“Yes,” the priest replied, with a smile; “it is very easy.”
“Then, for the love of the Great Builder, tell me,” the earthman exclaimed. “Don’t keep me in suspense.”
But all that Nan-nan would say was: “Wait!”
Cabot was about to remonstrate again, when he noticed a peculiar thing: the Cupian flyers seemed to be manipulating their unlit searchlights, just as though they were lighted. What was the great idea? What could it mean?
His thoughts were interrupted by something dropping with a thud on the soft silver sward beside him. He groped for it and picked it up. It was a pair of binoculars, quite evidently lost overboard from one of the battling flyers. Now Cabot and his party would be able to observe the fight from closer quarters. Courteously he offered the glasses to the princess, and she in turn to the priest; but the latter declined them with a shrug, and again that quizzical smile, which a passing gleam of light revealed for a moment. So Lilla adjusted them and peered up into the velvet sky. Then she uttered a little exclamation of surprise.
“Myles, Myles,” she cried, “our ships have at last lit their searchlights! Now, indeed, we shall win.”
“We were winning already,” he replied, likewise peering into the black abyss above. “But why do you say that our ships are using their lights? It still seems to me as though they were not.”
“Here, take the glasses and see for yourself,” said Lilla, and she handed them over, adding, as she looked into the sky with her naked eyes: “But now it seems as though the lights of our fliers have been extinguished. How strange!”
Cabot adjusted the lenses to his own vision, and sure enough all the ships on both sides, were illumined. And still the young priest continued to smile. Cabot passed the binoculars back to Lilla, and again all the Cupian searchlights became dark to him. It was most mystifying. He glanced at his companions in perplexity and suddenly saw the teeth and eyeballs of Nan-nan glow phosphorescent. Then, and not until then, did the truth dawn on Cabot.
“They are using the black light!” he gasped.