ed 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 automatics. But evidently they
did not. Knives were in their hands. The whole place was ringing with
shouts. And then a shrill siren alarm from outside was 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 stood now 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 pigmy figures. I saw the small stab of flame, heard the sing
of the bullet.

We rushed, with the full frenzy of madness upon us, enraged giants.
What actually happened I can not 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