“AH, I see,” said Olga. “You have come to tell us this wonderful story about the comet, and the message you say you have received from Mars, over again. You are not the first who have prophesied the end of the world by such means, nor will you be the last to be discredited by the event.

“Once for all, then, let me save misunderstanding by telling you that I don’t believe a word of it, and therefore nothing that you can say will have any effect on the course of action that I have determined upon. You are of course at liberty to preach your truce elsewhere and at your own risk, though I fear it will be but the voice of one crying in the wilderness.”

“Yes, truly in the wilderness,” said Alma before Alan could reply, “but a wilderness that you have made with your own hand, Tsarina. You who have been the evil genius of the world, have you not done harm enough, now that the world has only a few more weeks to live?”

“According to the idle tale you bring us,” interrupted Olga, repressing with a barely successful effort the anger aroused afresh within her by the serene tone in which Alma spoke. It sounded rather like the voice of an angel speaking to a mortal than of one woman addressing another, and even to herself Olga was forced to admit that there could be no[339] question of equality between this daughter of the air and herself.

“It is no idle tale,” replied Alma, almost in the same tone which she might have used in reproving a wayward child, “it is not even a prophecy, it is a mathematical certainty, and if you understood you would believe.”

“You are wasting time and your own breath,” said Olga scornfully. “You are not my guests but the Sultan’s, yet he may allow me to say that we have other demands upon our attention more important than listening to such sentimentalism as this.”

Before Alma could answer, Alan turned to the Sultan as though not deigning to reply to Olga’s insulting speech.

“Your Majesty, I see that this is no time to perform the mission upon which I came. We did not expect the presence of the Tsarina here. Had we done so we should not have come, for I know how vain it would be to reason with her. I came prepared to satisfy the most skilful astronomers in your kingdom that what I say is absolutely true, and I ventured to hope that you, if satisfied by their assurances, would give peace to the world for the remnant of its days.

“But even so it is not for us to interrupt or even to introduce an unpleasant element into the doings of to-day, so, with your Majesty’s permission, I will leave the calculations with your minister and relieve you and the Tsarina of our unwelcome presence.”

All this time the Grand Vizier, Musa al Ghazi, had been standing a little to the rear of the group stroking his beard nervously and looking anxiously from one to the other. He seemed about to speak, when Khalid said to Alan with a courtesy which contrasted strongly with Olga’s contemptuous demeanour—

“I thank you, Prince of the Air. As matters stand I think that will be the most reasonable as well as the most convenient course. Though I am far from convinced that you are not mistaken, yet I can assure you that the best[340] skill in my domains shall examine what you leave us. Musa!”

The old man turned pale as his master pronounced his name, and stepped forward with a visible agitation, which was by no means accounted for by the circumstances of the strange situation. Instead of waiting for Khalid’s commands he said as he made his obeisance before him—

“Commander of the Faithful, I am here; but before your Majesty bids me take these papers from the hands of Alan Arnold I would ask permission to say a word that must be said in private.”

“In private, Musa?” said Khalid, frowning slightly and passing his hand down his beard. “This is hardly a time for State secrets.”

“It is but my duty to my master that bids me speak,” replied the old man, again bending before him. “A moment will suffice for the speaking of what I have to say.”

Musa’s tone was so earnest and his anxiety so palpable, that Khalid without more ado made his excuses to the Tsarina and his unexpected guests and stepped aside out of earshot with his Vizier.

“Well, Musa, what is it that is so pressing and yet so private?” he asked, a trifle impatiently.

“My master,” replied the old minister, in a voice that now trembled with emotion, “there is no need to examine the calculations from Aeria. An hour before daybreak Hakem ben Amru, your chief astronomer at the observatory of Memphis, came to me and told me that he had completed his own calculations of the curve and period of the comet, and that, allowing for difference in longitude between our meridian and that of Aeria, the prediction from Mars will be fulfilled beyond all doubt at midnight on the 23rd of September.”

This was testimony which it was impossible for Khalid to question. Musa’s sincerity was beyond all question and Hakem ben Amru was the most renowned astronomer in the world outside Aeria. Khalid recoiled a pace as though[341] he had been struck, and said in a voice hoarse with sudden emotion—

“Why did you not tell me this before, Musa?”

“Because I would not mar my master’s happiness for this day at least,” replied Musa. “If it be true that the end of earthly things is at hand a day is of but small account. To tell you would neither hasten nor delay the end. But Alan Arnold’s words forced me to speak, for I knew that Hakem would speak if I did not.”

Khalid laid his hand upon the old man’s shoulder and said gravely but kindly—

“It was well thought, Musa, and I thank you for your consideration, evil as your news is. It is Kismet, and the will of Allah must be done!”

