The engineer pulled the starting-levers, and then came up out of the engine-room and said to him: "It's no good, my Lord; I don't know what devil's world we've got into now, but they won't work.

If I thought that engines could be bewitched----" "Oh, nonsense, Andrew!" said his lordship rather testily.

"It's perfectly simple: those people down there, whoever they are, have got some way of demagnetising us, or else they've got the R.Force too, and they're applying it against us to stop us going down.

Apparently they don't want us.

No, that's just to show us that they can stop us if they want to.