A sweep of the Pauillac hid the light from view. Even that faintest ray vanished. But--what? It came again! Much nearer now, and brighter! And--another gleam! Another still! Three of them--and they were real!
With a tremendous effort, Stern fixed his fevered eyes upon the lights.
Up, up at a tremendous rate they seemed speeding. Blue and ghastly through the dense vapors, spinning in giddy gyrations, as the machine wheeled, catapulted and slid from one long slant to another, their relative positions still remained fixed.
And, with a final flicker of intelligence, Stern knew they were no figment of his brain.
"Lights, Beatrice! Lights, lights, real lights!" he sought to scream.
But even as he fought to shake her from the swoon that wrapped her senses, his own last fragment of strength deserted him.
He had one final sense impression of a swift upshooting of the lights, a sudden brightening of those three radiant points.
Then came a sudden gleam as though of waters, black and still.
A gleam, blue and uncanny, across the inky surface of some vast, mysterious, hidden sea.
Up rushed the lights at him; up rushed the sea of jetty black!
Stern shouted some wild, incoherent thing.
Crash!
A shock! A frightful impact, swift, sudden, annihilating!
Then in a mad and lashing struggle, all knowledge and all feeling vanished utterly. And the blackness of oblivion received him into its insensate bosom.