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Rh the elements at war among themselves: a silence that rang with an accent as dreadful as the crack of Doom in the ears of those three suspended there, in the heart of that unimaginably pellucid and immaculate radiance, in the vast hollow of the heavens, midway between the deep blue of the eternal dome and the rose and golden welter of the fog—that fog which, cloaking earth and sea, hid as well every vestige of the tragedy they had wrought, every sign of the murder that they had done that they themselves might not be murdered and cast down to destruction.

And, its propeller no longer gripping the air, the aeroplane drifted on at ever-lessening speed, until it had no way whatever and rested without motion of any sort; as it might have been in the cup of some mighty and invisible hand, held up to that stark and merciless light, under the passionless eye of the Infinite, to await a Judgment. …

Then, with a little shudder of hesitation, the planes dipped, inclined slightly earthwards, and began slowly and as if reluctantly to slip down the long and empty channels of the air.

At this, rousing, Lanyard became aware of his own voice yammering wildly at Vauquelin:

"Good God, man! Why did you do that?"

Vauquelin answered only with a pale grimace and a barely perceptible shrug.

Momentarily gathering momentum, the biplane sped downward with a resistless rush, with the speed of a great wind—a speed so great that when Lanyard again attempted speech, the breath was whipped from his lips and he could utter no sound.