ated white building was in progress, but then he perceived
that the party of the revolt was not advancing, but sheltered amidst the
colossal wreckage that encircled this last ragged stronghold of the
red-garbed men, was keeping up a fitful firing.

And not ten hours ago he had stood beneath the ventilating fans in a
little chamber within that remote building wondering what was happening
in the world!

Looking more attentively as this warlike episode moved silently across
the centre of the mirror, Graham saw that the white building was
surrounded on every side by ruins, and Ostrog proceeded to describe in
concise phrases how its defenders had sought by such destruction to
isolate themselves from a storm. He spoke of the loss of men that huge
downfall had entailed in an indifferent tone. He indicated an improvised
mortuary among the wreckage, showed ambulances swarming like cheese-mites
along a ruinous groove that had once been a street of moving ways. He was
more interested in pointing out the parts of the Council House, the
distribution of the besiegers. In a little while the civil contest that
had convulsed London was no longer a mystery to Graham. It was no
tumultuous revolt had occurred that night, no equal warfare, but a
splendidly organised _coup d'etat_. Ostrog's grasp of details was
astonishing; he seemed to know the business of even the smallest knot of
black and red specks that crawled amidst these places.

He stretched a huge black arm across the luminous picture, and showed the
room whence Graham had escaped, and across the chasm of ruins the course
of his flight. Graham recognised the gulf across which the gutter ran,
and the wind-wheels where he had crouched from the flying machine. The
rest of his path had succumbed to the explosion. He looked again at the
Council House, and it was already half hidden, and on the right a
hillside with a cluster of domes and pinnacles, hazy, dim and distant,
was gliding into view.

"And the Council is really overthrown?" he said.

"Overthrown," said Ostrog.

"And I--. Is it indeed true that I--?"

"You are Master of the World."

"But that white flag--"

"That is the flag of the Council--the flag of the Rule of the World. It
will fall. The fight is over. Their attack on the theatre was their last
frantic struggle. They have only a thousand men or so, and some of these
men will be disloyal. They have little ammunition. And we are reviving
the ancient arts. We are c