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A line was stretched across the narrow space, and there hung the fine linen and muslin, streaming out the death-mist upon the weakened lungs of that wretched girl in the corner; and the old woman, with her tremulous hands, was smoothing out the robes that were to rustle amid scenes of pleasure and folly, while the wearers never bestowed a thought upon the lowly ones who helped to adorn them.
Driven outward from the super-ship as a center, its advancing surface of seething energy consumed the crimson murk as a billow of blast-furnace heat consumes a cloud of snowflakes in the air above its shaft. Nor was the red death-mist all that was consumed. Between that ravening surface and the armor skin of the Boise there was nothing.
And thus at last I looked at that wide stretch of country across which our men had advanced unshaken and undismayed, through a hell the like of which the world had never known before; and, as I stood there, I could almost see those long, advancing waves of khaki-clad figures, their ranks swept by the fire of countless rifles and machine guns, pounded by high explosives, blasted by withering shrapnel, lost in the swirling death-mist of poison gas heroic ranks which, rent asunder, shattered, torn, yet swung steadily on through smoke and flame, unflinching and unafraid.
But when the last of the fighting creatures was down, no more than a dozen were left of the three score who had begun the fight. But this was not the main battle. The main battle was hidden under the Death-Mist cloud, concentrated in a vast thick mass in the very center of the city. Tommy watched that grimly. Perhaps eight thousand men had assailed the city.
These men were at the moment in a madness of terror, and ready even to plunge into the white death-mist advancing to meet them, obeying only the instinct of the trapped animal to "get out." But Moses was able to control them, to draw them back by degrees along the heading till, in the distant workings where they were found, the air was more tolerable, and they could wait for rescue.
Tommy's face went gray. These were the escaped prisoners, arrived actually after the air fleet which was to demand the return of their captives. Tommy wet his lips and spoke grimly to his pilot. There were six men and many Death-Mist bombs in his ship. He was asking if communication could be had with the other ships.
"Now we must stop," Labiskwee whispered painfully, "or we will die. We must cover up so the old men said." She did not delay to untie knots, but began cutting her pack-lashings. Smoke cut his, and, with a last look at the fiery death-mist and the mockery of suns, they covered themselves over with the sleeping-furs and crouched in each other's arms.
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