And so we left him, and raising the car high above the earth, sped back again across the broad Atlantic. And too, we came on farther into time until when we came into view of the New Jersey coasts, we had come on into time a space of almost two hundred years, for the dials registered the fact that our car had reached the year 1777, when Denham had been seized by the Raider.
We had offered to land him in England, but he had refused. "I'm a soldier," he told us, "and it would be desertion. Let me down at Philadelphia, or near it." So the car planed down through the darkness to a field beyond Camden, and there came to rest in deep snow, for we had stopped our time-progress in the dead of winter, and at night.
Denham stepped out of the car, and we followed him. There was no moon, but the stars above were brilliant, the sheen of their light reflected from the glistening, silent fields around us. It was bitterly cold, and we shivered, standing there.
"And so the last of us part," said Denham. "Curse me if I like it, either. Think of it, Wheeler: Ixtil and Fabrius and D'Alord are already dead and dust, have been for centuries."
"They're not, Denham," I said. "They're only separated from us by time, as well as space. At least we have learned one thing, that time is largely a delusion, after all, and that the men of one age are not much different from those of another."
"It's so," he said. "And I never had better friends than Ixtil and D'Alord and Fabrius, and Lantin and you. We've seen some things together, since we met in the city of cylinders, Wheeler. Well, we shan't meet again. And so—good-bye."
He shook my hand, and Lantin's, and then, like the other three, drew and handed to me his slender rapier.
"You have four swords now, Wheeler. And each from a different time. It may be that they'll remind you of all we went through together, in the city of cylinders and in the pit below it. I am only sorry that we could not find your friend Cannell in time to save him. But it was fate."
"It was fate," Lantin repeated, "and he died nobly. So, in a measure, I am content."
Lantin and I stepped back into our car, now. Outside, as we rose above the ground, Denham called to us again.