* * *

We were a hundred feet back from the opening. The giant's legs
disappeared. But in a moment the round light hole of the exit was
obscured again. His head and shoulders! He was lying prone. His great
arms came in. He hitched forward. The width of his expanding shoulders
wedged.

I think that he expected to reach us with a single snatch of his
tremendous arms. Or perhaps he was confused, and forgot his growth. He
did not reach us. His shoulders stuck. Then suddenly he was trying to
back out, but could not!

It was only a moment. We stood in the radiant gloom of the tunnel,
clinging to each other, ourselves stricken by confusion. The giant's
voice roared, 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 large for the broken cliff opening.

I found my wits. "Alan! Out of here--God! Don't you see--"

* * * * *

But Glora held us. The drug the giant had taken was about at its end,
and Glora recognized it. The growth presently stopped. That huge,
noisome mass of pulp which once had been human shoulders--

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 w