“What Humphrey says I repeat,” said Yva.  “My Father, although you know it not, you seek great evil, and from these hopes you sow you will harvest nothing save a loss of which 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 appalling, and its weight caused the solid rock to quiver like a leaf.  Watching it, we felt as ants might feel at the advent of the crack of doom, for its mere height and girth and size overwhelmed us.  We could not even speak.  The last words I heard were from the mouth of Oro who screamed out: