“By the Blessed Mother, if it ain’t little old New York!” stuttered Stranahan, nudging me knowingly in the side. Even as he spoke, I was startled by a noise as of a thunder clap. And the next instant, the midget men and women scattered pellmell, vanishing through little openings in the walls. Meanwhile the thunder claps continued, loud-rumbling and resonant, one crash pealing and reverberating before the echoes of the last had died away; and miniature lightnings darted and flared from the great greenish vault above. As the display proceeded, it grew constantly brighter and more vivid; and I was wondering what the sequel would be, when suddenly there came a blast so loud that I clapped my hands to my ears in terror. Simultaneously a brilliant blade of light seemed to cut dagger-like through the buildings, wrapping them momentarily in a sheet of flame; the walls seemed to be heaving and trembling as though in an earthquake’s claws, and there came to my ears a rattling and crashing as of falling masonry. Then, while the clamor increased and the buildings heaved and wavered with the motion of tossing ships at sea, the ground beneath them gave a sharp lunge downward; and like toy castles, the towers all at once collapsed, some falling over their neighbors in crashing confusion, some shaken into great dusty piles of mortar and stone, some stripped of their walls yet still standing with gaunt contorted ribs of steel, some bursting into flame that glared and crackled fiendishly and poured out dense, black spirals of smoke. But scarcely had the thunder of the overthrown walls died down when a new and more ominous roaring came to my ears, a tumult as of Niagara or of sea-waves splashing the cliffs. Out of the great earthen basin into which the ruined city had subsided, there issued a foaming confusion of waters, as though a reservoir had burst its dam; and from all sides a white-flecked torrent came plunging down upon the wrecked towers, struggling and storming above their lower stories as if to wash them utterly away. And it seemed that they were to have their will, for the towers were sinking, visibly sinking beneath the waves. Heap after gigantic heap of debris dipped its head into the waters and was lost to view; edifice after looming edifice, dismantled and battered, was engulfed by the insatiable flood. And now the fires no longer burned and the smoke no longer soared; now only two or three tortured steel columns reached out of the indifferent sea; now only one was left, one lean and crooked metallic shaft like the agonized clutching hand of a drowning man. But soon even this had slipped from view, and the frothy-tongued, deep-blue waters gave no sign that a city had ever barred their path. And as the last trace of old Atlantis vanished, a grayness as of twilight suffused the scene; the golden lights became dim, and dimmer still, until they had fluttered out altogether, and blackness blotted all things from our gaze.