Page:Robert William Cole - The Struggle for Empire; A Story of the Year 2236 (1900).djvu/193

Rh tion. A moment afterwards the metal shower came crashing down on to the city. Torpedoes, shell, and shot fell down in an increasing stream. Houses were dashed to pieces, towers staggered and were overturned, domes were pierced and battered down. Huge blocks of granite were wrenched away from their places and thrown down, crashing and breaking everything in their way. Walls tottered and fell; pavements and roads were torn up by the bursting shells. Huge public buildings, churches, hotels, museums, factories, and picturesque rows of private houses were soon reduced to heaps of shapeless stone. Hundreds of thousands of human beings were crushed to death beneath their homes. Clouds of dust and smoke rose into the air and hovered over the city like a funeral pall. The gardens and parks were ploughed up by the shot, and the flowers scorched by the terrible rays of Ednogen; trees were uprooted and torn to pieces. Bridges folded up and fell