moment--then the ground split asunder, and the house and the garden,
with all their living occupants were swallowed by an awful chasm which
opened just where they had stood. The great rent ran in a widening
line across the sunlit landscape until it reached the horizon, when
the distant mountains crumbled, clouds poured in from all sides at
once, and billows of flame burst through them as they veiled the
scene.

But in another instant the commotion was over, and the world whose
curious spectacles had been enacted as if on the other side of a
window, seemed to retreat swiftly into space, until at last, emerging
from a fleecy cloud, it reappeared in the form of the full moon
hanging in the sky, but larger than is its wont, with its dry
ocean-beds, its keen-spired peaks, its ragged mountain ranges, its
gaping chasms, its immense crater rings, and Tycho, the chief of them
all, shooting raylike streaks across the scarred face of the abandoned
lunar globe. The show was ended, and Dr. Syx, turning on only a
partial illumination in the room, rose slowly to his feet, his tall
form appearing strangely magnified in the gloom, and invited his
bewildered guests to accompany him to his house, outside the mill,
where he said dinner awaited them. As they emerged into daylight they
acted like persons just aroused from an opiate dream.



V

WONDERS OF THE NEW METAL

Within a twelvemonth after the visit of President Boon and his fellow