Dazzling, blinding fire seemed to pour from the aperture through which the bolt had passed. The clamor that arose was deafening.
Then again the streak of fires was withdrawn, leaving the night intensely black until, in a moment more, it came thundering out of the west again and, with an impact that made the land and the sea and the very heavens tremble, hurled its way into the depths of the doomed leviathan.
Twice again it fell, a fiery scimitar out of the darkness, and twice again it careened at the vitals of the stricken monster.
Then, after the assault was over, the ship still floated on the surface of the Sound and its shell, as far as Dirk and the others could judge, still was unscathed.
“We will soon know our fate,” remarked Steinholt calmly. “If that didn’t kill those beasts we might as well give up our ghosts.”
“I’ll drop the plane a little lower and a little nearer to the ship,” said Dirk. “I don’t believe that any life is surviving in that thing.”
“My beautiful palace is nothing but dust,” sighed Fragoni, mournfully. “And all my beautiful treasures, too.”
“And that beautiful Zitlan,” Lazarre reminded him, “and his beautiful boy friends, they are all dust too, thank God!”
“It was a queer fate that Stanton met,” suggested Dirk. “He thought that he would save his life by going over to our enemies, and, instead of that, he lost it.”