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Nineteen days fro for a desolate world took place on the broad beach that now edged the city where once the sluggish Providence River had flowed seaward

For here, clad in a double suit of leather that Beatrice had ive the rehabilitated Pauillac a try-out

Day by day, working incessantly when not occupied in hunting or fishing, the man had rebuilt and overhauled the entire mechanism Tools he had found a-plenty in the ruins, tools which he had ground and readjusted with consuether from a score of sources All the wooden parts, such as skids and levers and propellers, long since vanished and gone, he had cleverly rebuilt

And now the ly sewn buckskin, stretched as tight as dru in the ave it a painstaking inspection

"I think," he judged, as he tested the last stay and gave the engine its final adjustment "I think, upon my word, this machine's better to-day than when she was first built If I'm not mistaken, buckskin's a better er and less porous, for one thing--and as for the stays, I prefer the braided hide Wire's so liable to snap

"This co Pauillac hiyrostat and aneot cards and spades over the old-style models?"

Enthusiastic as a boy, Stern shook his head and shtedly at Beatrice as he expounded the lad, half anxious at the possible outcoh she understood all the o up this ?" she asked, with just a quiver of nervousness in her voice "You're quite certain everything's all right--no chance of accident? For if anything happened--"

"There, there, nothing can happen, nothing will!" he reassured her "This motor's been run three hours in succession already without skipping an explosion Everything's in absolute order, I tell you And as for the human, personal equation, I can vouch for that myself!"

Stern walked around to the back of the , stout stake he had prepared, took his ax, and at a distance of about twelve feet behind the biplane drove the stake very deep into the hard sand