Page 138 (1/1)

"How sana--"It's not worth half the fuss made about it! And yet--it's such a pretty little God's toy!"

She s expressed a lovely sweetness Rivardi raised his eyes froear

"You are not tired, Madama?" he asked

"Tired? No, indeed! How can I be tired with so short a journey!"

"Yet we have travelled a thousand "--said Rivardi--"We have kept up the pace, have we not, Gaspard?--or rather, the 'White Eagle' has proved its speed?"

Gaspard looked up from his place at the end of the ship

"About two hundred and fifty to three hundred miles an hour,"--he said--"One does not realise it in the ht is as safe as it is quick?" said Morgana--"Do you not?"

"Madae is outdistanced by yours,"--replied Gaspard--"I am baffled by your secret--but I freely admit its power and success"

"Good! Now let us dine!" said Morgana, opening a leather case such as is used for provisions in lasses, wine and food on the table--"A cold collation--but we'll have hot coffee to finish We could have dined in Cairo, but it would have been a bore! Marchese, we'll stop here, suspended inwith our own!" and she turned on a switch which illuht radiance--"Whereabouts are we? Still over the Libyan desert?"

Rivardi consulted the chart which was spread open in his steering-cabin

"No--I think not We have passed beyond it We are over the Sahara Just noe can take no observations--the sunset is dying rapidly and in a few ht the ship to a standstill--it re as though touched by wave-like ripples of air Morgana went to theaperture of her silken-lined "drawing-rooreat air-ship were the illimitable spaces of the sky, now of a dense dark violet hue with here and there a streak of dull red relow of the vanished sun,--below there was only blackness For the first tih her frame at the look of this dark chaos--and she turned quickly back to the table where Rivardi and Gaspard awaited her before sitting down to their eous spirit chilled her blood, but she fought against it, and seating herself beca hostess to her two coh she took scarcely anything herself Foruncanny in a e circumstances, and so far as the two th