vable.

I bent and strove to aid him. For all the pair of us could do, the rifle
might have been a part of the gleaming surface on which it rested. The
tiny, deepset star points winked up--

"They're--laughing at us!" grunted Drake.

"Nonsense," I answered, and tried to check the involuntary shuddering
that shook me, as I saw it shake him. "Nonsense. These blocks are great
magnets--that's what holds the rifle; what holds us, too."

"I don't mean the rifle," he said; "I mean those points of lights--the
eyes--"

There came from Ventnor a cry of almost anguished relief. We
straightened. Our head shot above the mists like those of swimmers from
water. Unnoticed, we had been climbing out of them.

And a hundred yards ahead of us, cleaving them, veiled in them almost to
the shoulders, was Norhala, red-gold tresses steaming; and close beside
her were the brown curls of Ruth. At her brother's cry she turned and
her arm flashed out of the veils with reassuring gesture.

A mile away was an opening in the valley's mountainous wall; toward it
we were speeding. It was no ragged crevice, no nature split fissure; it
gave the impression of a gigantic doorway.

"Look," whispered Drake.

Between us and the vast gateway, gleaming triangles began to break
through the vapors, like the cutting fins of sharks, glints of round
bodies like gigantic porpoises--the vapors seethed with them. Quickly
the fins and rolling curves were all about us. They centered upon the
portal, streamed through--a horde of the metal things, leading us,
guarding us, playing about us.

And weird, unutterably weird was that spectacle--the vast and silent
vale with its still, smooth vapors like a coverlet of cloud; the regal
head of Norhala sweeping over them; the dull glint and gleam of the
metal paradoxes flowing, in ordered motion, all about us; the titanic
gateway, glowing before us.

We were at its threshold; over it.

CHAPTER VIII. THE DRUMS OF THUNDER

Upon that threshold the mists foamed like breaking billows, then ceased
abruptly to be. Keeping exactly the distance I had noted when our gaze
had risen above the fog, glided the block that bore Ruth and Norhala.
In the strange light of the place into which we had emerged--and
whether that place was canyon, corridor, or tunnel I could not then
determine--it stood out sharply.

One arm of Norhala held Ruth--and in her attitude I sensed a shielding
intent, guardianship--the first really human