With the war that was raging beyond their borders they had now no personal concern. The quarrels of men and nations were as the bickerings of children in the presence of the fate that would so soon involve the world in ruin. And yet the rulers of Aeria were not willing that this fate should overtake their fellow-men in the delirium of blood-drunkenness. They recognised that their duty to the nations bade them send the warning of the world’s approaching fate far and wide through the earth and call for the cessation of strife, so that humanity might set its house in order and prepare to meet its end. Whether the warning would be received or not was another matter. It was possible that both the Tsarina and the Sultan would laugh it to scorn, and pursue their path of now certain conquest through carnage and devastation to the end. That, however, was their concern. As soon as the Council decided to despatch an envoy to summon the warring nations to cease their strife for the now more than ever worthless prizes of earthly empire, and to prepare for the cataclysm which would so soon dissolve all empires and kingdoms to nothing in the fiery crucible of the coming chaos, Alan at once renewed his petition and asked to be allowed to man the _Avenger_ with a crew of volunteers and convey the warning to the Sultan and the Tsarina. Since his second return to Aeria no word of love had passed between him and Alma. He was still too proud to become a suitor even to her, knowing as he did that she had looked upon him as polluted by his involuntary relations with Olga. As before, they had met as friends whose friendship was warmed by the memory of an early but bygone love. They had talked calmly and dispassionately of the coming end of earthly things, but neither of them had let fall any hint of a desire to meet it hand and hand with the other. His lips were sealed by the pride and anger of humiliation and hers by a spiritual exaltation which in the presence of approaching death raised her above the consideration of earthly love to the contemplation of even more solemn and holier things. Then there happened an entirely unexpected event, which completely changed their relationship in an instant. On the third day after the delivery of the message in the temple a company composed of twenty old men, the heads of the noblest families in Aeria, presented to the President in Council, a petition, signed by every father and mother in the nation, praying that all in whose veins flowed the blood of Natas, Richard Arnold, and Alan Tremayne should, irrespective of all other considerations, be included among those who were destined to seek in the caverns of Mount Austral the one chance of escape from the universal doom. So obvious and so weighty were the reasons advanced in support of the petition that when, like all other matters of State, it was put to the vote of the Council, the only dissentient voices were those of the President and the Vice-President.