CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE END OF TAO. The scene of desolation that met us in the Lone City was at once extraordinary and awesome. It seemed impossible that our rays, acting for so brief a period, could have done so much damage. The city was nothing more than a semicivilized settlement of little, flat-topped stone houses. Our rays, striking these, had discharged harmlessly into the ground. But the interiors had been penetrated through windows and doors, and everything inflammable about them, as well as about the streets, had been destroy…