* * * * *

A hideous coppery face glared close into his own. Miraculously it
vanished, disappeared in a cloud of white. Then the blazing walls were
gone--there was nothing in all the world but rushing clouds of
whiteness, shrieking winds, the roar of an explosion--and cold, so
biting that it burned like heat.

Vaguely he wondered at the hands that still clutched at him. Dimly he
sensed other bodies close to his, other hands that tore him free where
he lay, still struggling with the priests, upon the floor. A narrow
opening was in the wall, a blur of darkness in the billowing white
clouds. They were dragging him into it, those others who held him, and
they were white--white as the vapor that whirled about him.

Ahead, the girl of his former dreams was guiding him, her hand cool
and soft in his. Others helped him; he ran stumblingly where they led
down a steep and narrow way.

The White Ones! In a vision they had reached out to him before. Was
this, too, a dream? Was it only the delirium of death? That burst of
cold--had it truly been liquid fires, wrapping him around?

Dean Rawson could not be sure. He knew only that his fate lay wholly
in the hands of these White Ones--and that hideous eyes in the coppery
face of a priest had glared at them as they fled.

CHAPTER XVI

_The Metal Shell_

[Illustration: _She was motioning for him to follow._]

[Sidenote: The Voice of the Mountain heralds Rawson's Messianic coming
to the White Ones in their hour of need.]

Dean Rawson had passed through a nerve-racking experience. It was not
a question of courage--Rawson had plenty of that--but there are times
when a man's nervous system is shocked almost to insensibility by
sheer horror. Not at once did he realize what was happening.

Perhaps it was the sound of pursuit that jarred him out of the fog
clouding all his thoughts and perceptions. It was like the sound of
fighting animals--cat-beasts--whose snarls had risen to screaming,
squalling shrieks of rage. It was sheer beastliness, the din that
echoed through that narrow passage.

Ahead of him the girl was running. She held a light in her hand. Soft
wrappings of cloth hung loosely from her waist; like her golden hair,
it was flung backward in the strong draft of air against which they
were struggling. She was outlined clearly before the red, rock-like
masses where her light was falling; she was running swiftly,
gracefully, like a