And all this time, when the government of the greatest city in the world was recognizing the hopelessness of the city's plight and was preparing means to abandon the tall skyscrapers to the evil-smelling slime that would creep upon all the buildings and fill air the streets with glistening horror; all this time Davis and Nita spent gazing into each other's eyes, oblivious to everything but each other. The world breathed a sigh of relief when the government announced with a fanfare of trumpets that it had found--not a way of destroying the Silver Menace, but a means of checking it. Tall board fences would be built and covered with lubricants, with greases, and other water-resisting substances. The Silver Menace would creep up to them and be helpless to clamber over them. The world would protect itself by means of dykes a thousand times more extensive than those of Holland. Men set to work frantically to build these defenses against the creeping silver flood. Five hundred miles of fencing was completed within a week, and ten thousand men increased the force of laborers day by day. Men stood behind these bulwarks and watched the slowly approaching silver tide. It crept up to the base of the oily, greasy boarding. It checked a moment. Then it slowly and inexorably began to climb them. The lubricants were _absorbed as food by the microscopic animals, who flowed over the tall defenses and resumed their slow advance over the whole earth_! CHAPTER VI. Davis smiled expansively and idiotically as he looked across the dinner table at Nita. Gerrod and Evelyn tried to join in his happiness, but they were both worried over the ever-increasing threat of the Silver Menace. The government's tall dykes had proven useless, and even then there were creeping sheets of the sticky slime expanding over the whole countryside. Davis and Nita, however, were utterly uninterested in such things. They gazed upon each other and smiled, and smiled. Evelyn looked at them indulgently, but Gerrod began to be faintly irritated at their absorption in each other when the world was threatened with suffocation under a blanket of slimy horror. "It is indeed wonderful," he said with a quizzical smile, "that you two have decided to marry each other, but has it occurred to either of you that there is quite an important problem confronting the world?" "Yes," said Davis quite seriously. "Nita's father has to be placated before we can marry." "Please!" said Gerrod in a vexed tone. "Please stop looking at each other for one instant. I know how it feels. Evelyn and I indulge even at this late date, but for Heaven's sake think of something besides yourselves for a moment." "Oh, you mean the silver stuff," said Nita casually. "Daddy has offered a huge reward to any one who can fight it successfully. He and half a dozen other steamship men put together and made up a purse. About two millions, I believe."