BY the 30th of July the work in the caverns was so far advanced that the Council was able to authorise the departure of Alan and his companions for the outside world. The great vertical sluice-door, a huge sheet of steel forty feet long, twenty wide, and eighteen inches thick, and footed with a great indiarubber pad, was in its place, suspended at the top of the steel-lined grooves, which had been sunk three feet into each of the rock walls of the chasm into which the water-tunnel from the lake opened.

On the morning of the 30th it was sent down into its final position. The momentous experiment proved completely successful. The huge mass of metal descended slowly over the mouth of the tunnel into the black, swift stream at the bottom of the chasm. As its enormous weight crushed the indiarubber pad down into all the inequalities of the floor the outrush of the waters instantly stopped, and the channel ran dry save for the fierce jets of water which spouted out over the top of the plate.

The crevices through which these came were easily plugged, and when this was done it was found that the waters of the lake were rising at the rate of three feet an hour. This proved that, whether the lake had another outlet or not, the damming of the subterranean channels would be quite sufficient to flood the whole valley.

[326]

The gate was then raised again, and the waters permitted to flow as before. The triple doors at the entrance to the cavern were already in position when this was done, as the task of placing them had necessarily been much easier than the construction of the water-gate. Nothing but details now remained to be completed, and there was therefore no reason for any further postponement of Alan’s mission.

Alexis had also succeeded in carrying his point, and getting permission to accompany Alan in the Isma. He had had no difficulty in satisfying the Council that the risk would be enormously diminished by sending two air-ships instead of one, for while Alan descended to the earth to convey his message to a hostile city, he would be able to remain in the air, dominating it with his guns, and ready to lay it in ruins if the flag of truce were not respected.

But the two friends had gained even more than this, for in answer to their earnest pleadings, in which it may be suspected they were not altogether unsupported by those as vitally concerned as themselves, a joint family council had decided that, under the unparalleled circumstances of the case, there was no valid reason for refusing consent to their immediate union with the two faithful brides who had waited so long and so patiently for their lords.

Therefore, on the morning of the 31st, it came to pass that they stood upon the spot sanctified by the ashes of their great ancestors, and took each other for man and wife, for life or death, as the hazard of the world’s fate might decide, in the presence of a vast congregation of those who stood with feet already touching the brink of the valley of the shadow of death.

No bridal so strange or solemn had ever been celebrated in the world before. It was human love and hope and genius, serene and confident in the presence of the most awful catastrophe that had ever befallen humanity, defying the fate that was about to overwhelm a world in destruction.

That evening, as the sun was touching the tops of the western mountains, the last preparations for the voyage were[327] completed, the last farewells exchanged, and the Isma and the Avenger, now renamed the Alma by the hands of her name-mother, rose into the air amid salvoes of aerial artillery, and winged their way northward over the Ridge.

As they sped out over the plains of Northern Africa the sun sank, and out of the north-western heavens shone the luminous haze of the Fire-Cloud, which had now grown in visible magnitude until the two fan-like wings which spread out from its central nucleus spanned an arc of twenty degrees in the heavens.

As the two air-ships sped on their northward course towards Alexandria, where Alan had decided to make his first attempt to stay the progress of the world-war, the two pairs of new-wedded lovers watched with anxious eyes from the decks of their flying craft the terrible portent in the skies whose meaning they above all others on earth were so well qualified to read.

There could be no doubt now, even apart from all the elaborate calculations which had been made, that the prediction of the Martian astronomers was far more likely to be fulfilled than contradicted by the event.

Yet, so great was the happiness they found in this strange fulfilment of the faint hopes of years of almost hopeless waiting that, even as they journeyed on through the night with this threatening sign of approaching ruin pouring its angry light out of the skies, their talk was still rather of love and life and hope than of the death and desolation which they knew to be overhanging their race with such remorseless certainty.

They had lived and loved, and their love had found fruition. What more could they have asked of Fate than this, even if they could have prolonged their lives indefinitely by a mere effort of will? As Alan had said to Alma at the moment of their re-betrothal in the palm-grove, they were immortal now, and for them the death of a world was but an accident on the onward progress of an evolution in which such souls as theirs, veritable sparks of the divine fire itself, were the dominating factors.

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As the Fire-Cloud paled in the West, and the eastern heavens brightened with the fore-glow of the coming dawn, the captains of the two vessels were roused by the signals from the conning-towers which told them that Alexandria was in sight.

As soon as he got on deck Alan signalled to the Isma to come close alongside. As she did so and the morning greetings were exchanged, Alma appeared on deck, and suggested that Alexis and Isma should come and have breakfast on board the flagship, so that the two captains could discuss their final plans before descending to the city.

The invitation was of course accepted, and an hour later the Alma commenced her descent towards the Sultan’s palace, above which, from a lofty flagstaff, the banner of Islam was floating lazily in the early morning breeze. She flew no other ensign save a broad white flag of truce that streamed out from the signal-mast at her stern.

The whole city seemed asleep, secure in the conquests that had already been won. A single air-ship floated two thousand feet above the palace, and as he approached her Alan, keeping her well under his guns, flew from his mainmast the signal—“We come in peace. Will you respect the flag?”

The Moslem captain saw at a glance that a single shell would annihilate his vessel, and that the Alma was perfectly protected by her consort, circling two thousand feet above him, so he signalled, “Yes, come alongside.” The Alma descended and swung round until she came on a level with the Moslem vessel, then she ran alongside within speaking distance, the doors of the deck-chambers were opened, and Alan, after exchanging salutes, asked her captain whether the Sultan was in his capital.

“Yes,” replied the Moslem. “He is down yonder in his palace awaiting the coming of the Tsarina, for they are to join hands to-day and reign lord and mistress of the world they have conquered.”

“Is the world, then, conquered?” asked Alan, with a smile on his lips and a note of scornful pity in his voice.

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“Yes,” said the Moslem. “East and west, north and south, the world is ours, saving only your own little land, and for that, I suppose, you have come to make terms of peace.”

“I have not come to make terms of peace for Aeria, but for the world,” replied Alan gravely. “But of that I must speak with your master. When will he be able to give me an audience?”

“That I cannot say,” was the reply, “or even that he will hear you at all. But, pardon! I did not know that the angels of Paradise accompanied the Aerians on their voyages. Descend in peace, my master will receive you.”

As he was speaking Alma, crowned with her crystal wings, and radiant with a beauty which, to the Moslem’s eyes, seemed something superhuman, had come from the after part of the vessel to Alan’s side. It was the first time that he had ever seen a woman of Aeria; and, with the innate chivalry of his race, he paid his involuntary homage to her as he would have done to an incarnation of one of the poetic dreams of his faith.

Then salutes were exchanged again between the two captains and the Alma sank swiftly downwards until she hovered twenty feet above the terrace on which Alan had first spoken with the Sultan on the night that he captured the Vindaya.

The approach of the Aerian warship had already summoned a party of guards to the roof, and after a brief parley a message was carried to the Sultan from Alan. A few minutes later Khalid stepped out of the doorway leading from the interior of the palace, magnificently attired as though for some great ceremonial.

He looked up and saw Alan standing with Alma by his side on the after-deck of his ship. He saw, too, that the flag of truce was flying from the stern and that the guns were laid alongside instead of being pointed down upon the city. He raised his hand in salute and said—

“I see you come in the guise of peace. If that is so you are welcome.”

“It is peace if your Majesty will have it so,” replied Alan,[330] returning his salute, and at the same time making a sign for the Alma to descend to the roof of the palace. As her keels touched the floor of the terrace, the steps fell from the after doorway, and he came down, leaving Alma standing on deck by the open door.

“Will not your companion honour my palace by touching its roof with her foot?” said Khalid, looking up at Alma as he exchanged greetings with Alan.

“My companion, Sultan, is the wife of the man whom you turned your back upon on this very spot as a liar, a traitor, and a murderer,” said Alan, looking him straight in the eyes. “How, then, could she honour your palace by setting foot on its roof?”

For a moment the Sultan was abashed into silence by the directness of the rebuke, and then his Oriental subtlety and quickness of thought came to his aid, and, bending his head with royal dignity, he said—

“The angels do not mate with such men as that. The Tsarina must have been misled by appearances, perhaps, indeed, carried away by her hereditary hatred of your people. It is impossible that any but a true man could have won the love of such a woman. You tell me that you come as friends and not as enemies, so, for the hour, let there be peace, not war, between us. While you are my guests my city is yours, and all that it contains. I pledge my honour for your safety, so let the Daughter of the Air descend that I may hear from her lips the music of her voice.”

Turning aside, half to hide a smile at the Oriental metaphor of the Sultan’s speech, Alan went to the foot of the steps and held out his hand to Alma. As she alighted on the terrace he led her towards him, saying—

“This is my wife. Yesterday morning she was Alma Tremayne, a daughter in the fifth generation of the first President of the Federation. Her ancestor and yours made terms of peace after the War of the Terror. It is, therefore, more fitting that you should hear from her lips than from mine the message that we bring.”

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“My ears are waiting,” said Khalid, bending low over the hand that Alma held out to him as Alan spoke. “It would be a strange message that would not be welcome from such lips.”

From one whom she could have looked upon as an equal such language as this would have jarred sorely upon Alma, accustomed as she was to the frank directness of her own people’s speech. But from Khalid she tolerated it as she would have tolerat............