t horizontally
forward in a wide curve, and vanished again in the steaming specks of
snow. And, through the ribs of its body, Graham saw two little men, very
minute and active, searching the snowy areas about him, as it seemed to
him, with field glasses. For a second they were clear, then hazy through
a thick whirl of snow, then small and distant, and in a minute they were
gone.

"Now!" cried his companion. "Come!"

He pulled Graham's sleeve, and incontinently the two were running
headlong down the arcade of ironwork beneath the wind-wheels. Graham,
running blindly, collided with his leader, who had turned back on him
suddenly. He found himself within a dozen yards of a black chasm. It
extended as far as he could see right and left. It seemed to cut off
their progress in either direction.

"Do as I do," whispered his guide. He lay down and crawled to the edge,
thrust his head over and twisted until one leg hung. He seemed to feel
for something with his foot, found it, and went sliding over the edge
into the gulf. His head reappeared. "It is a ledge," he whispered. "In
the dark all the way along. Do as I did."

Graham hesitated, went down upon all fours, crawled to the edge, and
peered into a velvety blackness. For a sickly moment he had courage
neither to go on nor retreat, then he sat and hung his leg down, felt
his guide's hands pulling at him, had a horrible sensation of sliding
over the edge into the unfathomable, splashed, and felt himself in a
slushy gutter, impenetrably dark.

"This way," whispered the voice, and he began crawling along the gutter
through the trickling thaw, pressing himself against the wall. They
continued along it for some minutes. He seemed to pass through a hundred
stages of misery, to pass minute after minute through a hundred degrees
of cold, damp, and exhaustion. In a little while he ceased to feel his
hands and feet.

The gutter sloped downwards. He observed that they were now many feet
below the edge of the buildings. Rows of spectral white shapes like the
ghosts of blind-drawn windows rose above them. They came to the end of
a cable fastened above one of these white windows, dimly visible and
dropping into impenetrable shadows. Suddenly his hand came against his
guide's.

"Still!" whispered the latter very softly.

He looked up with a start and saw the huge wings of the flying machine
gliding slowly and noiselessly overhead athwart the broad band of
snow-flecked grey-blue sky