IN the mysterious revolution of human things it came about that the
only spectator of the closing scene of the tragedy of humanity who
endured and survived its final terrors was the woman to whom it had
been due that the fire from heaven had fallen upon a world mad with the
frenzy and agony of war instead of sane and calm with the sanity and
calmness of peace and reason.
On the issue of the Battle of Aeria, Olga and, under her unnaturally
acquired influence, the Sultan, had staked the empire of the world
and lost it. Before the fight had been raging many hours even she was
forced to admit that Aeria was impregnable to any assault that she
could deliver. But when the Aerians began to practise the desperate
tactics of the second day it became manifest that nothing but
annihilation awaited the invading fleet, out-matched as it was in speed
and gun-power by the new Aerian warships and the land batteries.
With eyes burning with rage and envy she had watched through her
glasses the incomparable _Alma_ floating serenely at her unattainable
altitude far above the battle-storm, and she had pictured Alan, her
former slave, standing upon her deck perhaps--bitterest thought of
all--with his wedded love beside him, and like a very arbiter of war
hurling his destroying lightnings far and wide upon her ships until
the supreme moment came in which he would descend like a very god from
the upper air, and, hand in hand with Alma, strike the last terrible
blow which would end the last conflict of man with man and leave
neither friend nor foe alive to tell what the issue had been.
It would be a glorious end, worthy of him and the splendid traditions
of his race, and she loathed herself for the craven fear that had
seized upon her in the fateful hour of battle, and made her incapable
of challenging the same fate at his hands. Khalid himself would have
done so without hesitation, but she had robbed him of his manhood and
debased him, as she had debased every other human being that had fallen
under her influence.
She had spent nearly the whole of the night of the 22nd on deck,
and when the awful radiance of the Fire-Cloud was for the last time
succeeded by the light of day, even her haughty spirit had at last
bowed before the supernatural terrors that were multiplying about her.
For the first time since she had brought bloodshed back into the world
a thrill of panic shuddered through her soul, and, for the first time,
she learnt the meaning of fear.
Then, too, came a longing which for the time being overmastered
all other considerations. The elementary animal instinct of
self-preservation rose up within her with irresistible force and
conquered the hate and the ambition whose objects would have vanished
when another sun had risen.
Her thoughts went back to her old stronghold in the snowy solitudes
of Antarctica, to the deep dark caverns of Mount Terror. Surely those
mighty walls of living rock, shrouded in eternal ice and snow, would
give her an asylum in which she could defy the fate that was about to
overwhelm humanity--and what then? For a moment an awful vision of
the unspeakable loneliness of such a survival amidst the ruins of the
world struck such terror to her heart that she almost resolved to head
the _Revenge_ into the thick of the fight that was still raging round
Aeria, and die rather than face it. Then the vision passed, and the
terrors of the present blotted out the fear of the future.
The last sun that the human race would ever see was just rising when
she sent for Boris Lossenski, who was still commanding the _Revenge_
under her, and said abruptly, and without even consulting Khalid, who
was standing by her side--
“There is nothing but death to be found here. We will escape if we can.
Head the ship for Mount Terror and make her fly as she has never flown
before. Don’t spare either the engines or the power. We must be there
before nightfall if possible.”
Boris saluted and obeyed in silence, and Olga turned to Khalid and said
in a tone of weariness and almost of despair--
“It is no use fighting any longer. The Fates themselves are against
us, and I--yes, I have been frightened into belief at last. A shameful
confession is it not?”
“Not shameful but only reasonable,” he replied. “All I regret is that
you did not believe sooner, and save this last slaughter of these
gallant people.”
“What is done, is done!” she said with a half-regretful glance at the
mountains of Aeria, which were now rapidly fading away into the blue
distance; “it is only a question of sooner instead of later. Indeed, it
seems hardly worth while even for us to attempt to live when, even if
we survive, only the ruins of the world can be ours. And yet”--
“Yet sweeter would be life with you even in a wilderness of death than
destruction that might be eternal parting,” replied Khalid in low tones
that thrilled with passion. “Nay, what dearer destiny could man desire
than to be the Adam of a new world of which you were the Eve?”
The words of her husband--for Khalid was her husband now as well as her
slave--brought a sudden flush to Olga’s face, and this was succeeded by
an almost deathly pallor. She put up her hand to the broadened circlet
of gold which concealed the terrible scar of the wound made by Alan’s
bullet, and said almost in a whisper--
“You and I--yes, you and I may live. We _will_! But if we do we must
save ourselves alone.”
And with that she left him abruptly and went to her own room with the
plan of her last crime already shaped in her mind.
She was the only woman on board the _Revenge_. Her maid Anna had been
left behind at Alexandria, a maniac driven mad by the universal terror.
What of Boris and the twenty-five men who formed the air-ship’s crew?
If they were permitted to survive to the time when there would be no
law but might, she would be the one woman in the world--one woman,
beautiful and almost defenceless, among those who, though now her
servants, would then be ready to slay each other in the dispute as to
which of them should be her master.
Such a thought in such a mind as hers could have but one outcome. When
the hour for the midday meal arrived, she bade Boris invite the whole
crew into the main saloon, saying that, as this might be the last meal
that any of them would eat, they would take it together. Then, as
though moved by some sudden gracious fancy, she filled for every man
with her own hands a glass of the best and oldest wine that had been
reserved for her own use.
Khalid, rigid Moslem as he was, refused it, and she only touched it
with her lips, but the others drained their glasses and drank death at
her hands, even as the Aerians had drunk it in the same fashion and at
the same table seven years before.
But this time it was fated that her sin should find her out more
quickly. Later on in the afternoon Boris, to his amazement and alarm,
found every man of his crew succumbing to an irresistible drowsiness,
and soon this began to affect himself. A terrible thought at once
flashed into his ever-suspicious mind. Fighting against the stupor that
was stealing over his senses, he took a deep draught of strong spirit.
This conquered the poison for a time and cleared his intellect
sufficiently for him to see what his pitiless mistress had done, and
then there rose up in his mind a desperate longing for vengeance on
the murderess who had used him and his companions as long as they were
useful and then poisoned them like so many rats.
He took out his pistol and examined it to see if it was charged, and
then, with the poison and the spirit fighting in his brain for mastery,
he made his way from the engine-room to the quarter-deck, where Olga
and Khalid were standing, watching with strained, fascinated eyes and
faces that looked livid and corpse-like in the unnatural light of the
Fire-Cloud, the long tongues of many-coloured flame that were shooting
like so many gigantic serpents down from the zenith, as though they
would lick the life-blood out of the world that now lay panting for
breath and paralysed with fear beneath them.
Just as he reached the top of the companion-way a mist swam before
Boris’s eyes, his brain reeled, and he stumbled forward on to the deck,
discharging his pistol aimlessly as he did so. The bullet struck and
broke to fragments against the bulwarks. Khalid and Olga turned round
to see him lying on his side with savagely-gleaming eyes, livid face,
and foam-flecked lips, trying to raise himself on one hand and take aim
at them with the other.
As Khalid sprang forward Olga’s ever-ready pistol came out of her belt.
She cried to Khalid to get out of the line of fire, but just as she
spoke Boris made his last effort, and, taking what aim he could, pulled
the trigger. Khalid stopped short and clasped his hand to his right
side. Then Olga, with a low cry of fury breaking from her white lips
through her clenched teeth, sent a bullet through Boris’s brain just as
he was struggling to bring his pistol up again.
“Are you hurt, Khalid?” she asked with a deadly fear at her heart as
she crossed the deck to where he was standing with his hand still
pressed to his side.
“Yes,” he gasped. “He has shot me through the lung.”
Then he coughed, and Olga saw drops of blood on his black beard and
moustache. Without wasting any time in useless words she helped him
down into the saloon and set herself at once to examine and dress his
wound. The bullet had entered between the fourth and fifth ribs on the
right side, drilled a clean hole through the lower lobe of the right
lung, and passed out at the back without touching any bone.
With perfect rest and quiet there was nothing to prevent recovery from
such a wound, but Olga shuddered as she thought of its consequences in
their present situation. If Khalid succumbed, as he well might do under
the unknown terrors and dangers of the night that was now so near, she
would have to choose between killing herself beside him, or, if the
rock-chambers of Mount Terror proved a safe asylum, living mateless and
alone until she starved to death on the wilderness that the world would
be when it had passed through its baptism of fire.
She satisfied Khalid’s whispered request for an explanation of Boris’s
attempt on their lives by saying that he had probably made himself
drunk in an attempt to fortify himself against the terrors that were
multiplying around him. Then she went through the ship and in a few
minutes came back and said--
“I shall have to take the ship to Mount Terror myself. It was not only
Boris, for every man of the crew is dead drunk. Think of them making
such brutes of themselves at such a time!
“No,” she continued, putting her hand on his shoulder as she saw him
make an attempt to rise. “You must not move yet; you will want all your
strength when we get there, for you will have to regulate the engines
while I am in the conning-tower. As for these animals, we will leave
them to their fate.”
A couple of hours later she went on deck to see whether Mount Terror,
or at anyrate the smoke-crest of Mount Erebus, was in sight, for the
_Revenge_ had now been flying almost long enough to have reached the
confines of Antarctica. The speed was, however, so great that nothing
was distinctly visible. There was only the flaming heaven above and a
grey blur beneath, so she went to the engine-room and slowed down to a
hundred miles an hour.
Then she helped Khalid to the engineer’s seat in front of the
controlling levers and took her place in the conning-tower. She had
scarcely been at her post half an hour before she saw the huge white
cones of the twin mountains of Antarctica shining against the dull
grey sky beyond, one of them crowned as she had last seen it by a long
stream of smoke that rose almost vertically in the windless air.
She signalled to Khalid to reduce the speed, first to fifty and then
to thirty miles an hour, allowing the _Revenge_ at the same time to
sink gently down towards the ice-covered continent. She crossed the
well-remembered bay in which the _Narwhal_ had performed her terrible
exploit, swept over the ice-wall at an elevation of a hundred feet,
swung the ship round and stopped her in front of the great cleft in the
side of Mount Terror.
No human foot seemed to have trodden the Antarctic solitude from the
day she left it to crown herself Tsarina of the Russias to this one on
which she brought her flagship back with its crew of murdered men to
seek her last chance of life amidst the general doom which she could
now almost bring herself to believe she had directly brought upon the
world.
She ran the _Revenge_ slowly into the vast portal that yawned black
and deep before her between the snow slopes of the mountain, and then,
turning on the search-light, took her along the great gallery which
led to the shore of the subterranean lake, and there lowered her for
the last time to the earth. Then she and Khalid disembarked, he moving
slowly and painfully, and she supporting him as well as she was able,
and watching him with the intense anxiety of a supreme selfishness
which had now centred itself upon him as the one possibility of making
her life endurable.
Thus did Tsarina Olga and Khalid the Magnificent, conquerors of the
earth and sharers of the world-throne, come back, one wounded almost to
death, and the other half distraught with fear and perplexity, to take
refuge at the uttermost ends of the earth from the assault of the foe
that had confounded all their schemes of conquest.
Leaving the _Revenge_ in the great gallery, she led him to the council
chamber and laid him on the cushions of the luxurious divan on which
she had been wont to hold her audiences. There she examined and
redressed his wound, and then for the next three hours she busied
herself bringing supplies of food and drink from the ship and preparing
for the final siege which their last stronghold would so soon have to
endure.
Then the fancy took her to go once more into the air to take one more
look at the world and the splendours of the fate that was menacing
it. Nineteen hours had passed since she gave the order to head the
_Revenge_ for Mount Terror. Sixteen of these had been consumed in the
most rapid flight that the air-ship had ever accomplished. So fast had
the _Revenge_ flown westward and southward that the sun had almost
seemed to stand still waiting for her journey to be accomplished, but
still it had slowly sunk farther and farther down into the luminous
mist that now seemed to fill the whole sky.
The difference between the longitude of Aeria and Mount Terror had
lengthened the last fateful day by nearly five hours, but now the end
was very near at hand, and here even, on the very confines of the
world, life had little more than four hours to live. To the north the
whole sky was flaming out into indescribable splendours, and the long
fire-streams radiating from the nucleus now seemed to be literally
holding the planet in their clasp. Enormous meteors were bursting out
from the heart of the flaming cloud and exploding without a sound in
the ever-silent abysses of space.
She stood rooted to the spot by the weird and awful glories of the
spectacle, and for the time being seemed to forget even Khalid and the
indescribable dangers that were threatening them both. Instead of being
daunted, her spirit rose as though in response to the splendours before
her. She felt that she was standing upon Nature’s funeral pyre watching
the conflagration of the world she had ruined. Saving only Khalid there
was not another human being within thousands of miles of her, and in
her loneliness her soul seemed to expand and rise to a nobility that it
had never known before.
She saw the utter insignificance and contemptibility of the human
strife which had been superseded and silenced by this majestic assault
of the primal forces of Nature, and for the first time in her life she
thought of herself and her sins with a disgust and shame that humbled
her in her own eyes to the dust.
So she stood and watched, oblivious of everything but the celestial
glories above and around her, until a rapid series of frightful
explosions seemed to run roaring round the whole horizon. She looked
up with shaded eyes towards the zenith. The central mass had suddenly
become convulsed and expanded until it looked as though the whole sky
had been transformed into an ocean of fire torn by incessant storms.
Huge masses of many-coloured flame were falling from it in all
directions on the devoted earth, and as each of these entered the
atmosphere it burst into myriads of fragments which fell in swarms
until the blazing sky was literally raining fire over sea and land.
[Illustration: THE BLAZING SKY WAS LITERALLY RAINING FIRE OVER SEA AND
LAND. _Page 367._]
The Fire-Cloud had at last invaded the outer confines of the earth’s
atmosphere.
All this while there had been no change in the Antarctic cold of the
air, but soon after the first storm of explosions roared out Olga felt
a puff of warm tainted air blow across her face. Then came another and
another, and then she heard what had never been heard before on the
slopes of Mount Terror--the sound of running water. The snows were
melting, and soon there would come avalanche and deluge.
She hurried back into the council chamber, convinced that it was no
longer safe to remain in the open air. She made the great bronze doors
fast and covered them with layer after layer of thick heavy curtains.
Every other opening into the chamber she closed up as tightly as
possible. In the nature of the case they were compelled to trust to the
supply of air already in it to last them through the ordeal.
Then she went and sat down on the divan by Khalid’s side, and, taking
his hand in hers, bent over him and kissed him on the lips, saying--
“Now we must wait for life or death together!”
And so they waited--waited while the ages-old snow and ice melted from
the bare black rocks under the fierce breath of the fire-storm; while
the ocean of flame seethed and roared and eddied about them, licking up
the seas and melted snows and fighting with them as fire and water have
fought since the world began; while the foundations of the Southern
Pole quivered and rocked beneath their feet, and the walls of their
refuge quaked and cracked with the throes of the writhing earth, and
cosmos was dissolved into chaos once more.
EPILOGUE. “VENGEANCE IS MINE.”
“THE temperature has been normal now for three hours. Don’t you think
we may venture to raise the sluice-gate?”
“I see nothing against it. If the world is not habitable again now it
never will be. It is a good two days since the contact now, and if the
atmosphere had been burnt up or carried away by the attraction of the
comet it would either be much colder or much hotter than that.”
“Very well then, up it comes, and then we shall get our last question
answered.”
It was Alan who thus questioned and answered his father. All had gone
well with the refugees of Mount Austral and the remnant of the Aerian
race. Their science and their faith in themselves had been triumphantly
justified by the event and had carried them safely through the sternest
ordeal that man had ever been called upon to face.
And now there was only one more chance to be met, one more problem to
be solved. The temperature showed that the earth still possessed an
atmosphere, but was that atmosphere capable of supporting human life?
If yes, all would be well and they could go forth into the wasted world
and possess and replenish it. If no, then all their labour would have
been in vain and they might as well have died in battle or with those
friends and kin who had taken their silent and dignified farewell of
the world in the last days of the State of Aeria.
They had a calorimeter and a pressure-gauge communicating with the
outer world to tell the temperature and the height of the water in the
valley. The former, after rising for a few hours to over a thousand
degrees, had now sunk back to normal, while the latter stood at thirty
feet above the entrance doors to the cavern.
The machinery for raising the sluice-gate was put into motion and
they watched it with almost breathless anxiety lest the straining or
shifting of the rocks, which had been very perceptible during the
terrific convulsions which had apparently lasted for nearly ten hours,
should have so dislocated the grooves that the gate could not be raised.
There were a few preliminary creaks and groans, a hitch and an
increased strain on the lifting chains, and then the great sheet of
steel rose easily and smoothly to the top of the channel and the
pent-up waters rushed forth in a black boiling flood through the narrow
opening and roared away, foaming and tossing along the bottom of the
crevasse, once more on their way to their unknown destination.
Very soon after this it was discovered that the waters were subsiding
much more rapidly than could be accounted for by the volume that
escaped through the subterranean channel. It was therefore necessary
to conclude that there must have been some convulsion in another part
of the mountains which had opened a fresh channel from the lake to the
outer world.
The next step was to raise the two inner of the three doors which
guarded the entrance to the caverns. The raising of the first one
showed the ice still intact between it and the second, and this had to
be broken up and removed before the second could be reached. Then the
middle door was raised an inch or so and the water spurted out from
beneath it.
Was this the water of the melted ice or was it that which filled the
valley? Had their outer door stood firm or had it cracked or shrivelled
up under the heat of the furnace through which the earth had passed? It
flowed for ten minutes and then slackened and stopped. The outer door
had held fast. Then, in case of accidents, the middle one was lowered
again and they waited until the waters should have sufficiently
subsided to enable them to challenge the last hazard on which their
fate depended.
The sluice-gate had been raised at what would be four o’clock on the
morning of the 26th of September, if the cataclysm through which the
earth had passed had not so far affected the terrestrial economy
as to alter the relations of day and night. Twelve hours later the
pressure-gauge ceased to act, showing that the rapidly-sinking waters
of the lake had reached the threshold of the outer door. The time had
now come to ask the question on the answer to which the lives of the
remnant of humanity depended--was the atmosphere breathable or not?
That was the one question which occupied, to the momentary exclusion of
all others, the mind of every Aerian who was in the caverns. The middle
gate was lifted, and every heart stood still as Alan and Alexis strode
forward into the dark passage and grasped the levers which actuated the
lifting mechanism of the outer one.
They took one glance back at the anxious faces which showed so white in
the gleam of the electric lamps, and then they pulled. The machinery
creaked and groaned as the power was applied. Then came a rending sound
and a dull crash. The door lifted a little, quivered and dropped again,
and remained immovable.
“The machinery has broken down!” said Alan, going back into the
gallery. “There must have been a land-slip over the doorway.”
“What will you do then?” said Alma. “Surely we have not escaped the
conflagration of the world to be buried alive after all!”
“No,” he said, looking down at her with a reassuring smile. “It can
hardly be as bad as that. Unless a whole mountain has fallen in front
of the door, we shall soon find a way out.”
The first thing to be done was to get rid of the door, and this Alan
accomplished in summary fashion by undermining it with drills, and
then, after he had sent everyone into the inner recesses of the
caverns, tearing it to fragments with a small quantity of the explosive
used in the shells.
A mass of earth and stones came rolling into the gallery immediately
after the explosion, then an excavating machine was run up on
hastily-laid rails and was soon boring its way into the obstructing
mass. A distance of ten yards was tunnelled and then there was a rattle
and whir in front of the machine, which told that the work was done.
There was a cloud of dust from pulverised stones and earth and then
came a rush of fresh warm air and a gleam of sunlight through the
opening.
“Thank God the atmosphere is still there and the sun is still shining!”
cried Alan, as he drew the machine back and ran out into the open air.
He looked about him for a few moments and then turned and walked back
to his companions, who were already crowding towards the opening with
faces glad with new hope and drawing deep breaths of the life-giving
air, which the mysterious alchemy of Nature had restored unchanged to
the earth. He stopped them with a gesture and said--
“Don’t go out yet till we have made the tunnel safe. You will find an
awful change out yonder. Aeria is no longer a paradise. It is only a
swamp surrounded by naked rocks!”
And so they found it to be when they at length passed out through the
tunnel and stood upon the black oozy shores of the dreary lake which
still half filled what had once been the lovely land of Aeria.
The once verdure-clad mountains rose up bare and gaunt and blackened,
a vast circle of ragged rock, unrelieved by a blade of grass or a
single tree of all the myriads that had clothed their slopes three days
before. It seemed as though the clock of Time had been put back through
countless ages and the world was once more as it had been before the
first forms of life appeared upon it.
But still the air that fanned their cheeks was fresh and warm and
sweet, and the afternoon sun was shining across the western peaks out
of a cloudless sky of purest blue. The calm had come after the storm
and the world was waiting to begin its life anew. The _Alma_ and the
_Isma_ had utterly vanished, and were probably buried deep in the black
slimy mud. Of the city of Aeria not a vestige was visible.
The first thing that Alan did as soon as the last momentous question
had thus been asked and answered was to ask his father to order one of
the smaller air-ships, which had been stored in sections in the cavern,
to be put together and charged with motive-power as rapidly as possible.
“Certainly if you wish it,” he replied; “but what is your reason for
being in such a hurry to reassert your empire of the air?”
“I can tell you now,” said Alan in reply, “what there would have been
no need to tell you if, well, if we had not been able to leave the
caverns. Just after sunrise on the last day of the battle Bruno Vincent
brought the _Orion_ as near as he could to the _Alma_ and told me by
signal that he had seen the _Revenge_ leave the fight and head away at
full speed to the southward and westward. That means, I think, that
Olga’s courage failed her at the last and that she meant to try the
forlorn hope of saving herself in her old stronghold at Mount Terror. I
am going to see whether she is alive or dead.”
“And suppose by a miracle you should find her alive. What then?” said
Alma, who had overheard his request, coming up to him and looking up
into his face with melting eyes as she slipped her hand caressingly
through his arm.
“The world is beginning its life anew in us, dear,” he replied with
tenderness in his eyes but none in his voice, “and there shall be no
snake in our Eden if I”--
“If you have to be the Cain of the new world to prevent it!”
interrupted Alma, reading his dark meaning at a glance, and
interpreting it with a directness and force that startled him. “No,
Alan, that must not be! If she has escaped the vengeance of God you may
well forego yours. I can hardly think that she is still alive, but it
is right that we should go and see”--
“We!” echoed Alan before she could finish. “Do you mean that you will
come with me? No, Alma, you must not do that. Remember that if she has
by any chance escaped, the crew of the _Revenge_ may be alive too, and
then we may have to fight”--
“No, no, Alan, not that! not that!” she cried with a gesture of horror.
“The world has done with fighting, for there is nothing left to fight
about. We will go as friends with open hands to them, and the new life
of the world shall be begun with the forgiveness of our enemies. Who
are we that we should judge after the Voice of God has spoken?”
In the end she had her way, and so it came to pass that soon after
sunrise on the following day an air-ship, which a hundred skilled and
willing hands had toiled all night in fitting together and equipping
for her voyage, rose into the air above the ghastly wilderness that had
once been Aeria, and winged her way towards the southern pole.
Twenty hours later she sank down on to the ice that had already
re-covered the rocks in front of the fissure in the side of Mount
Terror, and as she did so a figure came forth out in the darkness into
the half light of the polar morning.
“Look! There she is!” said Alma in an awe-stricken whisper to Alan.
“Alone in this awful place! Come, let us go to her.”
As she spoke the gangway steps were lowered and she descended them
first, followed by Alan, his father, Alexis, and Isma. Some strange
influence held the others back as she advanced with outstretched hands
and words of kindly greeting on her lips towards the piteous wreck of
womanhood that slowly emerged from the gloom of the chasm.
Olga Romanoff had survived the doom of the world, but the hand of a
just vengeance had fallen heavily upon her. Her once splendid form was
shrunken as though three score years had passed over her in as many
hours. Her left side was half paralysed and her shaking limbs hung
loosely as she tottered along.
[Illustration: OLGA ROMANOFF HAD SURVIVED THE DOOM OF THE WORLD. _Page
374._]
Her golden fillet and jewelled wings had been cast away, leaving bare
the great livid scar that crossed her forehead; her white, drawn face
was seamed with deep lines marked by agony and terror, and the thick
masses of the once glorious hair that hung about her head and shoulders
were streaked with grey and clotted with blood.
The fire had died out of her eyes and the red from her shrivelled
lips, and the weak broken voice in which she answered Alma’s greeting
quavered like that of an old woman in her dotage.
“I have been expecting you,” she said as Alma took her trembling hands
in hers. “I thought you would come. You have come for Alan, haven’t
you? He is yonder, but he is dead. I kept him alive as long as I could
but he was wounded, and when the world was changed to hell for my sins
the fire choked him.
“I tried to die too, but it wouldn’t kill me. There was air enough for
me and I wanted to give it to him to breathe but he wouldn’t take it.
I suppose you have been dead and are an angel now like those others
behind you. Come, I will take you to him. It is dark but I know the
way.”
The moment she began to speak Alma saw the awful calamity that had
befallen her. The haughty daring spirit that had essayed and almost
achieved the conquest of the world was dissolved in the bitter waters
of the Marah of Madness. The soul that had quailed before no human fear
had collapsed into imbecility under the superhuman terrors which she
alone had witnessed and survived. Without a word she suffered her to
lead her into the gloom, beckoning to the others to follow. They turned
on the electric lamps they had brought with them and entered the chasm.
They reached the black ash-strewn floor of the gloomy subterranean
lake in the heart of the mountain, and Alan, pausing for a moment,
flashed the light of his lamp round the vast chamber that had once been
so terribly familiar to him. The walls were burnt and blackened, and
here and there masses of rock and boulders had been calcined to dust
as though the long pent-up lava that had once flowed in fiery torrents
over them had again been let loose.
Then the light fell upon something that was not rock and which gave
back a dull metallic sheen. He took a few strides towards it and soon
recognised it as all that was left of the once shapely and beautiful
_Ithuriel_, the old flagship of the Aerian fleet with which he had lost
the mastery of his own manhood and his people the empire of the air.
The crystal dome of the roof was gone and lay in patches of congealed
glass about the blackened and shrivelled-up deck. The wings were burnt
away and the transverse ribs of azurine stood out bare and twisted like
the bones of a skeleton, and in the fore part of the hull a great gap
showed where her magazine had taken fire and burnt with such terrific
heat that it had melted even the azurine plates of which she was built.
“The poor old _Ithuriel_ has flown her last flight!” he said to himself
with a sigh as he turned away and followed the others, thinking sadly
of all that had come to pass since he had last trodden her deck.
Olga, holding Alma by the hand, led the way from the lower gallery to
the council chamber. As she pulled the curtain aside from the doorway a
puff of foul air that seemed to bear a faint smell of blood was wafted
in their faces. Alan called Alma back, fearing that she would faint in
the sickening atmosphere, and at the sound of his voice Olga stopped
short and looked back with a reawakened gleam in her eyes.
“Who is that?” she cried, pressing her hand to her brow. “Why, it is
Alan! But no, Alan is here--here. He has been with me all the time
since Khalid shot him. My God, can he have come to life again?”
Her voice rose to a shrill wavering scream as she said this. She
dropped Alma’s hand and ran with faltering, stumbling steps towards a
divan on which lay the form of a man whose black beard and moustache
were thickly clotted with blood. She stopped and bent over it for a
moment, then she raised herself and faced them with her hands locked in
her hair and the light of frenzied insanity blazing in her eyes.
“No! No!” she cried in a voice, half a scream and half a wail, that
rang weirdly through the great chamber. “He is dead still and that is
only his ghost. Oh, Alan, my love, Alan! Why could I not die with you?
Curse the hand that wounded you. Curse”--
In the one syllable her voice died away from a scream to a whisper, and
at the same instant the paralysis, which had already smitten her once,
laid its swift icy hand on her heart and brain. She swayed to and fro
for a moment and then fell forward across the corpse of the man whose
love for her had plunged the world into madness on the eve of its doom.
“What an awful end!” gasped Alma, shuddering in the close embrace she
had sought in Alan’s arms. “And yet, Alan, she loved you to the end
through all. That love for you was the one true thing in her life, and
for its sake I will say God forgive her! Come, let us go!”
THE END.
MORRISON AND GIBB, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
* * * * *
Now ready, Eighth Edition, price 6s. post free,
_With numerous Illustrations by Fred. T. Jane and Edwin S. Hope_,
THE ANGEL OF THE REVOLUTION.
A TALE OF THE COMING TERROR.
BY GEORGE GRIFFITH.
In this Romance of Love, War, and Revolution, the action takes place
ten years hence, and turns upon the solution of the problem of aerial
navigation, which enables a vast Secret Society to decide the issue of
the coming world-war, for which the great nations of the earth are now
preparing. Battles such as have hitherto only been vaguely dreamed of
are fought on land and sea and in the air. Aerial navies engage armies
and fleets and fortresses, and fight with each other in an unsparing
warfare, which has for its prize the empire of the world. Unlike
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generation of men has passed away.
_A FEW PRESS OPINIONS._
“Since the days of the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, we know of
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Chronicle._
“A really exciting and sensational romance.”--_Literary World._
“As a work of imagination it takes high rank.”--_Belfast News Letter._
“Full of absorbing interest.”--_Barrow Herald._
“This powerful story.”--_Liverpool Mercury._
“An entirely new departure in fiction.”--_Reynolds’ Newspaper._
“Of exceptional brilliancy and power.”--_Western Figaro._
“This remarkable story.”--_Weekly Times and Echo._
“There is a fascination about his book that few will be able to
resist.”--_Birmingham Gazette._
“This exciting romance.”--_Licensing World._
“A work of strong imaginative power.”--_Dundee Courier._
“We must congratulate the author upon the vividness and reality with
which he draws his unprecedented pictures.”--_Bristol Mercury._
“Is quite enthralling.”--_Glasgow Herald._
“A striking and fascinating novel.”--_Hampshire Telegraph._
* * * * *
PRICE 1s. Post Free,
A HEROINE OF THE SLUMS, and other Tales of the Times.
BY GEORGE GRIFFITH, AUTHOR OF “THE ANGEL OF THE REVOLUTION.”
These Tales form a series of narratives in which are depicted some of
the most thrilling situations and startling incidents taken from real
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“A capital shilling collection of exciting and laughable
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“A very entertaining shilling’s worth.”--_N. B. Daily Mail._
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THE GREAT WAR IN ENGLAND IN 1897.
