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It stood forth in four-foot skeleton characters atop of the flat roof an electric sign to burn like a beacon by night. And he was about to become a part of that establishment, a humble beginner, true, but a beginner with uncommon prospects. He wondered if Henderson senior was right, if there resided in him that elusive essence which leads some men to success in dealings with other men.

This was a lewd female from the Paris half-world, flower-chapleted, flimsily draped, prancing in drunken frenzy atop a table surrounded by her "worshippers." The Feast of Reason included hundreds of revelers grouped around the open-air tables for the "supper of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity," and between long lines of these they were obliged to pass.

Never had seconds seemed so long before not even under water. On came the great liner, and now her bow was right atop of the bow at the forward end of the submarine's platform deck. There was just an instant to spare, but the "Farnum" shot past the oncoming, hostile-looking bows. In another moment the little craft, now more than awash, was out of harm's way.

"Am I alone, then, Heavenly Ones? Shall I smooth out my flood lest unhappily I bear away their walls? Will Indra dry my springs in the hills and make me crawl humbly between their wharfs? Shall I bury me in the sand ere I offend?" "And all for the sake of a little iron bar with the fire-carriage atop. Truly, Mother Gunga is always young!" said Ganesh the Elephant.

Next moment he was at the garden wall. No outlet was discoverable in the gloom. But a fruit-tree grew close to the wall. Springing into it desperately, handcuffed as he was, Israel leaps atop of the barrier, and without pausing to see where he is, drops himself to the ground on the other side, and once more lets grow all his wings.

This person bore down upon me and gently extracted my bag from my grasp. He stood about six feet three; his face was long and brown and grave; his figure was spare and strong. Atop his head he wore the sacred Arizona high-crowned hat, around his neck a bright bandana; no coat, but an unbuttoned vest; skinny trousers, and boots.

The wind blew itself entirely out, but the current bore them steadily on to the clamorous shore, where the swells were creating promontories, bays, cliffs and chasms in the piled-up confusion of the floes pounding on the rocks, breaking up or sliding atop one another in noisy confusion.

It was in the hope of finding out something of their history that I had left them; on that I had received a little light: I must have more; I must learn how to protect them! Hearing at length a little stir in the place, I walked through the next gate, and thence along a narrow street of tall houses to a little square, where I sat down on the base of a pillar with a hideous bat-like creature atop.

Here one could buy sheepskin Indian moccasins made in Massachusetts, or abalone shells, or burnt-leather pillows, or a whole collection of photographic views so minute that they could all be packed in a single walnut shell. Next door were shops of Japanese and Chinese goods presided over by suave, sleepy-eyed Orientals, in wonderful brocade, wearing the close cap with the red coral button atop.

To port, only a few scattered gleams along the base of the cliff or atop it, showed that the sparsely settled Palisades were drawing abeam. The ceaseless, swarming activities of the metropolis were being left behind. Silence was closing in, broken only by vagrant steamer-whistles from astern. A crawling string of lights, on the New York shore, told that an express was hurling itself cityward.