ttering, pounding with
our giant tread. Huge loose boulders were tumbled in an avalanche
everywhere.

Again it seemed to Alan that our lurching, heedlessly surging bodies
must be crushed within these contracting walls. Only our locked,
intertwined legs were visible; our bodies were lost in the sky. Then
it seemed to Alan that I had heaved Polter upward. And followed him.
We disappeared. There was a distant overhead rumble, and the murky
sky, with vague patches of far-distant illumination in it, became
empty of movement....

The walls presently were again closing upon Alan and his companions.
They ran out of the open end of the shrinking little gully and came to
a new upward vista....

* * * * *

I found myself a full head and shoulders taller than Polter. And he
was tiring, panting heavily. His face was cut and bleeding from the
blows of my fists. The rock I heaved struck his shoulder. He roared,
head down, and bored into me. He was heavier than I. His weight flung
me back. My foot slid on the loose stones of the gully floor. I did
not know that Babs, Alan and their father were huddled under those
stones!

My back struck the opposite wall. Polter's upflung knee caught me in
the stomach, all but knocking the breath from me. He was desperate,
oblivious to the closing walls. And as he flung his arms with a grip
about my neck, hanging, trying to bear me down, I saw in his blazing
dark eyes what seemed the light of suicide. I think that then, with a
sudden frenzied madness he realized that he was beaten. And tried to
pull us to the ground and let the walls crush us.

I summoned all my remaining strength and heaved us forward. I broke
his hold. His body was jammed back against a lowering wall. Its top
seemed almost at our knees. I shoved frantically. He fell backward and
I jumped after him.

We were on a great rocky plateau. But it was shrinking, crawling into
itself. Spots of light were in the murk overhead; there seemed a
distant circular horizon of emptiness around us.

Polter was lying in a heap. But it was trickery, for as I incautiously
bent over him his hand crashed a rock against my head. I reeled, with
all the world turning black, but did not fall. There was a horrible
instant when my senses were going, but I fought to hold them. Blood
from a wound on my forehead was streaming in my eyes. I was
staggering. Then I realized I was grimly tossing my head, shaking the
blood away;