e meteor
a streaming movement had begun, so that it seemed to be pouring
both westwardly and back toward the east, with a crackling sound, as
though the whole heaven was stippled over with phantom pistol-shots.
It seemed to me then as if the meteor was coming to help me,
descending with those thousand pistols like a curtain to fend off
this unmeaning foolishness of the sea.

"Boom!" went a gun on the big ironclad, and "boom!" and the guns
of the pursuing cruisers flashed in reply.

To glance up at that streaky, stirring light scum of the sky made
one's head swim. I stood for a moment dazed, and more than a little
giddy. I had a curious instant of purely speculative thought. Suppose,
after all, the fanatics were right, and the world WAS coming to an
end! What a score that would be for Parload!

Then it came into my head that all these things were happening to
consecrate my revenge! The war below, the heavens above, were the
thunderous garment of my deed. I heard Nettie's voice cry out not
fifty yards away, and my passion surged again. I was to return to
her amid these terrors bearing unanticipated death. I was to possess
her, with a bullet, amidst thunderings and fear. At the thought I
lifted up my voice to a shout that went unheard, and advanced now
recklessly, revolver displayed in my hand.

It was fifty yards, forty yards, thirty yards--the little group
of people, still heedless of me, was larger and more important now,
the green-shot sky and the fighting ships remoter. Some one darted
out from the bungalow, with an interrupted question, and stopped,
suddenly aware of me. It was Nettie, with some coquettish dark
wrap about her, and the green glare shining on her sweet face and
white throat. I could see her expression, stricken with dismay and
terror, at my advance, as though something had seized her by the
heart and held her still--a target for my shots.

"Boom!" came the ironclad's gunshot like a command. "Bang!" the
bullet leapt from my hand. Do you know, I did not want to shoot
her then. Indeed I did not want to shoot her then! Bang! and I
had fired again, still striding on, and--each time it seemed I had
missed.

She moved a step or so toward me, still staring, and then someone
intervened, and near beside her I saw young Verrall.

A heavy stranger, the man in the hooded bath-gown, a fat, foreign-looking
man, came out of nowhere like a shield before them. He seemed a
preposterous interruption. His face wa