"I have done your bidding because it was you who bade,"--he said, his voice shaking with the tremor and excitement of his daring effort--"And it was not so very difficult. But it is a vain rescue! They are past recall." Morgana looked up from her awed contemplation of Seaton's rigid form. Her eyes were heavy with unshed tears. "I think not,"--she said--"There is life in them--yes, there is life, though for the time it is paralysed. But"--here she gave him the loveliest smile of tenderness--"You brave Giulio!--you are exhausted and wet through--attend to yourself first--then you can help me with these unhappy ones--and you Gaspard,--Gaspard!" "Here, Madama!" "You have done so well!" she said--"Without fear or failure!" "Only by God's mercy!" answered Gaspard--"If the rope had broken; if the ship had lost balance--" She smiled. "So many 'ifs' Gaspard? Have I not told you it CANNOT lose balance? And are not my words proved true? Now we have finished our rescue work we may go--we can start at once--" He looked at her. "There is more weight on board!" he said meaningly, "If we are to carry two dead bodies through the air, it may mean a heavenly funeral for all of us! The 'White Eagle' has not been tested for heavy transport." She heard him patiently,--then turned to Rivardi and repeated her words-- "We can start at once. Steer upwards and onwards." Like a man hypnotised he obeyed,--and in a few moments the air-ship, answering easily to the helm, rose lightly as a bubble from the depths of the canon, through the fiercely dashing showers of spray tossed by the foaming torrent, and soared aloft, high and ever higher, as swiftly as any living bird born for long and powerful flight. Night was falling; and through the dense purple shadows of the Californian sky a big white moon rose, bending ghost-like over the scene of destruction and chaos, lighting with a pale glare the tired and haggard faces of the relief men at their terrible work of digging out the living and the dead from the vast pits of earth into which they had been suddenly engulfed,--while far, far above them flew the "White Eagle," gradually lessening in size through distance till it looked no bigger than a dove on its homeward way. Some priests watching by a row of lifeless men, women and children killed in the earthquake, chanted the "Nunc Dimittis" as the evening grew darker,--and the only one among them who had first seen the air-ship over the canon, where it fell, as it were in the deep gulf surrounded by flood and foam, now raised his eyes in wonderment as he perceived it once more soaring at liberty towards the moon. "Surely a miracle!" he ejaculated, under his breath--"An escape from destruction through God's mercy! God be praised!"