"My God," said Max, "it is Cæsar's head!"
I looked, and there, sure enough, upon the top of the long pole I had before noticed, was the head of the redoubtable giant. It stood out as if it had been painted in gory characters by the light of the burning house upon that background of darkness. I could see the glazed and dusty eyes; the protruding tongue; the great lower jaw hanging down in hideous fashion; and from the thick, bull-like neck were suspended huge gouts of dried and blackened blood.
"It is the first instinct of such mobs," said Max, quietly, to suspect their leaders and slay them. They killed Cæsar, and then came after me. When they saw the air-ship they were confirmed in their suspicions; they believe that I am carrying away their treasure."
I could not turn my eyes from that ferocious head. It fascinated me. It waved and reeled with the surging of the mob. It seemed to me to be executing a hideous dance in mid-air, in the midst of that terrible scene; it floated over it like a presiding demon. The protruding tongue leered at the blazing house and the unspeakable horrors of that assemblage, lit up, as it was, in all its awful features, by the towering conflagration.
The crowd yelled and the fire roared. The next house was blazing now, and the roof of the one nearest us was smoking. The mob, perceiving that we did not move, concluded that the machinery of the air-ship was broken, and screamed with joy as the flames approached us.
Up, up, went bundle and package and box; faster, and faster, and faster. We were not to be intimidated by fire or mobs! The roof of the house next us was now blazing, and we could hear the fire, like a furnace, roaring within it.
The work is finished; every parcel is safe.
"Up, up, men!"
Max and I were the last to leave the roof; it had become insufferably hot. We stood on the deck; the engineer touched the lever of the electric engine; the great bird swayed for an instant, and then began to rise, like a veritable Phoenix from its nest of flame, surrounded by cataracts of sparks. As the mob saw us ascend, veiled dimly, at first, by that screen of conflagration, they groaned with dismay and disappointment. The bullets flew and hissed around us, but our metallic sides laughed them to scorn. Up, up, straight and swift as an arrow we rose. The mighty city lay unrolled below us, like a great map, starred here and there with burning houses. Above the trees of Union Square, my glass showed me a white line, lighted by the bon-fires, where Cæsar's Column was towering to the skies, bearing the epitaph of the world.
I said to Max: