a point
directly above it, passing through its aperture downward to the sea.

"Boom!" The fishing-boat shook to the thunder of the _Fiala's_
eight-inch gun, and a blinding spurt of flame leaped from the cruiser's
bows. With a whining shriek a shell rose toward the moon. There was a
quick flash followed by a dull concussion. The shell had not reached a
tenth of the distance to the flying machine.

And then everything happened at once. Mohammed described afterward to a
gaping multitude of dirty villagers, while he sat enthroned upon his
daughter's threshold, how the star-ship had sailed across the face of
the moon and come to a standstill above the mountains, with its beam of
yellow light pointing directly downward so that the coast could be seen
bright as day from Sfax to Cabes. He saw, he said, genii climbing up and
down on the beam. Be that as it may, he swears upon the Beard of the
Prophet that a second ray of light--of a lavender colour, like the eye
of a long-dead mullet--flashed down alongside the yellow beam. Instantly
the earth blew up like a cannon--up into the air, a thousand miles up.
It was as light as noonday. Deafened by titanic concussions he fell half
dead. The sea boiled and gave off thick clouds of steam through which
flashed dazzling discharges of lightning accompanied by a thundering,
grinding sound like a million mills. The ocean heaved spasmodically and
the air shook with a rending, ripping noise, as if Nature were bent upon
destroying her own handiwork. The glare was so dazzling that sight was
impossible. The falukah was tossed this way and that, as if caught in a
simoon, and he was rolled hither and yon in the company of Chud,
Abdullah, and the headless mullet.

This earsplitting racket continued, he says, without interruption for
two days. Abdullah says it was several hours; the official report of the
_Fiala_ gives it as six minutes. And then it began to rain in torrents
until he was almost drowned. A great wind arose and lashed the ocean,
and a whirlpool seized the falukah and whirled it round and round.
Darkness descended upon the earth, and in the general mess Mohammed hit
his head a terrific blow against the mast. He was sure it was but a
matter of seconds before they would be dashed to pieces by the waves.
The falukah spun like a marine top with a swift sideways motion.
Something was dragging them along, sucking them in. The _Fiala_ went
careening by, her fighting masts hanging in shreds.