ich you do not dream. Moreover, your
plans will fail. Now I who am, like yourself, of the Children of Wisdom,
have spoken, for the first and last time, and my words are true. I pray
you give them weight, my Father."

Oro heard, and grew furious.

"What!" he said. "Are you against me, every one, and my own daughter
also? I would lift you up, I would make you rulers of a new world; I
would destroy your vile civilisations which I have studied with my eyes,
that I may build better! To you, Humphrey, I would give my only child
in marriage that from you may spring a divine race of kings! And yet you
are against me and set up your puny scruples as a barrier across my path
of wisdom. Well, I tread them down, I go on my appointed way. But beware
how you try to hold me back. If any one of you should attempt to come
between me and my ends, know that I will destroy you all. Obey or die."

"Well, he has had his chance and he won't take it," said Bastin in the
silence that followed. "The man must go to the devil his own way and
there is nothing more to be said."

I say the silence, but it was no more silent. The distant humming grew
to a roar, the roar to a hellish hurricane of sound which presently
drowned all attempts at ordinary speech.

Then bellowing like ten millions of bulls, at length far away there
appeared something terrible. I can only describe its appearance as that
of an attenuated mountain on fire. When it drew nearer I perceived that
it was more like a ballet-dancer whirling round and round upon her toes,
or rather all the ballet-dancers in the world rolled into one and then
multiplied a million times in size. No, it was like a mushroom with two
stalks, one above and one below, or a huge top with a point on which it
spun, a swelling belly and another point above. But what a top! It
must have been two thousand feet high, if it was an inch, and its
circumference who could measure?

On it came, dancing, swaying and spinning at a rate inconceivable, so
that it looked like a gigantic wheel of fire. Yet it was not fire that
clothed it but rather some phosphorescence, since from it came no heat.
Yes, a phosphorescence arranged in bands of ghastly blue and lurid red,
with streaks of other colours running up between, and a kind of waving
fringe of purple.

The fire-mountain thundered on with a voice like to that of avalanches
or of icebergs crashing from their parent glaciers to the sea. Its
terrific aspect was appallin