BY WILLIAM LE QUEUX,
AUTHOR OF “GUILTY BONDS,” “STRANGE TALES OF A NIHILIST,” ETC.
There is a curious division of opinion upon the merits of Mr. WILLIAM
LE QUEUX’S remarkable book, “The Great War in England in 1897.” The
Author has performed a task never before attempted, namely, to forecast
an invasion of the whole of England and Scotland, and the reviewers
have taken him to task very freely. It has received the warmest
commendation from the Duke of Cambridge, the Duke of Connaught, Lord
Wolseley, Lord Roberts, and Lord George Hamilton; and the “Service”
papers, who should know something of our army and navy, unanimously
praise it. _The Admiralty and Horse Guards Gazette_ says:--“Mr. Le
Queux is a vivid writer, and his work gives evidence of care and
thoroughness. =The book is the best of its kind= we have come across.”
_The United Service Gazette_ says that the author has studied the
tactical and strategical problems thoroughly, and that “=the book
will do a national service=”; while _The Naval and Military Record_
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qualifications for the task he has carried out so successfully. Most of
the influential daily papers have also eulogised it strongly, amongst
them the _Times_, _Standard_, _World_, _Sketch_, _Nottingham Daily
Guardian_, _Scotsman_, _Glasgow Herald_, _Yorkshire Post_, _Aberdeen
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News_, _Bristol Mercury_, and the _Liverpool Courier_. _The Newcastle
Daily Chronicle_ devoted a column to a review of a most commendatory
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and thrilling of anything yet attempted=.” Three of the most powerful
papers on the Continent, the Paris _Figaro_, the Milan _Secolo_, and
the Rome _Opinione_, have devoted leading articles to the problems put
forward by the Author, all three journals declaring that =the work
is unique=, while _The Sheffield Daily Telegraph_ says it is “=the
sensation= as well as =the success= of the book season.” That it is
phenomenally successful is proved by the fact that =Five Editions were
sold within four weeks=.
* * * * *
Now ready, Fourth Edition, price 6s. post free,
_Demy 8vo, handsomely bound in cloth gilt_,
THE CAPTAIN OF THE MARY ROSE.
_A TALE OF TO-MORROW._
BY W. LAIRD CLOWES,
U.S. NAVAL INSTITUTE.
With 60 Illustrations by the Chevalier de Martino and Fred. T. Jane.
This work has been truly described by the public press as an intensely
realistic and stirring romance of the near future. It describes the
wonderful adventures of an armour-clad cruiser, built on the Tyne,
which takes part in a great Naval War that suddenly breaks out between
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altogether a narrative of most absorbing interest, and full of exciting
scenes and situations.
THE FOLLOWING ARE A FEW PRESS OPINIONS.
“Deserves something more than a mere passing notice.”--_The Times._
“Full of exciting situations.... Has manifold attractions for all sorts
of readers.”--_Army and Navy Gazette._
“The most notable book of the season.”--_The Standard._
“A clever book. Mr. Clowes is pre-eminent for literary touch and
practical knowledge of naval affairs.”--_Daily Chronicle._
“Mr. W. Laird Clowes’ exciting story.”--_Daily Telegraph._
“We read ‘The Captain of the Mary Rose’ at a sitting.”--_The Pall Mall
Gazette._
“Written with no little spirit and imagination.... A stirring romance
of the future.”--_Manchester Guardian._
“Is of a realistic and exciting character.... Designed to show what the
naval warfare of the future may be.”--_Glasgow Herald._
“One of the most interesting volumes of the year.”--_Liverpool Journal
of Commerce._
“It is well told and magnificently illustrated.”--_United Service
Magazine._
“Full of absorbing interest.”--_Engineers’ Gazette._
“Is intensely realistic, so much so that after commencing the story
every one will be anxious to read to the end.”--_Dundee Advertiser._
“The book is splendidly illustrated.”--_Northern Whig._
TOWER PUBLISHING COMPANY LIMITED,
95 MINORIES, LONDON, E.
* * * * *
Transcriber’s note:
Footnotes have been moved to the end of each chapter and relabeled
consecutively through the document.
Illustrations have been moved to paragraph breaks near where they are
mentioned.
Punctuation has been made consistent.
Variations in spelling and hyphenation were retained as they appear in
the original publication, except that obvious typographical errors have
been corrected.
The following changes were made:
p. 40: himself changed to herself (correct herself, she)
p. 46: of changed to so (and so the)