And then my mine went off!
A vast white cloud of smoke and shattered rock rose deliberately above the cliffs, spread into a Titanic mushroom shape, and fell in a great rain of débris into the abyss and into the lake. After many seconds the sound of it reached us—a crashing, deafening blast! The great wave of air swept up the green-winged fleet like leaves on a stormy lake!
Below the cloud of smoke, where the black cliffs had been, I saw a vast white sheet of waters—a rushing Niagara multiplied manifold—plunging over the brink in a sheer and gleaming arc!
Even as I gazed at it, in dazed wonder at the thing I had wrought, Sam was suddenly close beside me, shouting something with alarm and urgent command in his voice.
"Mel—the roof! Where is the Omnimobile? For God's sake——"
"In a crater in the abyss, by the metal cylinder," I cried, wondering.
Then I looked up, and saw that the flat roof was cupping up, like a vast inverted basin! The waters above were rising!
With no further word to me, Sam shouted a strange order to the monsters we rode. Their vast green wings were folded! We dropped like plummets into the crimson mist! The violet gleam appeared, and we made out the crater-pitted floor. I shouted directions, and in a few minutes we settled into the same little crater in which I had met disaster.
The Omnimobile was still lying there, just as I had left it!
The creatures that bore us dropped near the ground. Those great red tentacles set us gently down on the rocks by the machine. Sam led the way and I carried Xenora. Desperately we scrambled aboard and screwed down the manhole. Sam's mount, Alexander, slumped into a curious attitude of dejection.