ely; "if we had been landed a few
more feet to the left we should have been broiled to death. A part of
this lava is still in a liquid state."

VII.

The three men looked each other in the eye. Swift forgot the girl. The
professor forgot the balloon. Mr. Statis Ticks had forgotten his wife
and seven children; but this was no unusual circumstance. The aeronaut,
having less awe to the cubic inch in his make-up than his companions,
was the first to speak.

"What does this gol-darned thing mean, anyhow?"

"Hush!" said Swift, recoiling.

But Mr. Statis Ticks bared his head before the extinct city.

"It means," said the student, solemnly, "the presumptuous impiety of man
and the vengeance of Almighty God! It means," he added, slowly,
"incalculable volts of uncontrollable electricity acting and acted upon
by nascent oxygen and hydrogen. It means that Russell, the greatest
producer of the electro-motor power on the continent, has been smitten
by its servant. It means that man has outstripped his knowledge of this
mysterious fluid, and has ignorantly converted through millions of
inadequate conductors and faultily insulated wires the terrible, the
unfathomed power of electricity into light and heat and force; that
Russell was gradually becoming a gigantic storage battery, charged and
surcharged, until the time when its electrostatic capacity had been
criminally abused, the negative forces of the heavens concentrated over
the obnoxious territory, and a discharge unparalleled in electrical
experiments restored nature's equilibrium, and consumed in one
unspeakable spark Russell and its blind inhabitants."

"My God! Can this happen to Boston?" cried the professor, trembling.

"Or New York?" asked Swift.

"Or to Chicago?" added the girl, faintly. She had revived and was
looking about her in a ghastly way. "My mother used to live there."

This truly feminine view of a scientific subject passed unnoticed.

Mr. Ticks stood with his uncovered head yet bent before the annihilated
city. He spread his two hands out, palms to the ground, with a gesture
of indescribable significance, and made no reply.

Black, vitreous masses of melted conglomerate spread before them. Where
had stood the city, the sloping plain offered no obstruction to the
view. Russell, to the last splinter of iron or of wood, to the last chip
of brick or stone, to the last bone of the last corpse, was fused into a
terrible warning to the world by the