Page:Robert William Cole - The Struggle for Empire; A Story of the Year 2236 (1900).djvu/177

Rh the enemy's lines advanced, belching forth flame and smoke, but they left numbers of battered wrecks and thousands of dead men behind them. More vessels came up and took the places of those that were lost, and still the fight went on. The barren rocks were splintered, melted, shattered; they were scorched under the intense heat of the sun. Fleets were hidden in the craters of volcanoes, and suddenly sprang out and consumed unwary vessels. Ships chased one another round mountains, thirsting for destruction. They pursued one another deep down into clefts and caverns. Often the clouds of smoke and sheets of flame pouring out of the ground told of some deadly combat taking place far down in the bowels of the moon. Sometimes the combatants were shut in by the rocks their firing had precipitated, and they all perished together of slow starvation in the dark rocky depths. The giant forces which they had at their disposal were incapable of moving the