But officially there was no derision. Official activities were more or less secret; rumors of them leaked out, of course, while bulletins distorted the facts to what officialdom considered was for the public good. But through Dr. Plantet’s activities I was made aware of much that was going on. The “Yellow Peril” was lost and forgotten. All the world’s governments were working together. The huge armored aircrafts were being recommissioned. Men were being drilled. The Yellow War, with all its main battles fought in the air, had given a tremendous stimulus to aviation, and all the devices which it had developed for dealing death were being made ready anew. Underocean warfare was a thing of the distant past. But that, too, was being resuscitated. I heard that they were building armored submersibles. A Brazilian engineer, one Lopez, came suddenly into prominence with his claim for an underwater death-dealing ray. They brought forth from the United States Navy Yard shops, new models of the ancient ocean bombs, called mines--things that could be electrically exploded. And tiny traveling bomb-ships called torpedoes. One of these latter was tested off Hatteras. In Dr. Plantet’s instrument room we sat watching the test as it showed on one of his receiving mirrors. It was broadcasted over the world--I suppose fifty million or more people must have been watching it as we were. We had a good view; they had the finder on a small plane which circled back and forth. We saw the small submersible, awash at the surface, shoot out the torpedo. It came up like a child’s toy, and then dived a few feet. It traveled swiftly; we could follow its progress by the tiny aërial projecting up from it, cleaving the surface like the periscope of an old-fashioned sub-marine. It sped straight for its target--a small vessel they had towed out and left drifting. There was a dull, muffled report--we heard it plainly over the audiphone--and a heave of the water. The small ship presently sank. It seemed rather a futile demonstration. But there were rumors of the Lopez ray--and diving bombs which aircraft could drop from a considerable height. A multitude of official activities. Dr. Plantet was concerned with many of them--but mostly with this enterprise of his own at Norfolk. He was almost without sleep. Far into the night he would sit over charts, or blue prints--or casting up seemingly endless mathematic formulæ. And several times engineers came from Norfolk to see him, frequently taking him back with them. * * * * * On July 29 he chose to tell me what he was doing. “Come into the library, Jeff.” It was after midnight, and he had just returned from a swift visit to Norfolk. “Come into the library, you and Polly. Where is Arturo?” The soft, plaintive notes of Arturo’s violin from his bedroom upstairs told us only too surely. A shadow crossed Dr. Plantet’s tired face; but his muttered contemptuous oath was vigorous enough. He said brusquely: