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something beyond speech for those quite near. As the echoes of
Evan's last appeal rang and died in the universal uproar, the
fiery vault over his head opened down the middle, and, reeling
back in two great golden billows, hung on each side as huge and
harmless as two sloping hills lie on each side of a valley. Down
the centre of this trough, or chasm, a little path ran, cleared
of all but ashes, and down this little path was walking a little
old man singing as if he were alone in a wood in spring.
When James Turnbull saw this he suddenly put out a hand and
seemed to support himself on the strong shoulder of Madeleine
Durand. Then after a moment's hesitation he put his other hand on
the shoulder of MacIan. His blue eyes looked extraordinarily
brilliant and beautiful. In many sceptical papers and magazines
afterwards he was sadly or sternly rebuked for having abandoned
the certainties of materialism. All his life up to that moment he
had been most honestly certain that materialism was a fact. But
he was unlike the writers in the magazines precisely in this--
that he preferred a fact even to materialism.
As the little singing figure came nearer and nearer, Evan fell on
his knees, and after an instant Beatrice followed; then Madeleine
fell on her knees, and after a longer instant Turnbull followed.
Then the little old man went past them singing down that corridor
of flames. They had not looked at his face.
When he had passed they looked up. While the first light of the
fire had shot east and west, painting the sides of ships with
fire-light or striking red sparks out of windowed houses, it had
not hitherto struck upward, for there was above it the ponderous
and rococo cavern of its own monstrous coloured smoke. But now
the fire was turned to left and right like a woman's hair parted
in the middle, and now the shafts of its light could shoot up
into empty heavens and strike anything, either bird or cloud. But
it struck something that was neither cloud nor bird. Far, far
away up in those huge hollows of space something was flying
swiftly and shining brightly, something that shone too bright and
flew too fast to be any of the fowls of the air, though the red
light lit it from underneath like the breast of a bird. Everyone
knew it was a flying ship, and everyone knew whose.
As they stared upward the little speck of light seemed slightly
tilted, and two black dots dropped from the edge of it. All the
eager, upturned faces watched the two dots as they grew bigger
and bigger in their downward rush. Then someone screamed, and no
one looked up any more. For the two bodies, larger every second
flying, spread out and sprawling in the fire-light, were the dead
bodies of the two doctors whom Professor Lucifer had carried with
him--the weak and sneering Quayle, the cold and clumsy Hutton.
They went with a crash into the thick of the fire.
"They are gone!" screamed Beatrice, hiding her head. "O God! The
are lost!"
Evan put his arm about her, and remembered his own vision.
"No, they are not lost," he said. "They are saved. He has taken
away no souls with him, after all."
He looked vaguely about at the fire that was already fading, and
there among the ashes lay two shining things that had survived
the fire, his sword and Turnbull's, fallen haphazard in the
pattern of a cross. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]