rays of the setting sun and suck down the aurora?"

"I don't know," he answered.

"Devils," croaked Chiu-Ming. "The devils that defied
Buddha--and have grown strong--"

"Like a metal claw!" breathed Drake.

Far to the west a sound came to us; first a whisper,
then a wild rushing, a prolonged wailing, a crackling. A
great light flashed through the mist, glowed about us and
faded. Again the wailing, the vast rushing, the retreating
whisper.

Then silence and darkness dropped embraced upon the
valley of the blue poppies.





CHAPTER II

THE SIGIL
ON THE ROCKS

Dawn came. Drake had slept well. But I, who had not
his youthful resiliency, lay for long, awake and uneasy.
I had hardly sunk into troubled slumber before dawn