n this day
when fire might sweep their world.

Carrigan dashed water into his eyes, and it was warm. Then he looked
across. The fire had passed, the pall of smoke was clearing away, and
what he saw was the black corpse of a world that had been green. It was
smoldering; the deep mold was afire. Little tongues of flame still
licked at ten thousand stubs charred by the fire-death--and there was
no wind here, and only the whisper of a distant moaning sweeping
farther and farther away.

And then, out of that waste across the river, David heard a terrible
cry. It was Black Roger, still calling--even in that place of hopeless
death--for Andre, the Broken Man!

XXVI

Into the stream Carrigan plunged and found it only waist-deep in
crossing. He saw where Black Roger had come out of the water and where
his feet had plowed deep in the ash and char and smoldering debris
ahead. This trail he followed. The air he breathed was hot and filled
with stifling clouds of ash and char-dust and smoke. His feet struck
red-hot embers under the ash, and he smelled burning leather. A forest
of spruce and cedar skeletons still crackled and snapped and burst out
into sudden tongues of flame about him, and the air he breathed grew
hotter, and his face burned, and into his eyes came a smarting
pain--when ahead of him he saw Black Roger. He was no longer calling
out the Broken Man's name, but was crashing through the smoking chaos
like a great beast that had gone both blind and mad. Twice David turned
aside where Black Roger had rushed through burning debris, and a third
time, following where Audemard had gone, his feet felt the sudden stab
of living coals. In another moment he would have shouted Black Roger's
name, but even as the words were on his lips, mingled with a gasp of
pain, the giant river-man stopped where the forest seemed suddenly to
end in a ghostly, smoke-filled space, and when David came up behind
him, he was standing at the black edge of a cliff which leaped off into
a smoldering valley below.

Out of this narrow valley between two ridges, an hour ago choked with
living spruce and cedar, rose up a swirling, terrifying heat. Down into
this pit of death Black Roger stood looking, and David heard a strange
moaning coming in his breath. His great, bare arms were black and
scarred with heat; his hair was burned; his shirt was torn from his
shoulders. When David spoke--and Black Roger turned at the sound--his
eyes glared wild