advisability of bringing it with him, decided he had more important things to do. The owners of the nest did not appear.

As he emerged from the building, however, the quick motion of a shadow across the street caused him to look up in time to catch a glimpse of one of the four-winged birds they had seen before, and just as he was driving the car away, his ears were assailed by a torrent of screeches and "skrawks" from the homecomer. He did not look up until the shadow fell across him again when he perceived the bird was following close behind him, flying low, and apparently debating the advisability of attacking him.

Roberts waved his arms and shouted; it had not the slightest effect on the bird, which, now that it was closer, he perceived to move its hind wings only, holding its fore-wings out like those of an airplane. He wished he had a weapon of some kind; lacking one, he drew the car up to the curb and ran into a building. The bird alighted outside and began to peck the door in, but by the time it got through Roberts had climbed a maze of stairs, and though he could hear it screaming throatily behind him, it did not find him and eventually gave up the search.

The end of this remarkable tale was delivered to an enlarged audience. Gloria had arrived, bringing a chubby little man who announced himself as F. W. Stevens.

"The boy plunger?" queried Murray absent-mindedly, and realized from Gloria's gasp that he had said the wrong thing.

"Well, I operate in Wall Street," Stevens replied rather stiffly.

Ben came with three recruits. At the sight of the first, Murray gasped. Even in the metal caricature, he had no difficulty in recognizing the high, bald forehead, the thin jaws and the tooth-brush moustache of Walter Beeville, the greatest living naturalist. Before dark the others were back—Yoshio with one new acquisition and Mrs. Roberts, whose energy paralleled her strength, with no less than four, among them an elaborately gowned woman who proved to be Marta Lami, the Hungarian dancer who had been the sensation of New York at the time of the catastrophe.

They gathered in the Times Square drug store in a strange babble of phonographic voices and clang of metal parts against the stone floor and soda fountains. It was Roberts who secured a position behind one of these erstwhile dispensers of liquid soothing-syrup and rapped for order.

"I think the first thing to be done," he said, when the voices had grown quiet in answer to his appeal, "is to organize the group of people here and search for more. If it had not been for the kindness of Mr. Ruby here, my family and I would not have known about the necessity of using oil on this new mechanical make-up nor of the value of electrical current as food. There may be others in the city in the same state. What is the—ah—sense of the gathering on this topic?"

Stevens was the first to speak. "It's more important to organize and elect a president," he said briefly.

"A very good idea," commented Roberts.

"Well, then," said Stevens, ponderously, "I move we proceed to elect officers and form as a corporation."

"Second the motion," said Murray almost automatically.

"Pardon me." It was the voice of Beeville the naturalist. "I don't think we ought to adopt any formal organization yet. It hardly seems necessary. We are practically in the golden age, with all the resources of an immense city at the disposal of—fourteen people. And we know very little about ourselves. All the medical and biological science of the world must be discarded and built up again. At this very moment we may be suffering from the lack of something that is absolutely necessary to our existence—though I admit I cannot imagine what it could be. I think the first thing to do is to investigate our possibilities and establish the science of mechanical medicine. As to the rest of our details of existence, they don't matter much at present."

A murmur of approval went round the room and Stevens looked somewhat put out.

"We could hardly adopt anarchy as a form of government," he offered.

"Oh, yes we could," said Marta Lami, "Hurray for anarchy. The Red Flag forever. Free love, free beer, no work!"

"Yes," said Gloria, "what's the use of all this metallizing, anyway? We got rid of a lot of old applesauce about restrictions and here you want to tie us up again. More and better anarchy!"

"Say," came a deep and raucous voice from one of the newcomers. "Why don't we have just a straw boss for a while till we see how things work out? If anyone gets fresh the straw boss can jump him, or kick him out, but those that stick with the gang have to listen to him. How's that?"

"Fine," said Ben, heartily. "You mean have a kind of Mussolini for a while?"

"That's the idea. You ought to be it."

There was a clanging round of metallic applause as three or four people clapped their hands.

"There is a motion—" began Roberts.

"Oh, tie a can to it," said Gloria, irreverently, "I nominate Ben Ruby as dictator of the colony of New York for—three months. Everybody that's for it, stick up your hands."

Eleven hands went up. Gloria looked around at those who remained recalcitrant and concentrated her gaze on Stevens. "Won't you join us, Mr. Stevens?" she asked sweetly.

"I don't think this is the way to do things," said the Wall Street man with a touch of asperity. "It's altogether irregular and no permanent good can result from it. However, I will act with the rest."

"And you, Yoshio?"

"I am uncertain that permission is granted to this miserable worm to vote."

"Certainly. We're all starting from scratch. Who else is there? What about you, Mr. Lee?"

"Oh, I know him too well."

The rest of the opposition dissolved in laughter and Ben made his way to the place by the counter vacated by Roberts.

"The first thing we can do is have some light," he ordered. "Does anyone know where candles can be had around here? I suppose there ought to be some in the drug store across the street, but I don't know where and there's no light to look by."

"How about flashlights? There's an electrical and radio store up the block."

"Fine, Murray you go look. Now Miss Roberts, will you be our secretary? I think the first thing to do is to get down the name and occupation of everyone here. That will give us a start toward finding out what we can do. Ready? Now you, Miss Rutherford, first."

"My name is Gloria Rutherford and I can't do anything but play tennis, drink gin and drive a car."

The rest of the replies followed: "F. W. Stevens, Wall Street," "Theodore Roberts, lawyer," "Archibald Tholfsen, chess-player," "H. M. Dangerfield, editor," "Francis X. O'Hara, trucking business," (this was the loud-voiced man who had cut the Gordian knot of the argument about organization). "Are you a mechanic, too?" asked Ben.

"Well, not a first class one, but I know a little about machinery."

"Good, you're appointed our doctor."

"Paul Farrelly, publisher," "Albert F. Massey, artist"—the voices droned on in the uncertain illumination of the flashlights.

"Very well, then," said Ben at the conclusion of the list. "The first thing I'll do is appoint Walter Beeville director of research. Fact number one for him is that we aren't going to need much of any sleep. I don't feel the need of it at all, and I don't seem to see any signs among you. O'Hara will help him on the mechanical side.... I suggest that as Mr. Beeville will need to observe all of us we make the Rockefeller Institute our headquarters. He will have the apparatus there to carry on his work. Let's go."

CHAPTER III

Rebellion

They whirled away to the east side of the city and up Second Avenue like a triumphal cortege, blissfully disregarding the dead traffic lights, though now and then they had to dodge the ruins of some truck or taxi that had come out second best from an argument with