action and rushed into the tunnel-mouth.

Alan stopped just for an instant to gaze out over the starlit scene.
It was almost the same viewpoint from which he had his first sight of
Glora's world only an hour or two before. The distant island beyond
the city showed plainly with the shining water around it. The
vegetation there was growing! And there were dark, horribly formless
blobs lurching outward and rising with monstrous bulk against the
background of the stars!

"Alan! Come, lad!"

With a prayer for Glora trembling on his lips, Alan plunged into the
dim phosphorescent gloom of the tunnel.

CHAPTER X

_The Escape_

To Babs and me the ride in the golden cage strapped to Polter's chest
as he made his escape outward into largeness was an experience awesome
and frightening almost beyond conception. We heard the alarm in the
palace on the island. Polter rushed to Dr. Kent's laboratory door,
looked in, and in a moment banged it shut. Babs and I saw very little.
We knew only that something horrible had happened; we could see only a
blur with formless things in the void beneath our bars; and there were
the choking fumes of chemicals surging at us.

Polter rushed through the castle corridor. We heard rumbling distant
shouts.

"The drug is loose! The drug is loose! Monsters! Death for everyone!"

The room swayed with horrible dizzying lurches as Polter ran. We clung
to the lattice bars, our legs and arms entwined. There were moments
when Polter leaped, or suddenly stooped, and our reeling senses all
but faded.

"Babs! Babs, darling, don't let go! Don't lose consciousness!"

If she should be limp, here in this lurching room, her body to be
flung back and forth across its confines--that would be death in a
moment. I feared I could not hold her. I managed to get an arm about
her waist.

"Babs!"

"I'm--all right, George. I can stand it. We're--he is enlarging."

"Yes."

I saw water far beneath us, lashed into a turmoil of foam with
Polter's wading steps. There was a brief swaying vista of a toy city;
starlight overhead; a lurching swaying miniature of landscape as
Polter ran for the towering cliffs. Then he climbed and scrambled into
the tunnel-mouth. Had he turned at that instant doubtless he would
have seen the rising distant figures of Glora, Alan and Dr. Kent. But
he did not see them, evidently. Nor did we.

Polter spoke only very occasionally to Babs. "Hold tightly!" It was a
rumbling voice from abo