"There aren't any more fighters!" mumbled Clay—and this was the literal truth. The great battle machines, which had snorted and thundered so violently a few minutes before, were no longer to be seen! Instead, we looked out upon a spectacle of wild devastation. The rocky ground, plowed up and torn as by Titanic dredges, had been beaten into ridges and furrows like the waves of a stormy sea; the opposite canyon wall had been wrecked as if with dynamite, and great masses of broken boulders were heaped up where the porthole-like openings had stared.
But were there no signs at all of the land-battleships? Yes—here and there along the scarred and charred pit-floor, we saw twisted rods and wires! Here and there were bent and dented iron plates; here and there were contorted coils, broken rods, fragments of wheels and axles—mute testimonials to the fate of those five battle monarchs!
For a long while we gaped in silence at that desolate battlefield. How inconceivably powerful were these mysterious people of the depths! What gigantic forces they controlled to be able to blow up huge steel vessels like toys! In contemplation of such unheard-of might, I felt overwhelmed with awe, and I felt crushed, humbled by my own feebleness.
But quite different was Clay's reaction. I saw his lower lip curl in a faintly contemptuous expression as he spoke.
"You know, Frank, what I'm beginning to think? These caves are inhabited by a lot of crazy men—blank, raving lunatics, the whole set of them! Why, if they had the sense of a two-year-old, they'd know enough not to fight when they'd all be blown to smithereens!"
"Looks that way, doesn't it?" I conceded, begrudgingly. "But how could we expect to have any wars at all, if every one had the sense of a two-year-old?"
Clay opened his mouth to reply. But before he could utter a word, an event occurred that turned our thoughts to other subjects.
From the cavern walls opposite us, where the little round openings had not been blown away in the recent engagement, a shaft of red lightning leapt, striking not many yards below us with an ear-splitting din. And almost instantly another bolt shot out, and another, and another still, each of them coming nearer us than the last, while our ears rang with the heavy explosive uproar. That we were not killed instantly was due more to luck than to our swift action.
Yet we were not slow about rising and fleeing. Startled as we were, we realized the nature of the onslaught. We had been seen, mistaken for enemies, and fired upon! Hostile marksmen, armed with thunderbolts, were seeking our lives!