left. In a
vague dismay, I now looked round the half of the wide circle in rear of
the two bended figures intent on the caldron. All along that disk the
light was already broken, here and there flickering up, here and there
dying down; the six lamps in that half of the circle still twinkled, but
faintly, as stars shrinking fast from the dawn of day. But it was not
the fading shine in that half of the magical ring which daunted my eye
and quickened with terror the pulse of my heart; the Bushland beyond
was on fire. From the background of the forest rose the flame and the
smoke,--the smoke, there, still half smothering the flame. But along the
width of the grasses and herbage, between the verge of the forest and
the bed of the water-creek just below the raised platform from which I
beheld the dread conflagration, the fire was advancing,--wave upon wave,
clear and red against the columns of rock behind,--as the rush of a
flood through the mists of some Alp crowned with lightnings.

Roused from my stun at the first sight of a danger not foreseen by the
mind I had steeled against far rarer portents of Nature, I cared no more
for the lamps and the circle. Hurrying back to Ayesha, I exclaimed: "The
phantoms have gone from the spaces in front; but what incantation or
spell can arrest the red march of the foe, speeding on in the rear!
While we gazed on the caldron of life, behind us, unheeded, behold the
Destroyer!"

Ayesha looked, and made no reply; but, as by involuntary instinct,
bowed her majestic head, then rearing it erect, placed herself yet
more immediately before the wasted form of the young magician (he still
bending over the caldron, and hearing me not in the absorption and hope
of his watch),--placed herself before him, as the bird whose first care
is her fledgling.

As we two there stood, fronting the deluge of fire, we heard Margrave
behind us, murmuring low, "See the bubbles of light, how they sparkle
and dance! I shall live, I shall live!" And his words scarcely died in
our ears before, crash upon crash, came the fall of the age-long trees
in the forest; and nearer, all near us, through the blazing grasses, the
hiss of the serpents, the scream of-the birds, and the bellow and tramp
of the herds plunging wild through the billowy red of their pastures.

Ayesha now wound her arms around Margrave, and wrenched him, reluctant
and struggling, from his watch over the seething caldron. In rebuke; of
his angry exclam