Fortunately the attack broke off as rapidly as it had begun. A few screams, lost in the darkness of the night were the only answer to another shell from the gun. But there was no assurance that this was more than a temporary respite. Murray and Beeville strove desperately to bring the warped bridge mechanism into running order while O'Hara routed out a blow-torch from somewhere and attacked the anchor chain, now welded into a solid mass with the deck by the force of the light-bomb. Finally, weaving to and fro in the hands of the inexperienced mariners, she was gotten round and pointed downstream and out to sea. If the birds sought them again in the darkness there was no sign of it. Day found them stumbling down the Jersey coast, the foredeck a mass of wreckage and the ship leaking badly. "Well, where are we now?" called a cheerful voice, as Murray Lee stood at the wheel. "Australia in sight yet?" He looked up to see Gloria's head emerging from the companion. "Come on up," he said, "I'm just going to turn the wheel over to Beeville and get busy with this radio. Don't think the bomb knocked it out. It did everything else, though. Look at that." He indicated the prow of the ship, where the big gun hung down like a tired candle and the whole fore part of the vessel had dissolved into tears of metal. "Golly," said Gloria, "that was some egg those birds laid. What was it, anyway?" "Don't know. Never saw anything like it before. Must be some kind of new-fangled high-power incendiary bomb to melt steel down like butter. Why, even thermit wouldn't do that." "I hope our friends don't think of looking us up here, then, or we'll be finding out what it's like to walk under water." "You said something, sister," declared Murray. "Wait! I think I got something." He fumbled with the radio dials before him, swinging them this way and that: then clamped on the headset. "Oh, boy, there's something coming through ... we're not alone in the world then.... Yes, there she is.... Damn, I wish they wouldn't send so fast.... AAM2 calling.... Now who is AAM2?" His fingers pressed the key in reply as the others watched him with bated breath. "Position, seventy-three, fifty-three west longitude; forty, o-three, north latitude. Here ..." he wrote the figures down. "Take this, one of you and dope it out. Ssh, there's more coming. Oh, he wants to know who we are and where. Call Ben, will you Gloria?" She dashed off to return with the dictator of the colonists just as Beeville, who had been fumbling over the charts with one hand, called suddenly, "Why, the position they give is right near here--hardly a hundred miles away. I don't know just what ours is, but it can't be far from this spot. Tell them that." "Find out who they are first," Ben put in, practically. "After what they've done, I wouldn't put it past the tetrapteryxes to handle a radio set."