"Triton is dead! The earth has no longer a god!" was the furious wail which ran through the whole land. "Only the God of the Glaciers still lives. Let us go out against him! Let us kill him also! He, too, shall live no more!"
And the rabid millions seized their weapons and marched forth to fight against God. The monsters that formed a separate people among them whetted their teeth and horns, and rushed madly in their thousands towards the glaciers; and the mammoths stormed their way through the primæval woods in order to stamp to pieces the people of the glaciers.
The roar of battle re-echoed through the wide continent. The natural order of things seemed to be suspended or abolished. Even the trees and grasses began to fight against Heaven. The leaves of the palm-trees stood out stiffly against the sky, like so many swords, and every blade of grass, every leaf of every tree turned its point upwards. The rocks, hurled one upon another, split asunder, discovering bottomless abysses, and the mountains, hitherto so still and peaceful, hurled flames and burning stones into the sky in impious anarchy. The earth burst asunder in a hundred places, and vomited forth foul, stinking morasses and loathsome, black slime into her own bosom, and the woods burst into flame, colouring the heavens blood-red.
Only the rocks of the glaciers still remained white and calm.
As now the host of the rebel millions and the ghastly shapes of the mongrel monsters stormed over the land of the God they blasphemed, vast thunderclouds enveloped them on every side. The loud, rattling peals rose above the battle din of the wild host, and the vivid lightnings scattered death among them with their glowing darts, and scourged them incessantly for three days and three nights with fiery scourges.
CHAPTER XIII
CONCLUSION
The people dwelling in the mountains prayed and praised God in the midst of their peaceful habitations; only a faint echo of the terrible battle below reached their ears.
On the fourth day everything was silent. The clouds that had obscured the sky dispersed, and as the dwellers among the glaciers looked down from their mountains, lo! a great ocean extended before and around them—a serene and silent watery mirror, whose wide horizon was conterminous with the vast firmament—mountain, valley, continent, what had become of them? whither had they vanished?
The eleven glaciers were also separated by the waters, and had become eleven islands. The whole mass had sank insensibly some thousands of feet. The warmer atmosphere of the lower regions had begun to melt the layers of eternal snow, and a new life—a new vegetation—was developing. On the first spot left clear by the snow Bar Noemi planted a linden—under the shadow of which he erected his hut, and the larger the leafy tabernacle grew the greater grew Bar Noemi's family, and God's blessing grew with it.
The group of these eleven mountains form the Canary Islands. Of all that vast continent, these mountains alone remain. Their fauna and flora, the conformation of their coasts, prove that this group of islands is merely the remnant of a submerged world.