been extinguished. Graham saw the aperture of the ventilator with
ghostly snow whirling above it and dark figures moving hastily. Three
knelt on the fan. Some dim thing--a ladder was being lowered through the
opening, and a hand appeared holding a fitful yellow light.

He had a moment of hesitation. But the manner of these men, their swift
alacrity, their words, marched so completely with his own fears of
the Council, with his idea and hope of a rescue, that it lasted not a
moment. And his people awaited him!

"I do not understand," he said, "I trust. Tell me what to do."

The man with the cut brow gripped Graham's arm.

"Clamber up the ladder," he whispered. "Quick. They will have heard--"

Graham felt for the ladder with extended hands, put his foot on the
lower rung, and, turning his head, saw over the shoulder of the nearest
man, in the yellow flicker of the light, the first-comer astride over
Howard and still working at the door. Graham turned to the ladder again,
and was thrust by his conductor and helped up by those above, and then
he was standing on something hard and cold and slippery outside the
ventilating funnel.

He shivered. He was aware of a great difference in the temperature. Half
a dozen men stood about him, and light flakes of snow touched hands and
face and melted. For a moment it was dark, then for a flash a ghastly
violet white, and then everything was dark again.

He saw he had come out upon the roof of the vast city structure which
had replaced the miscellaneous houses, streets and open spaces of
Victorian London. The place upon which he stood was level, with huge
serpentine cables lying athwart it in every direction. The circular
wheels of a number of windmills loomed indistinct and gigantic through
the darkness and snowfall, and roared with a varying loudness as the
fitful white light smote up from below, touched the snow eddies with a
transient glitter, and made an evanescent spectre in the night; and
here and there, low down! some vaguely outlined wind-driven mechanism
flickered with livid sparks.

All this he appreciated in a fragmentary manner as his rescuers stood
about him. Someone threw a thick soft cloak of fur-like texture about
him, and fastened it by buckled straps at waist and shoulders. Things
were said briefly, decisively. Someone thrust him forward.

Before his mind was yet clear a dark shape gripped his arm. "This way,"
said this shape, urging him along, and pointed Gra