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The ship was now well in the air, and beginning to move away from the fort. But they were only ten miles away, and Murray had hardly expected that Balta would be in such a hurry. "You get off here!" Balta said, and Murray felt the muzzle of the neuro-pistol on his spinal column. A grinning soldier seized a countersunk ring and raised the trap-door.

Well, she can trust in me." "They say," the deacon hinted, "that if one went to Tarog, and inquired at the proper place, there would be a reward." The little old woman chilled him, she looked so deadly. "Deacon Homms!" she hissed. "If you sell this poor little girl to Scar Balta, your hypocritical white eyes will never roll again, because I'll tear them out and feed them to the fish. Understand?"

And of the loopholes back of these recesses, with still other armed men, as a constant warning to any of the inner guards whose thoughts might turn to treachery. Scar Balta bowed respectfully. "Your Excellency desired to see me?" "I wished to see you, or I should not have had you called," Wilcox replied irritably.

On the fourth day Sime was able to drink water freely, and to eat the food they placed into his mouth, a fact which the medical officer noted. The torture was wearing itself out. Sime's body was emaciated, stringy, burnt black. But his extraordinary toughness was weathering conditions that would kill most men. Balta shook his head in wonderment when this was reported to him.

He convinced the other I. F. P. man, anyway. But Murray had an uneasy feeling that Balta was laughing at him, and when the shifty soldier politician invited him into his ship for the ride back to Tarog, Murray had a compelling intuition that he would not be in a position to step out of the ship when it landed on the parkway of Scar Balta's hotel.

He paused, thought a moment, added, with that absolute fairness and impartiality that was characteristic of him: "True, Balta is not the ideal prince consort. He would not add kingly qualities to the royal line. But he would confer cunning upon his offspring; and energy neither to be despised in a royal family that must forever resist intrigue." He sighed again.

It seemed as if the energy of destruction and savagery had spent itself in the exploits at Balta. On the whole, the pogrom campaign conducted in the spring of 1882 covered but an insignificant territory when compared with the pogrom enterprise of 1881, though surpassing it considerably in point of quality.

He was exceedingly irritated, not only on account of the recent circular of Tolstoi which implied a personal threat against him as one who had connived at a number of pogroms within his dominions, but also because of the steps taken by the representatives of the Balta Jewish community at St. Petersburg in the direction of exposing the spiritual fathers of the local riots.

It would seem as if the terrible atrocities at Balta had made the highest Government spheres realize that the previous policy of connivance at the pogroms, which had been practised for a whole year, could not but disgrace Russia in the eyes of the world and undermine public order in Russia itself.

"You've heard of me?" "Uh yes and no," Sime suddenly remembered the girl of the evening before the imperious little Martian. She had warned him of Scar Balta. "If I do say it," said the Martian, "I am the best impersonator in the service of the interests I represent. I did not expect to get information of great value from you, but we do not neglect even the most unpromising leads."