Low, hoarse, almost whispered were the words. A dagger blazed crimson in the sun as it fell, fell twice.
Roy Lee looked away; he looked across the black, tossing, groaning sheet of water, where, like golden coffins, the huge blocks of fiery ice bobbed up and down in the black waves.
Far off in the inky sky swung a faint star. There were struggling nations scattered all over it. These nations held very serious beliefs. Generally speaking, they considered murder wrong, unless it were the murder of an army! They had grand laws—a great many of them!
But what could it matter to Roy Lee, the belief of those people who lived in that particular star?
Before him fire-red snow peaks rose against a violet sky; iced spires cast gleams of fire into his eyes from their shining tops. From ashen chasms of unsunned snow the hideous imps peeped, grinning at him.
Jupiter burned and blazed at Roy Lee. The little Earth shuddered. An island fell into the sea and set the ice coffins dancing. Winds howled requiems in the steeply crags above his head. At the north some breaking ice fields groaned a knell. Roy Lee did not hear them; he was listening for something else—to hear Regan fall!
Slowly, shielding his eyes from the full sight with his hand, he turned partly toward him to look. All the earthly horror of his crime came sweeping to his soul. There were no voices to cry “murder,” unless he heralded himself! No newspaper would put his name under that awful combination of letters! If it were chronicled, his own hand must cut it into the rock! But some things were the same. Human love, human hate and human ferocity were just the same in the one sphere as in the other!
Oh! he was dead! Man of earth might be horrified! The heart of that one man of the star was triumphant above all horror!
Oh! he was dead!
Roy Lee looked out upon the shady north, where there was neither red Jupiter nor pale sun, pausing a moment yet before he could gaze upon his achieved triumph. Blue-black sky was cut across by a bank of unmelted white snow framed in by lava cliffs.