from the tripod-top. As it fell it uncovered a beautiful and perfect
globe of clear white glass, a foot or so in diameter, and obviously
filled with the thinnest, most limpid water imaginable. At first it
seemed to me, who stood near to the priestess of Mars, with that beaming
sphere directly between us, and the newly risen world, that its smooth
and flawless face was absolutely devoid of sign or colouring. Then,
as the distant planet became stronger in the magnifying Martian air,
or my eyes better accustomed to that sudden nucleus of brilliancy,
a delicate and infinitely lovely network of colours came upon it.
They were like the radiant prisms that sometimes flush the surface of a
bubble more than aught else for a time. But as I watched that mosaic
of yellow and purple creep softly to and fro upon the globe it seemed
they slowly took form and meaning. Another minute or two and they
had certainly congealed into a settled plan, and then, as I stared and
wondered, it burst upon me in a minute that I was looking upon a picture,
faithful in every detail, of the world I stood on; all its ruddy forests,
its sapphire sea, both broad and narrow ones, its white peaked mountains,
and unnumbered islands being mapped out with startling clearness for a
spell upon that beaming orb.

Then a strange thing happened. Heru, who had been crouching in a
tremulous heap by the tripod, rose stealthily and passed her hands a few
times across the sphere. Colour and picture vanished at her touch like
breath from a mirror. Again all was clear and pellucid.

"Now," said my companion, "now listen! For Heru reads the destiny;
the whiter the globe stays the better for us--" and then I felt her
hand tighten on mine with a startled grasp as the words died away upon
her lips.