He would have been greatly surprised to learn that the child of his brain could be used for destruction.

Harry Killer had asked for rain, and Camaret had caused it; Harry Killer had asked for agricultural instruments, and Camaret had produced ploughs, sowing machines, weeding machines, reapers, threshers, which ploughed, sowed, weeded, reaped, threshed, without needing a separate motor; Harry Killer had asked for flying machines, and Camaret had given him the heliplanes, able to travel three thousand miles with meteoric speed.

As for the use which his companion made of these inventions, Marcel Camaret had never even thought of asking. A creature of abstract thought, he had seen them only as pure problems without worrying either about their practical application or about the origin of the materials he was given. Though he had been present without realizing it at the birth of Blackland and at the progressive substitution of fertile land for the desert, he had never had the remotest wish to know the methods by which Harry Killer had equipped him with the first instruments and machines which enabled the Factory to make the others.

Marcel Camaret had first asked, as though it were the simplest tiling in the world, for a factory to be built, and at once hundreds of Negroes had built it. He had then asked for such-and-such a machine-tool, for dynamos and a steamengine, and, sometimes almost at once, sometimes months later, the machine-tools, the dynamos, and the engine had arrived as though by miracle in the desert.

He had asked for workmen, and, one after another, the workmen had come in the numbers he desired. How had such marvels been accomplished? Marcel Camaret did not worry about that. He had asked for them, he had got them. To him, nothing seemed simpler.

Nor had he ever dreamed of working out the amount of capital absorbed in realizing his dreams, and never had he asked the very natural question: "Where's the money coming from?"

At the moment when this narrative began, all was as usual in Blackland. The Factory personnel were busy at work; some of the Merry Fellows were supervising the Negroes at the agricultural toil necessitated by the approach of the rainy season, the others as usual giving themselves up to the grossest pleasures; and the Civil Body was occupied a little vaguely in its highly restricted and irregular trade.

About eleven in the morning, Harry Killer was alone in his private room. He was thinking deeply, and to judge by his expression his thoughts cannot have been pleasant.

The telephone bell rang.

"Listening!" he said, as he grasped the receiver.

"West, seventeen degrees south, ten heliplanes in sight," the telephone announced.

"Coming up!" said Harry Killer, replacing the apparatus.

In a few seconds he had reached the Palace roof, above which rose a tower about thirty feet high; on to this he climbed. On the platform was the Merry Fellow who had warned him.

"There," he said, indicating a direction.

Harry Killer turned his telescope that way.

"That's them," he said, after a short examination.

"Call the Counsellors," he added. "I'm going down."

While the Merry Fellow was telephoning the various members of the Council, Harry Killer quickly descended to the Esplanade between the Factory and the Palace. There the nine Counsellors came one by one to join him. Their eyes lifted skywards, they waited.

The delay was short. The heliplanes seemed to get larger as they approached. A few minutes later they landed gently on the Esplanade.

The eyes of Harry Killer gleamed with delight. If four of the heliplanes contained only their respective pilots, the other six each carried two passengers: a man of the Black Guard and a prisoner firmly bound and with the head muffled in a hood.

The six prisoners were released from their bonds. When their dazzled eyes had grown used to the daylight they looked round them in surprise. They found themselves in a wide open space surrounded on all sides by unscaleable walls. A few paces away were the strange contrivances which had carried them through the air. Before them the vast bulk of the Palace was surmounted by its tower, and thirty Negroes of the Black Guard formed a compact group.

Behind them, more than a hundred yards away, was a wall two hundred and fifty yards long with neither door nor window, above which appeared a tall factory chimney and a frail-looking metallic pylon which rose higher still, but whose purpose they did not know. Where were they? What was this fortress not shown on any of the maps of Africa which they had studied so carefully and so long?

While they were asking themselves these questions, Harry Killer made a sign, and a brutal hand fell on the shoulder of each of the prisoners. Willy-nilly they entered the Palace, whose door swung open before them and closed itself after them.

Jane Blazon, St. Berain, Barsac, Am6d6e Florence, Dr. Chatonnay and M. Poncin were in the power of Harry Killer, the dictator of Blackland, the unknown capital of an unknown empire.


CHAPTER II

WITH WINGS OUTSPREAD

(From the note-book of Amedee Florence)

25th March. It is now nearly twenty four hours since we have been at . . . But where in fact are we? If someone told me I was in the Moon, it wouldn't surprise me much, given the mode of travel whose charms we've just tasted. The truth is that I haven't the slightest idea.

Whatever the facts, I can quite accurately express myself as follows: It isn't twenty four hours since we were made prisoner, and it was only this morning, after a night otherwise peaceful, that I felt strong enough to add these notes to my record, which I daresay was beginning to get a little sparse.

In spite of the lesson in aerial equestrianism which we've been forced to take, our general health is excellent, and we are all in good shape except that St.