I staggered to my feet. Behind me was a shattered wall of basalt monoliths, hewn and squared. Before me was the Pacific, smooth and blue and smiling.

And not far away, cast up on the strand even as I had been, was⁠—Marakinoff!

He lay there, broken and dead indeed. Yet all the waters through which we had passed⁠—not even the waters of death themselves⁠—could wash from his face the grin of triumph. With the last of my strength I dragged the body from the strand and pushed it out into the waves. A little billow ran up, coiled about it, and carried it away, ducking and bending. Another seized it, and another, playing with it. It floated from my sight⁠—that which had been Marakinoff, with all his schemes to turn our fair world into an undreamed-of-hell.