"See! See there!" I read the unexpressed words on his lips. "Just look at that! Just look! Just look!"
Well might he be agitated. From far down the cavern to our left, three more land-battleships were rumbling toward us, shooting out flashes of red and white lightning like a challenge, while hastening to meet the other Titans as though intending a head-on collision.
CHAPTER V
Separated!
Straight on and on the two sets of battle-monsters came, their ugly pointed forms half-concealed in puffs and streamers of black smoke. Waving at the stern of one group, we could distinguish banners of yellow and purple, while the other group displayed green and vermilion flags; but otherwise it was hard to tell them apart. On the decks of all the vessels alike we could see swarms of animated black specks; from the curved tubes at their sides we observed darts of lightning intermittently shooting; and meantime their rumbling and roaring made a pandemonium as of a thousand locomotives in simultaneous action.
As they drew near each other, the two groups did not relax their speed. Indeed, their pace was only accelerated! With the velocity of motor cars on a highway, they raced to within a few hundred yards of each other, as if intending to ram and destroy. There came a prodigious hissing of steam as they rolled toward the death-grip; for a moment, the five rushing monsters were obscured amid clouds of vapor, through which the blue and yellow lightnings flared in innumerable bolts. Then our aching ears caught the shock of a concussion so severe that for a second we were stunned; then other shocks, equally severe, followed one upon the other, as though a mile high giant were delivering blows with a sledgehammer; then, while the earth reeled and staggered, we were too dazed to be aware of anything except a stupendous uproar and commotion.
But by slow degrees, the din subsided. By slow degrees, the wavering ground regained its balance. Bewildered and still trembling, Clay and I nerved ourselves to peer out again across the cavern edge. Yet for a minute we saw nothing; the depths of the canyon were blanketed in a fuming yellow vapor which obscured everything like a heavy fog and tormented our nostrils with acrid odors.
Owing to our physical discomfort, we did not know how or when the mists were dissipated. But when at last Clay leaned across the cavern edge once more, he uttered a surprised "Battle over! Say, it looks like a tie!"
"Like a tie?" I echoed, staring into the pit. "But where under Heaven—where under Heaven are the fighters?"