Nor were we permitted to forget that fact. Intelligence of our arrival had spread almost as quickly as though it had been broadcasted by radio, and along the banks the people were waiting, in twos and threes, in scores and in hundreds, to see the men from the mysterious and fearful World Above--harbingers, in their minds, of calamities and nameless things. Goodness only knows how many fists were shaken at Rhodes and me during the day, how many were the maledictions that they hurled upon us. Happily, however, there was no act of hostility. "You know, Bill," Milton smiled, "I am beginning to wish that we were back there among those _gogrugrons_, whatever they are, and the tree-octopi." This day's voyage brought us to the City of Dranondocrad. There a change was made that certainly did not displease me--from our little craft to none other than one of the queen's own, a long beautiful vessel with oarsmen and guards. The next day we passed a large tributary flowing in from our left, from out a yawning cavern there. This was by no means, however, the first cave we had seen entering the main one. As one moves through some valley in the mountains, smaller ones are seen coming in on either hand; and so it was in this great cavern of Drome, save that the valleys were caves. In that place, the great cavern itself has a width of two miles or more, and it is four or five thousand feet up to the vaulted roof. "One wonders," said I, "why the roof doesn't cave in." "Pooh, Bill!" said Rhodes. "One doesn't marvel that natural bridges don't collapse or that the roof of the Mammoth Cave doesn't come crashing down." The two days succeeding this brought us into the very heart of Drome, and on the third we reached the Golden City itself. This, the capital of the Droman nation, is situated at the lower end of a lake, a most picturesque sheet of water some fifteen miles in length. Where the river flows into it and for a distance of about a league down, the lake extends from one wall of the great cavern clean to the other. The walls go straight down into the water to what depth no man knows. It was about midafternoon when our boat, followed by a fleet of smaller craft, glided out onto this lovely expanse of water. At a point about halfway down the lake, we had our first view of Narnawnla Prendella, the Golden City. I say view, but it was in reality but little more than a glimpse that we obtained. For, almost at that very moment, a dense gloom fell upon water and landscape. Fierce and dreadful were the flickerings along the roof a mile or more above us. So sudden and awful was the change that even the Dromans seemed astonished. There was a blinding flash overhead, and then utter blackness everywhere.