“If you have to be the Cain of the new world to prevent it!” interrupted Alma, reading his dark meaning at a glance, and interpreting it with a directness and force that startled him. “No, Alan, that must not be! If she has escaped the vengeance of God you may well forego yours. I can hardly think that she is still alive, but it is right that we should go and see”—
“We!” echoed Alan before she could finish. “Do you mean that you will come with me? No, Alma, you must not do that. Remember that if she has by any chance escaped, the crew of the Revenge may be alive too, and then we may have to fight”—
“No, no, Alan, not that! not that!” she cried with a gesture of horror. “The world has done with fighting, for there is nothing left to fight about. We will go as friends with open hands to them, and the new life of the world shall be begun with the forgiveness of our enemies. Who are we that we should judge after the Voice of God has spoken?”
In the end she had her way, and so it came to pass that soon after sunrise on the following day an air-ship, which a hundred skilled and willing hands had toiled all night in fitting together and equipping for her voyage, rose into the air above the ghastly wilderness that had once been Aeria, and winged her way towards the southern pole.
Twenty hours later she sank down on to the ice that had already re-covered the rocks in front of the fissure in the side of Mount Terror, and as she did so a figure came forth out in the darkness into the half light of the polar morning.
“Look! There she is!” said Alma in an awe-stricken whisper to Alan. “Alone in this awful place! Come, let us go to her.”
As she spoke the gangway steps were lowered and she descended them first, followed by Alan, his father, Alexis, and Isma. Some strange influence held the others back as she advanced with outstretched hands and words of kindly greeting on her lips towards the piteous wreck of womanhood that slowly emerged from the gloom of the chasm.
Olga Romanoff had survived the doom of the world, but the hand of a just vengeance had fallen heavily upon her. Her once splendid form was shrunken as though three score years had passed over her in as many hours. Her left side was half paralysed and her shaking limbs hung loosely as she tottered along.
Olga Romanoff had survived the Doom of the World. [Page 374].