“Rejoice, O earth!—rejoice, O sea!—to be freed of the burden of Mankind! Rejoice, O birds, that the hand of the spoiler shall no longer wound or slay!—rejoice, O trees, that the axe of the destroyer shall no more cast ye down!—rejoice, O all ye living creatures of the field and forest, that Treachery no longer stalks the world in man’s disguise! Take back thy planet, O great God, cleansed of a pigmy race! Create a new Humanity!—for this is past!” [Illustration: Like a vast Shadow between Earth and Heaven the Demon stood....] On—on,—along the black ridge jutting darkly over silent Immensity, with a whirl of fire and roar of thunder the Car flew,—and then—as if for one brief breathing part of a second it paused! Like a vast Shadow between Earth and Heaven the Demon stood—his bony hand on the steering-wheel—and every point in his flaming crown scintillating with the sparkle of a million stars. Round about him soared and stooped countless terrific Phantom-shapes—some like wrecked ships—some like torn flags of honour—some like mounted warriors—some like throned kings—some like fair women veiled in a mist of tears,—and beneath his bat-like pinions, outstretched to north and south, there glimmered a pale crowd of white faces, upturned wild eyes and imploring hands—all crushed together in a writhing mass of agony! But no sound came from those dumb mouths agape with terror,—all were silent as Death itself, and only the thunderous roar of the Car echoed through space, as after that infinitely brief pause, it dashed furiously onward and down!—down,—down sheer over the edge of that mystic precipice into the fathomless abyss of the Unseen and Unknown! [Illustration: A scarlet sun rose slowly, fixing the red seal of God on the closed history of a world.] A thousand lightnings leaped after it—a thousand crashing echoes vibrated through the Universe with its fall,—one frightful human cry shuddered up to Heaven,—and then—silence. Gradually, gently, and by faint degrees, a glimmer of pale gold divided the darkness with the wavering rise of dawn—a cool wind parted the air into sweet breaths of fragrance—and in the centre of the awful stillness a scarlet sun rose slowly, fixing the red seal of God on the closed history of a world! Printed in the City of London by the Edinburgh Press Transcriber’s Note Archaic and non-standard spellings (e.g. “sulphureous”, “pigmy”) have been retained. Some minor changes have been made to the original text, in order to fix typographical errors, and illustrations that were originally placed in the middle of a paragraph have been moved to the end of that paragraph, to make the layout more suitable for e-books. These changes are listed below. Because the original book has no page numbers, the changes are listed according to the first two words of the paragraph where the change was made.