Ornethelo's face was half submerged in the beard on his breast, but he looked up suddenly and spoke:
“For their sakes, then, we ought not to delay; there may yet be hope.”
“You are right, Ornethelo.” There was a ring of hope in the voice of the king. “Quick! show me my capitol, that I may see if all the protectors are ready.”
Ornethelo touched another button, and, as if seen from a great height, the fair and wondrous city dawned before the eyes of the spectators. In every street policemen and protectors and flying-machines stood in orderly readiness. The housetops were colored with the variegated costumes of men, women and children. Over all lay the wondrous sunlight, through the green splendor of which the flakes of soot were falling like black snow.
The king touched the old man's arm. “I must see beyond the walls; are the connections made?”
“Ready, sir.”
“Try them; they must not fail me now!”
The old man tremblingly unlocked a cabinet on the table, and another row of electric buttons was displayed. Ornethelo touched one. Immediately there was a sharp clicking sound under the stand, and the view was swept from the mirror. Nothing could be seen but a dark suggestion of towering cliffs and yawning caverns.
“Not the east, Ornethelo,” cried the king impatiently. “Go on! the west! the west!”
The black landscape flashed by like a glimpse of night from a flying train, and then a blur of redly illuminated smoke in rolling billows seemed to swell out from the surface of the mirror into the room.