e whole lump melt.

The tiny portions that melted and liquefied became full of motion,
although the motion was never in one place for more than about a minute
at a time; and wherever the motion had been the lump lost bulk, so that
gradually the whole piece shrank and shrank. At the end it was not in
its original shape, but had taken the form of a miniature cow's
dropping.

I suppose it was hot. Our host waited several minutes before picking it
off the slab.

At last he took the nugget off the slab and tossed it to King. King
handed it to me. It was still warm and it looked and felt like gold. I
laid it back on the slab.

"Do you understand it?" asked the Gray Mahatma.

CHAPTER VI

THE FIRE BATHERS

Our little wrinkly-skinned host did the honors as far as the door, and I
thanked him for the demonstration; but the Gray Mahatma seemed
displeased with that and ignoring me as usual, turned on King in the
doorway almost savagely.

"Do you understand that whoever can do what you have just seen can also
accomplish the reverse of it, and transmute gold into baser metal?" he
demanded. "Does it occur to you what that would mean? A new species of
warfare! One combination of ambitious fools making gold--another
unmaking it. Chaos! Now you shall see another science that is no fit
pabulum for fools."

We came to a door on our right. It was opened instantly by a lean,
mean-looking ascetic, whose hooked nose suggested an infernal brand of
contempt for whoever might not agree with him. Just as the others had
done, he met the Gray Mahatma's eyes in silence, and admitted us by
simply turning his back. But this door only opened into another passage,
and we had to follow him for fifty feet and then through another door
into a cavern that was bigger than any. And this time our host was not
alone. We were expected by a dozen lean, bronze men, who squatted in a
row on one mat with expressionless faces. They were not wearing masks,
but they looked as if they might have been.

This last cavern was certainly a blow-hole. Its round roof, blackened
with smoke, was like the underside of a cathedral dome. No effort seemed
to have been made to trim the walls, and the floor, too, had been left
as nature made it, shaped something like a hollow dish by the pressure
of expanding gases millions of years ago when the rock was molten.

The very center of the vast floor was the lowest point of all, and some
work had been done there, for