Then fell a strange and weird silence, and the echoes faded away like the voices of dying men, and all was still save the far-away barking of a coyote that answered the mysterious challenges of the night.

Joanne was close to the rock.

Quietly the men who had been working on the battery drew back.
"It is ready!" said one.
"Wait!" said Blackton, as his wife went to speak, "Listen!" For five minutes there was silence.

Then out of the night a single megaphone cried the word: "_Fire!_" "All is clear," said the engineer, with a deep breath.

"All you have to do, Miss Gray, is to move that little lever from the side on which it now rests to the opposite side.