Ralton staggered to Mallett's side, half led and half dragged his friend, still dazed, toward his plane that stood still untouched at the clearing's other side. Into its front cockpit he helped him, turned a switch and whirled the propeller. Another moment, and with motor roaring the little plane was speeding across the clearing, lifting sharply upward into the growing light of dawn, speeding away from the giant cone and island, over the gray waters toward the south. South--south--Ralton, with hands on the controls and with head thrown weakly back, let the plane find its own track through the upper air as it roared on. Swaying drunkenly, it flashed southward high above the clean gray sea, with the clean salt air rushing cold against his face and that of Mallett before him. And still toward the south he raced, with the gray light of dawn to his left changing to gold as the rising sun lifted above the horizon. South--south---- The world ahead of him, which had been saved from doom at the last, not by Mallett and him but by fate, was not in Ralton's thoughts as he thundered on. Nor were the explanations of that doom and that escape which only they could give to rejoicing humanity. He wanted only, in that moment, to race farther and farther from the island of hell that was dwindling in the waters far behind them; wanted only to speed farther and farther from the dark, gigantic cone upon the gray-strewn summit of which there lay the twisted bodies of the men who had planned to be the life-masters of the world, and whose plans had reaped but death.