tine burning of the great ring that girdled the encircling
cliffs.

I turned my head--behind us the corridor was closing!

Now the opening was so close that through it I could see the vast
panorama of the valley. The wall behind us touched us; pushed us on.
We thrust ourselves against it, despairingly. As well might flies have
tried to press back a moving mountain.

Resistingly, inexorably we were pressed forward. Now we cowered within a
yard-deep niche; now we trembled upon a foot-wide ledge.

Shuddering, gasping, we glared down the sheer drop of the City's wall.
The smooth and glimmering scarp fell thousands of feet straight to the
valley floor. And there were no merciful mists to hide what awaited us
there; no mists anywhere. In that brief, agonized glance every detail of
the Pit was disclosed with an abnormal clarity.

We tottered on the brink. The ledge melted.

Down, down we plunged, locked in each other's arms, hurtling to the
shattering death so far below!

CHAPTER XXIII. THE TREACHERY OF YURUK

Was it true that Time is within ourselves--that like Space, its twin, it
is only a self-created illusion of the human mind? There are hours that
flash by on hummingbird wings; there are seconds that shuffle on shod in
leaden shoes.

Was it true that when death faces us the consciousness finds power
through its will to live to conquer the illusion--to prolong Time? That,
recoiling from oblivion, we can recreate in a fractional moment whole
years gone past, years yet to come--striving to lengthen our existence,
stretching out our apperception beyond the phantom boundaries,
overdrawing upon a Barmecide deposit of minutes, staking fresh claims
upon a mirage?

How else explain the seeming slowness with which we were falling--the
seeming leisureness with which the wall drifted up past us?

And was this punishment--a sentence meted out for profaning with our
eyes a forbidden place; a penalty for touching with our gaze the ark of
the Metal Tribes--their holy of holies--the budding place of the Metal
Babes?

The valley was swinging--swinging in slow broad curves; was oscillating
dizzily.

Slowly the colossal wall slipped upward.

Realization swept me; left me amazed; only half believing. This was no
illusion. After that first swift plunge our fall had been checked. We
were swinging--not the valley.

Deliberately, in wide arcs like pendulums, we were swinging across the
City's scarp; three feet out from i