came back in a welter of cries.
"The Master is on our side!"

Graham perceived that he was no longer encompassed by people, that he
was standing upon a little temporary platform of white metal, part of
a flimsy seeming scaffolding that laced about the great mass of the
Council House. Over all the huge expanse of the ruins, swayed and
eddied the shouting people; and here and there the black banners of
the revolutionary societies ducked and swayed and formed rare nuclei of
organisation in the chaos. Up the steep stairs of wall and scaffolding
by which his rescuers had reached the opening in the Atlas Chamber,
clung a solid crowd, and little energetic black figures clinging to
pillars and projections were strenuous to induce these congested masses
to stir. Behind him, at a higher point on the scaffolding, a number of
men struggled upwards with the flapping folds of a huge black standard.
Through the yawning gap in the walls below him he could look down upon
the packed attentive multitudes in the Hall of the Atlas. The distant
flying stages to the south came out bright and vivid, brought nearer
as it seemed by an unusual translucency of the air. A solitary aeropile
beat up from the central stage as if to meet the coming aeroplanes.

"What had become of Ostrog?" asked Graham, and even as he spoke he saw
that all eyes were turned from him towards the crest of the Council
House building. He looked also in this direction of universal attention.
For a moment he saw nothing but the jagged corner of a wall, hard and
clear against the sky. Then in the shadow he perceived the interior of a
room and recognised with a start the green and white decorations of his
former prison. And coming quickly across this opened room and up to the
very verge of the cliff of the ruins came a little white clad figure
followed by two other smaller seeming figures in black and yellow. He
heard the man beside him exclaim "Ostrog," and turned to ask a question.
But he never did, because of the startled exclamation of another of
those who were with him and a lank finger suddenly pointing. He looked,
and behold the aeropile that had been rising from the flying stage when
last he had looked in that direction, was driving towards them. The
swift steady flight was still novel enough to hold his attention.

Nearer it came, growing rapidly larger and larger, until it had swept
over the further edge of the ruins and into view of the dense multitudes
below. It d