dropped down within a few yards of the boiling flood.

Now as he hung over our heads, and saw the water up to our very necks
and still swiftly rising, he shouted again:

"Catch hold, for God's sake!"

The three men who were with him in the ship seconded his cries.

But by the time we had fairly grasped the ropes, so rapidly was the flood
rising, we were already afloat. With the assistance of Tom and his men we
were rapidly drawn up, and immediately Tom reversed the electric polarity,
and the ship began to rise.

At that same instant, with a crash that shivered the air, the immense
metallic power house gave way and was swept tumbling, like a hill torn
loose from its base, over the very spot where a moment before we had
stood. One second's hesitation on the part of Tom, and the electrical
ship would have been battered into a shapeless wad of metal by the
careening mass.

The Deluge On Mars.

How the Martians Met Their Doom Through Aina's Plans.

When we had attained a considerable height, so that we could see to a
great distance on either side, the spectacle became even more fearful
than it was when we were close to the surface.

On all sides banks and dykes were going down; trees were being uprooted;
buildings were tumbling, and the ocean was achieving that victory over
the land which had long been its due, but which the ingenuity of the
inhabitants of Mars had postponed for ages.

Far away we could see the front of the advancing wave crested with foam
that sparkled in the electric lights, and as it swept on it changed the
entire aspect of the planet--in front of it all life, behind it all death.

Eastward our view extended across the Syrtis Major toward the land of
Libya and the region of Isidis. On that side also the dykes were giving
way under the tremendous pressure, and the floods were rushing toward
the sunrise, which had just begun to streak the eastern sky.

The continents that were being overwhelmed on the western side of the
Syrtis were Meroe, Aeria, Arabia, Edom and Eden.

The water beneath us continually deepened. The current from the melting
snows around the southern pole was at its strongest, and one could
hardly have believed that any obstruction put in its path would have
been able to arrest it and turn it into these two all-swallowing deluges,
sweeping east and west. But, as we now perceived, the level of the land
over a large part of its surface was hundreds of feet below the ocean,
so