The work is finished; every parcel is safe.

“Up, up, men!”

Max and I were the last to leave the roof; it had become insufferably hot.  We stood on the deck; the engineer touched the lever of the electric engine; the great bird swayed for an instant, and then began to rise, like a veritable Phoenix from its nest of flame, surrounded by cataracts of sparks.  As the mob saw us ascend, veiled dimly, at first, by that screen of conflagration, they groaned with dismay and disappointment.  The bullets flew and hissed around us, but our metallic sides laughed them to scorn.  Up, up, straight and swift as an arrow we rose.  The mighty city lay unrolled below us, like a great map, starred here and there with burning houses.  Above the trees of Union Square, my glass showed me a white line, lighted by the bon-fires, where Caesar’s Column was towering to the skies, bearing the epitaph of the world.

I said to Max: 

“What will those millions do to-morrow?”

“Starve,” he said.

“What will they do next week?”

“Devour each other,” he replied.

There was silence for a time.

“Will not civil government rise again out of this ruin?” I asked.

“Not for a long time,” he replied.  “Ignorance, passion, suspicion, brutality, criminality, will be the lions in the path.  Men who have such dreadful memories of labor can scarcely be forced back into it.  And who is to employ them?  After about three-fourths of the human family have died of hunger, or been killed, the remainder, constituting, by the law of the survival of the fittest, the most powerful and brutal, will find it necessary, for self-defense against each other, to form squads or gangs.  The greatest fighter in each of these will become chief, as among all savages.  Then the history of the world will be slowly repeated.  A bold ruffian will conquer a number of the adjacent squads, and become a king.  Gradually, and in its rudest forms, labor will begin again; at first exercised principally by slaves.  Men will exchange liberty for protection.  After a century or two a kind of commerce may arise.  Then will follow other centuries of wars, between provinces or nations.  A new aristocracy will spring up.  Culture will lift its head.  A great power, like Rome in the old world, may arise.  Some vast superstition may take possession of the world; and Alfred, Victoria and Washington may be worshiped, as Saturn, Juno and Hercules were in the past; with perhaps dreadful and bloody rites like those of the Carthaginians and ancient Mexicans.  And so, step by step, mankind will re-enact the great human drama, which begins always with a tragedy, runs through a comedy, and terminates in a catastrophe.”

The city was disappearing—­we were over the ocean—­the cool salt breeze was refreshing.  We both looked back.

“Think,” I said, “what is going on yonder.”

Max shuddered.  There was a sullen light in his eyes.  He looked at his father, who was on his knees praying.