And over these
vestiges of some splendid place, countless minute men were clambering,
leaping, swarming.

"This is the Council House," said Ostrog. "Their last stronghold. And
the fools wasted enough ammunition to hold out for a month in blowing up
the buildings all about them--to stop our attack. You heard the smash?
It shattered half the brittle glass in the city."

And while he spoke, Graham saw that beyond this sea of ruins,
overhanging it and rising to a great height, was a ragged mass of white
building. This mass had been isolated by the ruthless destruction of
its surroundings. Black gaps marked the passages the disaster had torn
apart; big halls had been slashed open and the decoration of their
interiors showed dismally in the wintry dawn, and down the jagged wall
hung festoons of divided cables and twisted ends of lines and metallic
rods. And amidst all the vast details moved little red specks, the
red-clothed defenders of the Council. Every now and then faint flashes
illuminated the bleak shadows. At the first sight it seemed to Graham
that an attack upon this isolated white building was in progress, but
then he perceived that the party of the revolt was not advancing, but
sheltered amidst the colossal wreckage that encircled this last ragged
stronghold of the red-garbed men, was keeping up a fitful firing.

And not ten hours ago he had stood beneath the ventilating fans in a
little chamber within that remote building wondering what was happening
in the world!

Looking more attentively as this warlike episode moved silently across
the centre of the mirror, Graham saw that the white building was
surrounded on every side by ruins, and Ostrog proceeded to describe
in concise phrases how its defenders had sought by such destruction to
isolate themselves from a storm. He spoke of the loss of men that huge
downfall had entailed in an indifferent tone. He indicated an improvised
mortuary among the wreckage showed ambulances swarming like cheese-mites
along a ruinous groove that had once been a street of moving ways. He
was more interested in pointing out the parts of the Council House, the
distribution of the besiegers. In a little while the civil contest
that had convulsed London was no longer a mystery to Graham. It was
no tumultuous revolt had occurred that night, no equal warfare, but
a splendidly organised _coup d'etat_. Ostrog's grasp of details was
astonishing; he seemed to know the business of even the sm