"The mother and her child--illegitimate in a new sense--are banished from the island." Loto's voice rose to sudden vehemence. "Can you understand what that sometimes does? I have seen a mother with her newborn infant, two or three weeks old, pleading before the King's Council. She would not murder it at birth, as the Bas women sometimes do, and I saw her plead for its right to live on the island. And then, with her plea denied, she took it away into the frozen north. Her husband did not follow her. That is optional. This one stayed behind, keeping the other two children, and letting her take the infant alone. And she went, to save its life--her child, born without a birthright." There was a silence. Rogers was staring down at a hilltop where, as the plane swept past, a woman with two naked children at her side stood in front of a small shack. "And when you have seen the Arans, living their life of luxury and immorality," Loto went on, "you will wonder why the Bas have stood it so long. 'After us--the deluge,' has always been the Aran reasoning." The plane was climbing to pass over a jagged, volcanic-looking peak. Behind, nestled in a hollow, with a curving stretch of white sand and the blue waters of the channel beyond, lay the capital city of the Arans: reckless, pleasure-loving, secure in its beauty and supremacy, yet trembling from so many causes upon the brink of disaster. CHAPTER EIGHT On the gently undulating floor of a valley, surrounded by three mountains and with the sea rolling up on its beach to the north, lay the Aran city. From an altitude of some three thousand feet, the travelers gazed down upon a scene of extraordinary color and beauty: low, pure, white buildings with many balconies and patios; gardens of vivid flowers; white pergolas trellised with scarlet blossoms; sunken pools of limpid water, with huge date palms curving over them. A grove of royal palms grew close to the beach, near a huge, rectangular bathing pool and a marble-white pavilion. A white palace stood on a rise of ground with a balconied tower, five hundred feet high, beside it. On the top of the tower was a beautiful flower garden. And everywhere was the romantic green foliage of the tropics, the blue-red sky, the soft, red-white clouds, and the azure waters of the channel. "Where do we land?" George asked. "To the west a little, Father," Loto directed. "See the cavern entrance?" He pointed for George, explaining: "We will not land directly in the city. I want the plane permanently guarded now, so we will leave it in the Cavern of Thunderbolts." "The what?" George demanded. "That's what the Bas picturesquely call it. You see the cavern mouth?" Across the city, a yawning black hole gaped in the mountainside near its base; an opening of irregularly circular shape, some two hundred feet in diameter. A gentle slope led up to it from the city.