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The burning of Warsaw served as an impetus to force the other nations to join the movement sponsored by Germany. Fervidly interested became the world’s greatest scientists, such as Rutherford, Bohr, Aston and many others. Laboratories worked day and night; lathes and machines roared full-throatedly in the ironworks; metal grated against metal and one after another there appeared upon the Earth iron and brass giants that were to combat the inexorable foe.

Toward the end of the week, Deriugin was commissioned to Paris to set aside all the difficulties that impeded the work in the Creusot ironworks. From there he was- supposed to go to Genoa, where the works of Italy were concentrated. The flaming sphere, meanwhile, continued its course over Europe, leaving in its wake fires, devastation and thousands of victims. Passing Warsaw, it set fire to Kovel and then disappeared for some time in the marshes of Poliesie. Thence it moved southward, flying between Kiev and Zhitomir and wiping Ouman completely off the map, it descended over the river Boog, then brushing by the eastern outskirts of Nikolaev, it wended its course over the Black Sea.

The destruction caused by it began to assume actual cosmic dimensions. Aside from the fires and victims, now it bore with it new calamities. Dreadful thunderstorms and hurricanes of unusual proportions — similar to tropical showers — were descending from the atmosphere which was pregnant with vapors from the rivers, lakes and seas, caused by the immense heat that had been radiating from the destroying globe.

Passing through the Balkan Peninsula and inflicting great damage and suffering on Belgrade, the fiery vortex, by way of Tyrol and Baxaria, entered France, and devastating the north-eastern comer, disappeared into the ocean. At this point, between Cologne and Paris, it was met by Eitel Flinder.

The turbulent days, after the death of his father, bore heavily upon the young man. He was completely lost in the chaos of strange occurrences. Ever since the time he had spoken to Hinez, after his father’s funeral, he found it impossible to collect his thoughts, or direct them along proper and sound channels. The strips of fires and min that had swept over Europe seemed to have cut deep crosses into his breast. He could not, under any circumstances, reconcile himself to the fact that his father was the cause of the disaster now ravaging all Europe. Besides, his old hatred for Deriugin, about whom he continued to hear and read daily, had not ceased for a single moment. And despite the fact that he could not himself explain on what this strange feeling toward the young Russian was being fed, yet, in his utter ignorance, he did not notice how that feeling of reasonless malice was gradually changing into the blind conviction that, it was the Moscovite, who was the cause of his father’s death, as well as of the dreadful nightmares that continued to ravage all of Europe for the last three weeks. Though the thought was wild, without any foundation, still it continued to torment the weak mind of the young Hussar. He felt certain that all misfortunes emanated from Moscow, for, while the fiery sphere had only grazed a small part of the Russian territory, it had played great havoc everywhere else in Europe. And without giving due consideration to his actions, Eitel turned about face to Paris, right on the heels of his detested foe.