lves at me. I moved incautiously and knocked them over. They
seemed small now, perhaps half their former size. Glora was standing
behind them. I was sitting and she was standing, but across the litter
our faces were level.

"Stand up!" she murmured. "You all right now. I hide!"

I struggled to my feet, drawing Alan up with me. Now! The time for
action was upon us! We had already been discovered. The men were
shouting, clambering to their feet. Alan and I stood swaying. The
dome-room had contracted to half its former size. Near us was a little
platform, chair and microscope. Small figures of men were rushing at us.

I shouted, "Alan! Watch yourself!"

We were unarmed. These men might have automatic weapons. But evidently
they did not. Only knives were in their hands. The whole place was
ringing with shouts. And then a shrill siren alarm from outside started
clanging.

The first of the men--a few moments before he had seemed a giant--flung
himself upon me. His head was lower than my shoulders. I met him with a
blow of my fist in his face. He toppled backward; but from one side
another figure came at me. A knife-blade bit into the flesh of my thigh.

The pain seemed to fire my brain. A madness descended upon me. It was
the madness of abnormality. I saw Alan with two dwarfed figures clinging
to him. But he threw them off, and they turned and ran.

The man at my thigh stabbed again, but I caught his wrist and, as though
he were a child, whirled him around me and flung him away. He landed
with a crash against the shrunken pile of gold nuggets and lay still.

The place was in a turmoil. Other men were appearing from outside. But
they now stood well away from us. Alan backed against me. His laugh rang
out, half hysterical with the madness upon him as it was upon me.

"God! George, look at them! So small!"

They were now hardly the height of our knees. This was now a small
circular room, under a lowering concave dome. A shot came from the group
of Pygmy figures. I saw the small stab of flame, heard the zing of the
bullet.

We rushed, with the full frenzy of madness upon us--enraged giants. What
actually happened I cannot recount. I recall scattering the little
figures; seizing them; flinging them headlong. A bullet, tiny now, stung
the calf of my leg. Little chairs and tables under my feet were
crashing. Alan was lunging back and forth; stamping; flinging his tiny
adversaries away.

There were twenty or thirty of t