ons,
burst the bonds. We got the pull of the aeroplanes."

"Yes," said Graham.

"That was, of course, essential. Or they could have got away. All the
city rose, every third man almost was in it! All the blue, all the public
services, save only just a few aeronauts and about half the red police.
You were rescued, and their own police of the ways--not half of them
could be massed at the Council House--have been broken up, disarmed or
killed. All London is ours--now. Only the Council House remains.

"Half of those who remain to them of the red police were lost in that
foolish attempt to recapture you. They lost their heads when they lost
you. They flung all they had at the theatre. We cut them off from the
Council House there. Truly to-night has been a night of victory.
Everywhere your star has blazed. A day ago--the White Council ruled as it
has ruled for a gross of years, for a century and a half of years, and
then, with only a little whispering, a covert arming here and there,
suddenly--So!"

"I am very ignorant," said Graham. "I suppose--I do not clearly
understand the conditions of this fighting. If you could explain. Where
is the Council? Where is the fight?"

Ostrog stepped across the room, something clicked, and suddenly, save for
an oval glow, they were in darkness. For a moment Graham was puzzled.

Then he saw that the cloudy grey disc had taken depth and colour, had
assumed the appearance of an oval window looking out upon a strange
unfamiliar scene.

At the first glance he was unable to guess what this scene might be. It
was a daylight scene, the daylight of a wintry day, grey and clear.
Across the picture, and halfway as it seemed between him and the remoter
view, a stout cable of twisted white wire stretched vertically. Then he
perceived that the rows of great wind-wheels he saw, the wide intervals,
the occasional gulfs of darkness, were akin to those through which he had
fled from the Council House. He distinguished an orderly file of red
figures marching across an open space between files of men in black, and
realised before Ostrog spoke that he was looking down on the upper
surface of latter-day London. The overnight snows had gone. He judged
that this mirror was some modern replacement of the camera obscura, but
that matter was not explained to him. He saw that though the file of red
figures was trotting from left to right, yet they were passing out of the
picture to the left. He wondered momentar