The street-lights had vanished with the bursting of their poles and cables by the rush of the great dinosaurs, but all around him was illumined brilliantly by the light of the flaming buildings. North and south and west the city was burning, vast sheets of murky flame roaring up from it in scores of places, and by the light of those distant fires Rowan glimpsed the scores of titanic dark shapes that crashed still through streets and walls, glimpsed the play of the livid rays and heard the thin cries of those who still fled before the mighty, bellowing dinosaurs. A moment he stood at the street's center, motionless, and then above him was a whirring and flapping of colossal wings, and he looked up to see a vast, dark shape swooping swiftly down upon him. In a single moment he glimpsed the thing, the forty-foot spread of its huge, batlike wings, the great reptilian head thrust down toward him as it swooped, white fangs gleaming and red eyes shining in the firelight, and in that flashing moment recognized the thing for what it was, a pterodactyl, a flying monster out of the dead ages. Then he saw that upon it rode one of the sealed, dark-eyed lizard-creatures, whose arm was coming up with a white globe in its grasp as its dragon-mount dove down toward Rowan. The next moment Rowan had thrown himself suddenly aside, and as he did so felt the great pterodactyl sweep over him by a few feet, glimpsed a beam of pale light that flickered down from the upheld globe and struck the street beside him, cracking and rending the pavement there with its intense heat and scorching his own shoulder as it grazed it. Then the giant thing had passed and was flapping on to the west, while behind and above it flew others of its kind, mighty flying reptiles ridden by the lizard-creatures, whose pallid rays struck down with fire and death as they swooped on with whirring wings. And then suddenly Rowan was running, dazed and blind with terror, down the street toward the east, between the flaming lines of buildings and over the crushed fragments of humanity which lay there. Down the street's length he ran, and out between its last buildings, and on and on into the night, crazedly, aimlessly. The roar of flames and thunderous din of the town behind him dwindled as he ran, but he did not look back, throwing himself blindly forward through the darkness, weeping and wringing his hands, stumbling, staggering on. 3