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 But shortly after nine o'clock, this ceased. The sky, the lake, the land became silent. Lights switched out; everything and everyone was prepared for the enterprise of the morning which would proceed, undoubtedly, as it was planned.

I lay down, trying to picture the enterprise prevented. How? By warning to Pete's and my seaplane squadron? What warning would have reached them?

Probably they had found Pete's machine wrecked on the sea; so they had reported him lost after a parachute jump. Me, they would have reported as lost, machine and all. Our disappearance must have puzzled them; but it would have given them no real warning.

I lay trying to sleep but succeeded at semiconsciousness only in which suddenly I was jerked by the shock of the sensation of being "danced", with my hands cuffed with steel, in an airplane with radio control—and a madman running the radio. That was what Bane meant by the bit I'd been through with rather more before me. Rather more before Pete, too? And what before her?