of the
grove of trees had allowed a flood of light to stream upon the scene
from a cluster of electric lamps on a distant portion of the bank on the
Syrtis that had not yet given way that he caught sight of us.

Immediately he began to shout to attract our attention, but in the awful
uproar we could not hear him. Getting together all the ropes that he
could lay his hands on, he steered the ship to a point directly over us,
and then dropped down within a few yards of the boiling flood.

Now as he hung over our heads, and saw the water up to our very necks
and still swiftly rising, he shouted again:

"Catch hold, for God's sake!"

The three men who were with him in the ship seconded his cries.

But by the time we had fairly grasped the ropes, so rapidly was the
flood rising, we were already afloat. With the assistance of Tom and his
men we were rapidly drawn up, and immediately Tom reversed the electric
polarity, and the ship began to rise.

At that same instant, with a crash that shivered the air, the immense
metallic power house gave way and was swept tumbling, like a hill torn
loose from its base, over the very spot where a moment before we had
stood. One second's hesitation on the part of Tom, and the electrical
ship would have been battered into a shapeless wad of metal by the
careening mass.

When we had attained a considerable height, so that we could see a great
distance on either side, the spectacle became even more fearful than it
was when we were close to the surface.

On all sides banks and dykes were going down; trees were being uprooted;
buildings were tumbling, and the ocean was achieving that victory over
the land which had long been its due, but which the ingenuity of the
inhabitants of Mars had postponed for ages.

Far away we could see the front of the advancing wave crested with foam
that sparkled in the electric lights, and as it swept on it changed the
entire aspect of the planet--in front of it all life, behind it all
death.

Eastward our view extended across the Syrtis Major toward the land of
Libya and the region of Isidis. On that side also the dykes were giving
way under the tremendous pressure, and the floods were rushing toward
the sunrise, which had just began to streak the eastern sky.

The continents that were being overwhelmed on the western side of the
Syrtis were Meroc, Aeria, Arabia, Edom and Eden.

The water beneath us continually deepened. The current from the melting
s