Higher even than the most gigantic, wind-wheels hung this crow's nest, a
clear thousand feet above the roofs, a little disc-shaped speck on a
spear of metallic filigree, cable stayed. To its summit Graham was drawn
in a little wire-hung cradle. Halfway down the frail-seeming stem was a
light gallery about which hung a cluster of tubes--minute they looked
from above--rotating slowly on the ring of its outer rail. These were the
specula, _en rapport_ with the wind-vane keeper's mirrors, in one of
which Ostrog had shown him the coming of his rule. His Japanese attendant
ascended before him and they spent nearly an hour asking and answering
questions.
It was a day full of the promise and quality of spring. The touch of the
wind warmed. The sky was an intense blue and the vast expanse of London
shone dazzling under the morning sun. The air was clear of smoke and
haze, sweet as the air of a mountain glen.
Save for the irregular oval of ruins about the House of the Council and
the black flag of the surrender that fluttered there, the mighty city
seen from above showed few signs of the swift revolution that had, to his
imagination, in one night and one day, changed the destinies of the
world. A multitude of people still swarmed over these ruins, and the huge
openwork stagings in the distance from which started in times of peace
the service of aeroplanes to the various great cities of Europe and
America, were also black with the victors.
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