It was now nearly an Earth-year since the strangers had alighted—their cursed visitors; and where they were no one knew. Without doubt they were the cause of the national disaster and moral degradation, and now everybody was too feeble to wish them back except to kill them, for by this no one cared to do that sufficiently to search for them, for every atom of strength was needed for their own bare existence. For months people had been telepathing with all their energies to all parts of the world, but their corrupters had vanished as completely as if taken off again in the ship. One day, to add to their misery, there burst over them an electric storm, which first began in various parts of the world and then embraced its whole surface, almost setting the very air on fire. Such a storm had never been known before, and people crouched and crawled and hobbled away in all directions to find a corner in which to shield themselves from the lightning-charged air, as if they could get away from that awful atmosphere which filled all the space on the earth, and in a cave by a lonely shore eight figures crouched together in deadly terror, waiting for the end which they felt was close at hand. “We are not safe by this water!” said Dawson, whose voice scarcely rose above a whisper, and in that thick and soundless air would not have been heard at all but for the acoustic properties of the cave. “Let us get away. See, the whole heavens are blazing, and the sea is so charged with electricity that it is actually floating fire.” “It is running in here and will burn us up!” exclaimed Siddall, hoarsely. “Let us go out and find another place.” “No,” cried Holt, “the sea is our safety,” and for the first time in his life he appealed to others for support of his statement. “The sea and cave are our safety,” he repeated; “Keeth, Congreve and Hewitt will tell you the same, and if we step outside we shall be caught. No one has thought it possible for us to be here”; and as the first wave of the rushing incoming tide rose up the floor, lighting the cave with a flood of electric fire, he continued,—“Now we should have to dive through the fire to get out!” Exhausted with this long speech, he leaned back against the wall, panting for breath. “Let us go higher,” said Keeth, painfully lowering himself from the ledge on which he had been sitting gazing seaward through a thin crack in a stratum of rock, and they all clambered still higher up the side of the cave, the water on the floor meanwhile being flooded with light. “It’s lucky we had a good supply of food in pellet form,” said Siddall, “or we should be dead now!” “It would have been better so!” groaned Wadsworth, “our records are none too clean; we have sent hundreds to the devil and have corrupted the morals of a whole world, for if the people here recover from this awful disaster, they’ll continue to go to the devil, who will get the lot!”