He passes without transition from a mad fury to an icy calm, and back again. For the time being there's not a vestige of his last outbreak.

"You're forty yards high here," he says, the tone of a guide explaining a view. "So the horizon is about fifteen miles away. You can understand that, so far as your eyes can see, the desert which surrounds us has been replaced by a fertile countryside. The empire I rule covers more than six hundred square miles at least. Really it is about twelve hundred. That's the work we've carried out over ten years."

Harry Killer interrupts himself for a moment. When he has preened himself enough )certainly not without reason this time) he goes on: "If anyone tried to enter these twelve hundred square miles, I should get immediate warning from a triple line of outposts set up in the desert, and connected to the Palace by telephone. . . ."

So that's the explanation of the oases and the telegraph poles which I saw the other day. But let's listen to Harry Killer, who is showing us a sort of glass lantern, something like that of a lighthouse but far larger, raised in the midst of the platform.

He continues in the same tone. "If that isn't enough, nobody could enter without my permission; he could not cross a protective zone half a mile wide, placed five furlongs outside the walls of Blackland, because it is swept all night by rays from powerful projectors. Thanks to its optical structure, this instrument, which I call the cycloscope, looks directly downwards on that circle of territory so that the lookout at its centre am keep every detail under his eyes )and enormously enlarged, too. Come into the cycloscope, I give you permission and judge for yourselves."

Our curiosity much aroused, we profit by this permission, and enter the lantern through a door consisting of an enormous lens swinging on hinges under our eyes. No sooner do we enter than the outside world changes. To whatever side we turn, we can see at first nothing but an upright wall, divided into a number of separate squares by a grille of black lines.

This wall, whose base is separated from us by a gulf of shadows, and whose top seems to tower above us to a prodigious height, apparendy consists of a sort of milky light. Then we begin to realize that its colour, far from being uniform, is compounded from countless patches of different shades with rather vague outlines. A little attention shows us that some of these patches are trees, others are fields or roads, and others again people working on the land, all enlarged so much we can recognize them easily.

"You see those Negroes," asks Harry Killer, pointing to two widely separated stains. "Suppose they took it into their heads to escape. They wouldn't get farl"

While speaking, he has picked up the telephone transmitter. "Hundred and eleven circle. Radius fifteen hundred and twenty-eight"

Then, picking up another transmitter, he adds: "Fourteen circle. Radius fifteen hundred and two."

Then, turning towards us, "Look carefully at this," he tells us.

After a few minutes wait, during which nothing special happens, one of the patches is obscured by a cloud of smoke. When this has cleared, the patch has vanished.

"What's happened to the man working there?" asks Mlle Momas in a voice trembling with emotion.

"He's dead," Harry killer replies coldly.

"Dead! . . ." We exclaim. You've killed that poor fellow for no reason at all?"

"Don't worry, he's only a Negro," Hany Killer explains with perfect simplicity. "Mere trash. When there aren't any of them left we can get more.