Cabot now at last had all the elements for his batteries, and so was able, by employing about seventy cells in multiple, to get the two volts, three hundred fifty amperes, necessary to electrolize the oxygen and hydrogen for melting his platinum.
The platinum proved to be quite free of iridium, and so was easily drawn into wires.
Needless to state, the distilling of alcohol in large quantities, ostensibly for the laboratory burners, but actually for Doggo’s airplane, was commenced as soon as they had blown their first glass retorts.
Myles was going strong!
One day, in the midst of all this technical progress, as Myles was passing through one of the streets of Vairkingi on some errand or other, and admiring the quaint and brightly colored wood carvings on the high walls which lined the way, his attention was arrested by the design over one of the gateways.
It was a crimson swastika within a crimson triangle, the insignia of the priests of the lost religion of Cupia, the priests who had befriended him in their hidden refuge of the Caves of Kar, when he was a fugitive during the dark days of his second war against the ant-men.
Could it be that the lost religion was also implanted upon this continent? Myles had never discussed religion with Arkilu, or Jud, or Quivven, or Crota, or any of his Vairking friends. Somehow the subject had never come up. Full of curiosity, Cabot knocked in the door.
Immediately a small round aperture opened and a voice from within inquired “Whence come you?”
For reply, the earth-man gave one of the passwords of the Cupian religion. To his surprise, the gate swung open, and he was admitted into the presence of a long-robed priest, clad exactly like his friends of the Caves of Kar.
“What do you wish?” asked the guardian of the gate.