comfort. I could lie at full length and control every movement of the vessel. I could cause it to stand on end, so that I stood erect, or I could lie on my sides or my stomach or my back. Always before my face were two windows. One was an ordinary window, through which I could see my immediate surroundings. The other window was my own development, kept as secret as the Mist Screen, of radar.

In this radar I could see any part of Atlantis at any time. And so, within my vessel I saw the terror strike. I studied, each in turn, the great cities of my native land. Their minarets, their spires which, before the Creeping Mist came down, were like new snow reflected in the sun. Never in the world were there beauties made by man such as were found in the cities of Atlantis. There were four great cities in the richest valleys, beside the most beautiful lakes, and countless smaller ones, and not even the proudest local dweller could have said which city of Atlantis was the most beautiful.

Surely Sian, for example, must have been even grander than the New Jerusalem which our ancient prophets foresaw. Perhaps heaven itself was what man saw when he looked upon the cities, the fields, the blue canals, the gorgeous spires, all the glory of Atlantis.

But for me it might have survived for further ages. Who can say? I might make a journey sideways in time, as we sometimes do among the Initiates of Atlantis, and see what would have happened if I had decided to give up the secret of the Creeping Mist. But now it was too late, though I may elect to do the sideways journey from the Master Island which is now, for a few short hours, a mountain peak.

The Creeping Mist became all at once a roaring maelstrom. Its mists became waters as the waters in higher heavens came down to join the mist. Over the hills, through the great divides, up the valleys of the rivers, came the blue-white waters of the Atlantean Sea. Atlantis, the continent itself, began to shake and tremble as if held up by palsied undersea legs that could no longer hold its weight. The land tipped, and the sea rushed over it, tilting it the more.

So I watched the sea strike Ogra, the City of the Morning-and-Evening Star. What a monster was the sea, its forerunning wave higher than the tallest spire in Ogra. It rushed with all its vast weight upon the city. People were like ants scurrying to safety. I watched them, refusing to think that but for me they could have had a chance to live.

The water struck. The spires disappeared. 

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