Gone! The shed was empty! No air-ship was there, poised trembling on its own balance all prepared for flight,--the wonderful "White Eagle" had unfurled its wings and fled! Whither? Like a madman he rushed up and down, shouting and calling in vain--it was after midnight and there was no one about to hear him. He started to run to the Palazzo d'Oro to give the alarm--but was held back--held by an indescribable force which he was powerless to resist. He struggled with all his might,--uselessly.
"Morganna!" he cried in a desperate voice--"Morganna!"
Running down to the edge of the sea he gazed across it and up to the wonderful sky through which the moon rolled lazily like a silver ball. Was there nothing to be seen there save that moon and the moon-dimmed stars? With eager straining eyes he searched every quarter of the visible space--stay! Was that a white dove soaring eastwards?--or a cloud sinking to its rest?
"Morgana!" he cried again, stretching out his arms in despair--"She has gone! And alone!"
Even as he spoke the dove-like shape was lost to sight beyond the shining of the evening star.
L'Envoi Several months ago the ruin of a great air-ship was found on the outskirts of the Great Desert so battered and broken as to make its mechanism unrecognisable. No one could trace its origin,--no one could discover the method of its design. There was no remnant of any engine, and its wings were cut to ribbons. The travellers who came upon its fragments half buried in the sand left it where they found it, deciding that a terrible catastrophe had overtaken the unfortunate aviators who had piloted it thus far. They spoke of it when they returned to Europe, but came upon no one who could offer a clue to its possible origin.
These same travellers were those who a short time since filled a certain section of the sensational press with tales of a "Brazen City" seen from the desert in the distance, with towers and cupolas that shone like brass or like "the city of pure gold," revealed to St. John the Divine, where "in the midst of the street of it" is the Tree of Life. Such tales were and are received with scorn by the world's majority, for whom food and money constitute the chief interest of existence,--nevertheless tradition sometimes proves to be true, and dreams become realities. However this may be, Morgana lives,--and can make her voice heard when she will along the "Sound Ray"--that wonderful "wireless" which is soon to be declared to the world. For there is no distance that is not bridged by light,--and no separation of sounds that cannot be again brought into unison and harmony. "There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy,"--and the "Golden City" is one of those things! "Masters of the world" are poor creatures at best,--but the secret Makers of the New Race are the gods of the Future!