But a few remained, determined to see the fearful drama played out to the end, if they could, and among these were Alan and Alexis, whose duty kept them by the doors, the President and Francis Tremayne, and Alma and Isma, whom nothing could persuade to leave their husbands’ sides. No human eyes had ever beheld so magnificent or so awful a display of celestial splendours as they beheld during the three hours that they stood in the doorway after sunset. The Fire-Cloud now covered almost the whole heavens, and its enormous nucleus blazed like a gigantic sun down out of the zenith with a heat and radiance that were almost insupportable. Huge masses of flame leapt out continuously, as though hurled from its fiery heart, and were projected far beyond its circumference, while the incandescent cloud-mass which surrounded it was torn and convulsed by internal commotions which spread out and out in enormous waves of many-coloured fires until they disappeared below the horizon. Still there was neither sound nor breath of wind upon earth, only the awful stillness in which the world waited for the hour of its doom to strike. At last, towards ten o’clock, the water began to lap the threshold of the entrance, and Alan, pointing to it, said-- “Come, we must take our last look at the world! It is time to lower the doors.” The words were scarcely out of his mouth before a low dull booming sound came echoing down the gorges of Mount Austral. They looked up and saw huge masses of snow and ice loosened from its upper heights gliding, at first slowly and then more and more swiftly, down towards the valley beneath, a mighty avalanche which in a few minutes more would carry irresistible ruin in its path. “In with you all!” cried Alan. “Quick! That is the beginning of the end; the snows are melting and the waters will be over us in another hour.” All but he and Alexis hurried in, and they, grasping the levers on either side of the door, pulled them, and the enormous sheet of steel descended quickly along its grooves and shut them in from the outer world, upon which chaos was about to fall. CHAPTER XXXII. THE SHE-WOLF TO HER LAIR. IN the mysterious revolution of human things it came about that the only spectator of the closing scene of the tragedy of humanity who endured and survived its final terrors was the woman to whom it had been due that the fire from heaven had fallen upon a world mad with the frenzy and agony of war instead of sane and calm with the sanity and calmness of peace and reason.