red, reverberating around
us. Anger. A note of fear. Finally stark terror. He heaved, but the
rocks of the opening held solid. Then there was a crack, a gruesome
rattling, splintering--his shoulder bones breaking. His whole gigantic
body gave a last convulsive lunge, and he emitted a deafening shrill
scream of agony.

I was aware of the tunnel-mouth breaking upward. Falling rocks--an
avalanche, a cataclysm around us. Then light overhead.

The giant's crushed body lay motionless. A pile of boulders, rocks and
loose metallic earth was strewn upon his head and torso, illumined by
the outer light through a jagged rent where the cliff-face had fallen
down.

We were unhurt, crouching back from the avalanche. The giant's mangled
body was still expanding; shoving at the litter of loose rocks. In a
moment it would again be too small for the broken cliff opening.

I found my wits. "Alan, we've got to get out of here. God--don't you see
what's happening?"

But Glora restrained us. She realized that the effect of the drug the
giant had taken was about at its end. The growth presently stopped. That
huge noisome mass of pulp which once had been human shoulders no longer
expanded.

I shoved Glora away. "Don't look!" I was shaking; my head was reeling.
Alan's face, painted by the phosphorescence, was ghastly.

Glora pulled at us. "This way! The tunnel is not too long. We go."

But the giant had drugs, and perhaps weapons. "Wait!" I urged. "You two
wait here. I'll climb over him."

I told them why, and ran. I can only leave to the imagination that brief
exploratory climb. The broken body seemed at least a hundred feet long;
the mangled shoulders and chest filled the great torn hole in the cliff.
I climbed over the litter. Indescribable, horrible scene! A river of
warm blood was flowing down the declivity outward....

I came back to Glora and Alan. Under my arm was a huge cylinder vial. It
was black, the enlarging drug. I set it down. They stared at me in my
bloodstained garments.

"George! You're--"

"His blood, not mine." I tried to smile. "Here's the drug he carried.
Evidently Polter was only sending him out because I found just the one
drug."

"What'll we do with it?" Alan demanded. "Look at the size of it!"

"Destroy it," said Glora. "See, that is not difficult." She tugged at
the huge stopper, and exposed a few of the pellets--to us as large as
apples. "The air will soon spoil it."

We left it in the tunnel. I a