The ship suddenly swerved to one side—a terrific explosion filled the air, and they saw the Castle Rock suddenly shiver, crumple up, and fall a shapeless ruin on to the railway line beneath. In a few minutes, Edinburgh, the Modern Athens, Edinburgh the Fair, was a mass of flames! They watched the populace, mad with fear, running aimlessly along the streets. “This is awful,” muttered Alan. “Make south if you can. Let us get away from this desolation.” With a great amount of patience and skill, Masters at length managed to get the engines to work. But they came upon havoc and destruction whichever way they went,—indeed, the whole world seemed to have turned upside down. They circled London, but the first metropolis of the world had been the first English city to suffer from the terrible scourge. Blackened, charred, lifeless, London was a city of the dead. As they swung in space over the dead London, they tried to pick out the familiar landmarks, but in vain—The Houses of Parliament were but a mass of bricks and dust; gone was the Abbey of Westminster, levelled to the ground was the mighty Tower of St. Edward, belonging to the Catholic Cathedral—gone was the Tower of London. There was not a sign of life in the once great city. Aimlessly they flew in all directions. The whole of England was a flaming mass. They headed for the Continent. It was true, Paris had gone; Brussels was no more; there was not a city left. Denmark was wiped out,—and the sea washed up noisily and angrily over a barren rock that had once been Norway. At short intervals terrific explosions rent the air, and the vibration caused the Argenta to perform many nerve-racking aerial gymnastics. “Head for the Atlantic if you can,” cried Alan in despair. For ten days they had hovered over dead cities, dying lands, and waste voids. Navigation was almost impossible, the hurricanes drove the craft this way and that; now forcing her high, now bringing her low. It was all very fearsome, very terrifying. Mavis was up, and with her baby in her arms she followed the men about, a forlorn pathetic figure. Landing was impossible—there was no place where they could land. They had plenty of water, plenty of provisions, but they ate mechanically, scarcely realizing what it was that Hector placed before them with unvarying regularity. They watched Europe sinking—the vast Atlantic was slowly but surely washing over lands and countries that had once been great empires. The Argenta was wonderful; no matter what the atmospheric disturbances were, she always righted herself. The heat, at times, was terrific, and the Argenta was forced to climb out of the reach of the burning wastes below. Then the water of the ocean seemed to rise like steam—the Atlantic itself was boiling, and as it grew hotter and hotter, the ocean seemed to grow less in size.