unknown
thickness to save him from a fall. The street showed warm and lit, and
Graham was wet now to the skin with thawing snow, and his feet were
numbed with cold. For a space he could not move. "Come on!" cried his
guide, with terror in his voice. "Come on!"

Graham reached the pitch of the roof by an effort.

Over the ridge, following his guide's example, he turned about and slid
backward down the opposite slope very swiftly, amid a little avalanche of
snow. While he was sliding he thought of what would happen if some broken
gap should come in his way. At the edge he stumbled to his feet ankle
deep in slush, thanking heaven for an opaque footing again. His guide was
already clambering up a metal screen to a level expanse.

Through the spare snowflakes above this loomed another line of vast
windmills, and then suddenly the amorphous tumult of the rotating wheels
was pierced with a deafening sound. It was a mechanical shrilling of
extraordinary intensity that seemed to come simultaneously from every
point of the compass.

"They have missed us already!" cried Graham's guide in an accent of
terror, and suddenly, with a blinding flash, the night became day.

Above the driving snow, from the summits of the wind-wheels, appeared
vast masts carrying globes of livid light. They receded in illimitable
vistas in every direction. As far as his eye could penetrate the snowfall
they glared.

"Get on this," cried Graham's conductor, and thrust him forward to a long
grating of snowless metal that ran like a band between two slightly
sloping expanses of snow. It felt warm to Graham's benumbed feet, and a
faint eddy of steam rose from it.

"Come on!" shouted his guide ten yards off, and, without waiting, ran
swiftly through the incandescent glare towards the iron supports of the
next range of wind-wheels. Graham, recovering from his astonishment,
followed as fast, convinced of his imminent capture....

In a score of seconds they were within a tracery of glare and black
shadows shot with moving bars beneath the monstrous wheels. Graham's
conductor ran on for some time, and suddenly darted sideways and vanished
into a black shadow in the corner of the foot of a huge support. In
another moment Graham was beside him.

They cowered panting and stared out.

The scene upon which Graham looked was very wild and strange. The snow
had now almost ceased; only a belated flake passed now and again across
the picture. But the broad stre