Page:Weird Tales Volume 9 Number 5 (1927-05).djvu/26

 Then his eyes traveled beyond them to the silent figure upon the floor.

"I am looking for the one who sent the message of surrender," he stated curtly, and in his powerful voice Graham recognized the tone which had echoed so mysteriously through the courtroom.

Graham inclined his head calmly.

"I sent the message. Your coming saved the four of us here from unhappiness—in fact, from death."

Briefly he related the situation which had existed at the moment when the aircraft of the conquerors had first been seen. As he explained the destruction of what had been a thickly populated world the stern eyes lighted curiously and several of the invaders glanced quickly at each other. When he had finished, the blond leader looked down at him with some great emotion on his face. Then, to Graham's intense surprize, he strode forward and clasped his hand in a mighty grip.

"A miracle has indeed taken place," he said with almost a tremor in his resonant voice. "Though all of this was known to us, not one ever dreamed that anyone but our forefathers had escaped the plot of the madman who lies there, dead."

Graham sat bolt upright.

"Your forefathers!" he repeated in amazement. "You mean that you"

"We are descended from the lost Americans," replied the other solemnly. "In that terrible catastrophe of the Twentieth Century a few thousands were saved by what I have always believed an act of God. The story has been handed down carefully through generations.

"At the last moment, before the force-reversal which wrecked the earth, these demons who planned it could not resist the temptation to gloat over their intended victims. A radio message was broadcast over the entire world, telling of the end of the continents and their people. At first it was thought an ugly joke, but almost at once there began a violent upheaval of land and sea. Except in one spot on the American continent every person perished. I believe there must have been a dead point, considered magnetically, somewhere about the eastern part of Pennsylvania. Either that, or there was a deep fault in the earth's crust. At any rate, an irregular bit of land, hardly as large as the state I mentioned, was shifted laterally hundreds of miles northward by the same force which sank all the rest of the land. As it shifted it also rose until it stood high above the surrounding seas. Our ancestors found themselves hurled into the bitter climate of the Arctic, though at that time they supposed some freak of nature had suddenly changed the temperature of the latitude where they had lived.

"Many died before they could adjust themselves to the rigors of that awful cold, but finally one mighty man took charge and brought hope out of fear and despair. In the years that followed these courageous souls struggled to overcome the handicap of nature, and to rebuild the civilization which had so nearly vanished. The centuries gradually produced a hardy race equipped both physically and mentally to survive the trials of the far North. And all through these centuries there has been one purpose: to become powerful enough to explore the lonely seas surrounding us and learn the secret of that which our history named 'TheDestruction'."

He paused in his astounding tale, while Betty and Graham stared at each other with incredulous eyes. The blond commander smiled.

"It is hard to believe, I know. But it is true. Three centuries passed before we knew—or rather, our ances-