buildings all about them--to stop our attack. You heard the smash? It
shattered half the brittle glass in the city."

And while he spoke, Graham saw that beyond this area of ruins,
overhanging it and rising to a great height, was a ragged mass of white
building. This mass had been isolated by the ruthless destruction of its
surroundings. Black gaps marked the passages the disaster had torn apart;
big halls had been slashed open and the decoration of their interiors
showed dismally in the wintry dawn, and down the jagged walls hung
festoons of divided cables and twisted ends of lines and metallic rods.
And amidst all the vast details moved little red specks, the red-clothed
defenders of the Council. Every now and then faint flashes illuminated
the bleak shadows. At the first sight it seemed to Graham that an attack
upon this isolated white building was in progress, but then he perceived
that the party of the revolt was not advancing, but sheltered amidst the
colossal wreckage that encircled this last ragged stronghold of the
red-garbed men, was keeping up a fitful firing.

And not ten hours ago he had stood beneath the ventilating fans in a
little chamber within that remote building wondering what was happening
in the world!

Looking more attentively as this warlike episode moved silently across
the centre of the mirror, Graham saw that the white building was
surrounded on every side by ruins, and Ostrog proceeded to describe in
concise phrases how its defenders had sought by such destruction to
isolate themselves from a storm. He spoke of the loss of men that huge
downfall had entailed in an indifferent tone. He indicated an improvised
mortuary among the wreckage, showed ambulances swarming like cheese-mites
along a ruinous groove that had once been a street of moving ways. He was