Moved beyond realization of the spaces between them, Dolores sprang to her feet and sounded into the upper spaces the vibrant chord of inspiration:
“John, be love-worthy!”
Regardless of the astonished stares directed her way, she saw in the mercurized pool that he bent his head as if listening—that his lips moved. She seized the telephone which Satan had used in communicating with the control platform. To the voice that answered she commanded:
“Get a record of what he said—I must know what he said!”
Lifted out of herself by her success, she leaned over the balustrade and willed that he should win.
And as she waited the battle on deck was fought to its finish. Self-mastered, John brushed from his ears the insinuations that had tempted him; controlled the fingers fumbling with the buckles; turned back the feet struggling toward the rail.
As the helium from the last compartments waved skyward the flames of the dirigible’s final support, he stripped off the life-saving jacket and forced it upon the pilot. His insistence clearly was in the name of that girl-child who would be orphaned should her father desert her for a scruple. He urged his protesting fellow-human to the rail; helped him over-side. In magnificent calm he watched the silken folds of the parachute spread open under their burden and begin a gentle, oceanward descent.
As the gas bag disintegrated, bits of burning embers became detached and dropped like spent rockets to the waves. John Cabot, left alone on the deck, stood ready for the end.
The while, his last utterance, demanded by her who had inspired him, was given to the vast throng through the annunciators connected with the master telephonograph. Deep, strong, triumphant, its first syllable silenced the orchestral Song of the Sea. A cry of victory, it shamed demon laughter and tortured the souls of the lost with regrets over the god-great powers they might have come to wield had they but won their fights. A requiem that rang through the crusts of two worlds was its single word:
“Dolores!”