That flood of lava was a spurt of the very heart's blood of the valley. Even as it jetted from the side of the Gateway, halfway up the valley's rim three more of its volcanic guardians gave up their fiery ghosts, and the cold grip of the Antarctic took hold of their gaping throats. Undaunted by the fury that raged on the Gateway to the Future, Analos would not desert his post on the upper terrace. All of the other priests he drove from him, bidding them abide below with the stricken people until such time as he should summon them to him again. He stayed alone with his god. More days of terror passed. The red priest from the flaming hill and Minos the king from his lair on Mount Latmos watched the march of winter down the valley. CHAPTER V THE WARNING OF THE LAST MOON When Nature issues a decree, the execution thereof is pitiless. She recks naught of dynasties or nations. When she would have a clean page on which to write, she erases, if needs be, and with inexorable completeness, the fairest characters she may have inscribed previously. The smallest and the greatest, the tiny grass blade, the towering forest giant, the lowly anthill, the lofty mountain, the blind worm in the dust, proud man, the "lord of creation"--be any or all of these in her path. Nature breaks them, and, with her ally, Time, makes smooth the page for her next writing. Only those who are wise and instructed may pore over such an erasure and, from a faint trace here, a blur there, partly read and partly guess at that which once was writ. Years uncounted, Sardanes had flourished in the wastes of the Southland. Then, the great All-Mother, always unhurried, drew a steadfast white finger across the valley. Only a fortnight elapsed from the day on which the Gateway to the Future sent forth its first flare of fire, that followed centuries in which it had been dark--only a brief fortnight, and the Gateway alone of all the volcanic ring still sent fire and smoke heavenwards. All the sister hills lay silent and lifeless, their furious spirits spent and gone elsewhere, their seamed summits crowned with the white of Antarctic snows.