I was just preparing to go out and investigate when there came an excited rapping at my door. Unable to imagine who might be seeking me at this early hour, I cried out sharply, “Come in!”; and the door swung abruptly open to admit--Captain Gavison! He was far from his composed and normal self. His pale blue costume was all ruffled, and had been flung over his shoulders as though in great haste; his long hair hung dishevelled over his narrow bronzed brow; his face looked all hot and sweaty; his gray eyes burned and sparkled with a vague distress. He did not wait for a formal greeting. “Have you--have you heard the news?” he gasped, as he strode into the room. I confessed that I had heard nothing. “Don’t see how you could help hearing!” he snapped, and began to pace slowly about the floor, with brow wrinkled in bitter thought. “What news is it?” I demanded. “Just what have you heard?” “One of the natives told me strange things last night,” he confided, as he continued his restless perambulations about the room. “I haven’t slept a wink, not a wink!” “What strange things? We’re not going to be sent back home, are we?” I inquired, with an abortive effort to be facetious. “We’ll be sent to a worse place than that!” he growled, bristling almost into his old military manner. “The glass wall has been cracked!” “The glass wall cracked?” I cried, stupidly, stunned by the terror of the words. “Yes, the glass wall has been cracked,” the Captain affirmed, in a more matter-of-fact manner. “One of the patrol boats discovered the damage late yesterday afternoon. There’s a dangerous fracture near the entrance of the Salty River.” For reply I could only groan. The glass wall of Atlantis cracked!--the whole Atlantic Ocean bearing down upon the Sunken World! Too well I understand what that meant, too well to require comment! And in that first moment of horrible realization I had visions of torrents pouring through a gap in the wall, flooding over the streets and temples and highest towers of the land! “But how--how under heaven did it happen?” I burst forth, when I had half recovered from the first staggering blow. “That is not hard to say,” he declared, slowly and in measured tones. “At least, there are suspicions--” “Suspicions?” I demanded. “Suspicions that you and I and the rest of us are to blame.” “But how is that possible?” I exclaimed. “It’s possible, all right. It all happened before we got here. The X-111, caught in the whirlpool outside the Salty River, was hurled by the force of the waters against the glass wall, probably striking with its steel prow, which, as you know, was built for ramming our foes. The wall, luckily, was too stout to be shattered; but it was cracked, and the crack must have been growing all this time without being noticed.” “Merciful gods!” I cried. “Then if--if anything happens to Atlantis, it will be all on account of us!”