So saying he turned away and walked with slow steps and downcast eyes to where Olga was standing talking to Orloff Lossenski with her back turned in open contempt upon Alma and Alan. A single glance at his face told her that Musa had had no pleasant tidings to impart.

“Your Majesty looks grave,” she said. “Has Musa given you news of some disaster to our forces?”

“More than that, Tsarina,” replied Khalid. “He has brought me confirmation that I cannot doubt of the truth of the message from Aeria.”

“What!” exclaimed Olga in a quick passionate tone that all standing near could hear. “The confirmation of that thrice-told tale with which these people are trying to impose on our fears! Surely your Majesty is jesting now?”

“No, Tsarina, it is no subject for jesting but only for earnest and solemn thought,” answered Khalid seriously.

“I neither can nor will believe it!” cried Olga passionately, her long-restrained anger completely overcoming her prudence and her whole soul rising in ungovernable revolt. “Believe or not as you will, I will not. It cannot be possible; it is too monstrous for all credence!

“Why, one would think the very Fates themselves were fighting against us if that were true, and were bringing[342] the world to an end just as we have conquered it for our own!

“As for these Aerians,” she continued, turning upon Alan and Alma and taking a couple of steps towards them, “they have come here with this wild story to cover an attempt to make terms with us before it is too late. It is a trick to deceive you, but it shall not succeed in my presence. Do you not remember how, upon this very spot little more than a year ago, I showed you this same Alan Arnold, who now comes preaching about his Truce of God, as the shameless liar and traitor that he is.”

She had thrown off all disguise and all restraint now. Hatred was shining out of her eyes and open scorn was upon her lips. She waved her hand with a contemptuous gesture towards them and went on—

“If you have come to ask for terms of peace, be honest and say so. You need not fear to speak, for there may be conditions on which we will let you live.”

Khalid was about to utter some reproof, and Alan’s hand had gone instinctively to the hilt of his rapier, when Alma stepped forward and faced Olga, her own eyes now burning dark with anger and her cheeks flushed with the hot blood which Olga’s insult had called to them.

“Make terms with you!” she said, looking down upon her from the height of her splendid stature. “With you, who have laid the earth waste and made the habitations of men desolate—with you, whom I could strike dead at my feet without staining my hand by laying it upon you! It is for you to make terms, if you can, not with us but with the Heaven whose justice you have outraged and whose patience you have scorned!

“Cease this idle talk of battle and conquest, this impious defiance of the decrees of Fate! Can you make terms with God? If so, then when you see His sign blazing in the heavens to-night cause it to change its path and pass aside from the earth. If not kneel down and pray, not for your life, for that would be useless, but for strength to meet your end in the midst of the desolation that you have created!”

[343]

Olga heard her in silence to the end, her whole being shaken with the tempest of passion that Alma’s words set raging in her breast. For a moment she stood speechless, white to the lips, and trembling in every limb from very rage. Then she suddenly stepped back a pace, and cried in a voice more like the cry of a wild animal in pain than human speech—

“Whether the world lives or not you shall not, whatever comes!” and as she spoke she snatched a pistol out of her girdle and levelled it at Alma’s heart. Before she could spring the lock Alan had snatched Alma up in his arms and Khalid, with a cry of horror and anger, had sprung forward and grasped Olga’s wrist.

The bullet flew high, cutting one of the wings off Alan’s coronet in its flight. Half a dozen strides took him alongside his ship, and in another instant he was standing on her deck, his left arm round Alma’s waist holding her behind him and his right hand grasping one of his pistols.

He raised his arm and the pistol flashed. At the same moment he stamped on the deck and the Alma leapt a thousand feet obliquely into the air. The second before the pistol flashed Olga turned her head as though she were going to fire again, and the motion saved her life, for Alan’s bullet, instead of piercing her brain, as it was meant to do, cut a straight red gash across her forehead from temple to temple and buried itself in the breast of Orloff Lossenski as he sprang forward to snatch his mistress out of the line of fire.

He pitched forward and dropped, and Khalid, forgetting everything else in the horror of the moment, caught Olga in his arms as a rain of blood streamed down over her face and a shrill scream of pain and rage burst from her lips.

Although there were nearly three hundred warships floating in the air above Alexandria, and though the rapidly-enacted tragedy on the roof of the palace could be distinctly seen from their decks, the Alma escaped scathless, for the simple reason that, so terrible was the energy developed by the projectiles in use, that had one struck her as she left the terrace the palace itself would have been wrecked, and every living being within[344] a radius of two hundred yards from the focus of the explosion would have been instantly killed.

Consequently, the captains of the Russian and Moslem ships had to look on in angry impotence as she leapt out of range, joined her consort, and with her soared away westward until a height of fifteen th............