The girls looked seaward.
Across the smooth distance of the sea something huge and black rolled towards the town. It was a wave, but a wave a hundred feet in height, a wave that looked like a mountain—a wave rising higher and higher till suddenly it seemed to break in two—one half of it rushed out to sea again; the other—
“Oh!” cried Anthea, “the town—the poor people!”
“It’s all thousands of years ago, really,” said Robert but his voice trembled. They hid their eyes for a moment. They could not bear to look down, for the wave had broken on the face of the town, sweeping over the quays and docks, overwhelming the great storehouses and factories, tearing gigantic stones from forts and bridges, and using them as battering rams against the temples. Great ships were swept over the roofs of the houses and dashed down halfway up the hill among ruined gardens and broken buildings. The water ground brown fishing-boats to powder on the golden roofs of Palaces.
Then the wave swept back towards the sea.
“I want to go home,” cried the Psammead fiercely.
“Oh, yes, yes!” said Jane, and the boys were ready—but the learned gentleman had not come.
Then suddenly they heard him dash up to the inner gallery, crying—
“I must see the end of the dream.” He rushed up the higher flight. The others followed him. They found themselves in a sort of turret—roofed, but open to the air at the sides.
The learned gentleman was leaning on the parapet, and as they rejoined him the vast wave rushed back on the town. This time it rose higher—destroyed more.