the first sunbeam slid across the waves and turned the misty gloom to the golden-blue glory of morning. And with it, as though the voice of the day itself, there went out over the water, above the sweep of the wind, a single piercing-sweet note of music, like the cry of a great, splendid bird calling to the sunrise. Fishermen in tossing _sampan_, and sailors on heaving _junk_ heard it, and whispered that it was the cry of the _kaminari_, the thunder-animal, or of the _kappa_ that lures the swimmer to his death. An icy blast seemed to shoot past the Glider into the zenith. Staring, Daunt realized that one of the great planes, the propeller, the after-framework, with the man who had clung to it, were utterly gone--that the Glider, like a dead bird caught by the thudding twinge of a bullet, was lunging by its own momentum--to its fall! Had Phil fallen, or was it-- Suddenly he felt himself flung backward, then forward on his face. The spreading vanes, crumpled edgewise, like squares of cardboard, were sliding down. He saw the shipping of the bay spread beneath him--the twin lighthouses, one red, one white, on the ends of the breakwater--the black Dreadnaughts--a steamer with bright red funnels--a fleet of fishing _sampan_ putting out. All were swelling larger and larger. The wind, blowing upward around him, stole his breath, and he felt the blood beating in his temples. He heard ships' bells striking, and across the sound a temple-bell boomed clearly. A mist was coming before his eyes. Just below him was a white yacht; it seemed to be rushing up to meet him like a swan. Thoughts darted through his brain like live arrows. The battle-ships were saved! No shameful suspicion should touch Japan's name in the highways of the world! What matter that he lost the game? What did one--any one--count against so much? He thought of Barbara. He would never know now what she had been about to tell him that night at the Nikko shrine! He would never see her again! But she would know ... she would know! The sound of the sea--a great roaring in his ears. CHAPTER LIV INTO THE SUNLIGHT