No
harm has come to them so far--that's certain. If his situation were
desperate he would have made himself as large as we are and we would see
him."

"If he got the chance," the Doctor murmured.

"Certainly he has not been killed or captured," the Chemist reasoned,
"for we would have other giants to face immediately that happened."

"Perhaps he took the girl with him and started off to Orlog to find
Loto," suggested the Doctor. "That crazy boy might do anything."

"He should be back by now, even if he had," said the Big Business Man.
"I don't see how anything could happen to him--having those----" He
stopped abruptly.

While they had been talking a crowd of little people had gathered in the
city beside them--a crowd that thronged the street before the Chemist's
house, filled the open space across from it and overflowed down the
steps leading to the beach. It was uncanny, standing there, to see these
swarming little creatures, like ants whose hill had been desecrated by
the foot of some stray passer-by. They were enraged, and with an ant's
unreasoning, desperate courage they were ready to fight and to die,
against an enemy irresistibly strong.

"Good God, look at them," murmured the Big Business Man in awe.

The steps leading to the beach were black with them now--a swaying,
struggling mass of little human forms, men and women, hardly a finger's
length in height, coming down in a steady stream and swarming out upon
the beach. In a few moments the sand was black with them, and always
more appeared in the city above to take their places.

The Big Business Man felt a sharp sting in his foot above the sandal.
One of the tiny figures was clinging to its string and sticking a sword
into his flesh. Involuntarily he kicked; a hundred of the little
creatures were swept aside, and when he put his foot back upon the sand
he could feel them smash under his tread. Their faint, shrill, squeaking
shrieks had a ghostly semblance to human voices, and he turned suddenly
sick and faint.

Then he glanced at Lylda's face; it bore an expression of sorrow and of
horror that made him shudder. To him at first these had been savage,
vicious little insects, annoying, but harmless enough if one kept upon
one's feet; but to her, he knew, they were men and women--misguided,
frenzied--but human, thinking beings like herself. And he found himself
wondering, vaguely, what he should do to repel them.

The attack was so unexpected, and came s