When he had passed they looked up. While the first light of the
fire had shot east and west, painting the sides of ships with
fire-light or striking red sparks out of windowed houses, it had
not hitherto struck upward, for there was above it the ponderous
and rococo cavern of its own monstrous coloured smoke. But now
the fire was turned to left and right like a woman's hair parted
in the middle, and now the shafts of its light could shoot up
into empty heavens and strike anything, either bird or cloud. But
it struck something that was neither cloud nor bird. Far, far
away up in those huge hollows of space something was flying
swiftly and shining brightly, something that shone too bright and
flew too fast to be any of the fowls of the air, though the red
light lit it from underneath like the breast of a bird. Everyone
knew it was a flying ship, and everyone knew whose.

As they stared upward the little speck of light seemed slightly
tilted, and two black dots dropped from the edge of it. All the
eager, upturned faces watched the two dots as they grew bigger
and bigger in their downward rush. Then someone screamed, and no
one looked up any more. For the two bodies, larger every second
flying, spread out and sprawling in the fire-light, were the dead
bodies of the two doctors whom Professor Lucifer had carried with
him--the weak and sneering Quayle, the cold and clumsy Hutton.
They went with a crash into the thick of the fire.

"They are gone!" screamed Beatrice, hiding her head. "O God! The
are lost!"

Evan put his arm about her, and remembered his own vision.