Forward!" In silence, they followed him along the dark wharf, reached a narrow, rocky path that serpented up the face of the densely wooded cliff, and began to ascend.

A lathering climb it was, laden as they were with heavy rucksacks, in the moonless obscurity.
Now and then the Master's little searchlight--his own wonderful invention, a heatless light like an artificial firefly, using no batteries nor any power save universal, etheric rays in an absolute vacuum--glowed with pale virescence over some particularly rough bit of going.

For the most part, however, not even this tiny gleam was allowed to show.

Silence, darkness, precision, speed were now all-requisite.
Twenty-four minutes from leaving the wharf, they stood among a confused, gigantic chaos of boulders flung, dicelike, amid heavy timbers on the brow of the Palisades.

Off to the north, the faint, ghostly aura dimly silhouetted the trees.