"I found the anaesthetic by its smell soon after I went to Xantra," she explained. "I tried to conceal it in my dress, but Xantra saw me and tried to take it away; and in the struggle that followed I guess we both got anaesthetized. When I came to I saw you and Jim trying to hold back the slaves; and I could see Xantra on the floor, conscious—which you couldn't—and knew he was ordering the slaves on. So I told you, and—here we are!
"Do you want to see Xantra now?" she added.
Clee would never forget the sight of the bound figure that met his eyes on the floor on the large room. The clothes were odd; the figure was much that of a normal man, though the shoulders were more sloped and the head much larger; but it was the face, its expression, that held him.
Unhealthy, leprous-white was the skin, and there was not one hair, eyelash or eyebrow on the whole head. The closed eyes lay in deep caverns surrounded by a thousand fine wrinkles, which crisscrossed all over his face in every direction. The face and head were freakish—monstrous; and yet, somehow, over it rested an expression of infinite wisdom and calm. He lay bound and still and unconscious, at the mercy of men far below him intellectually, this man from another planet. Clee could not help but compare him to a stoical man staked out on an anthill to die....
"We'll have to keep him unconscious with the anaesthetic," he said at length; "he's too dangerous to monkey with. And that means we've got to find out how to run this ship—take it back ourselves."
"Leave that to me!" said Jim, feeling quite chipper. "Never saw anything yet I couldn't drive. Where is it—Cape Cod, you want to be let off, Miss Gray?... O. K. This is my joy-ride, and I'll see that you're delivered at your front door."
ore than two days later, again at night, the few look-outs on the lonely fishing craft off Cape Cod might have seen a pinpoint of cherry-red appear off the eastern horizon and make a wide arc up the heavens.
Its course was erratic, and it made sudden angles as it drew near the zenith. It glowed more and more brightly as it approached—until it disappeared from sight overhead.