It was as I was studying the texture and the beauty of these garments that there happened the first approach to panic I had yet witnessed among this calm-eyed people. There had been a stillness as of ill-bridled tumult in the atmosphere all day. My proparents had moved restlessly abroad from daybreak, and all the Leomo were on the wing husbanding every minute with feverish clutch. We were sent in squadrons to different parts of the island, and many new leomorans were set to work in unaccustomed corners of the mountain, yet there was a look of baffled intelligence in every face. I had felt there was an undeciphered portent overshadowing their life. Thyriel and I had worked at two new leomorans and watched them till they wielded their brush of smoke across the sky. We had done all that we could and were sent out to Oomalefa to uncloud our troubled minds. The excitement of this new sphere had removed from our thoughts all ominous shadows and we were as innocently absorbed as primitive men of the woodlands in the wonders now opened to us; but silence had fallen upon the gambolling swimmers, and the hush awakened us from our new dream. We felt the foundations of the building tremble and quiver like a panic-stricken beast. Up the translucent walls clicked a huge rent, and slowly the liquid in the baths hissed and vanished. A tumultuous muffled cannonade rolled beneath us. The crystal roof crackled and snapped like ice-rafts that groan and toss before a sudden flood. The chink widened into a chasm, and through it we could see the ocean seethe in turbulence and revolution. Up through the roof whizzed the wings of the alarmed bathers, and as the jarring and detonation grew, I stood knowing not whither to turn. All I could do was to bid Thyriel follow her mates. More awful came back the reverberations from the domes, and Thyriel’s face was pale and her lips set, but she did not move. Finally she bade me follow her to that end of the gallery farthest from the chasm in the walls, a raised platform whence the swimmers dived. There she placed me with my back to hers, and ran a rope under my arms. Before I knew what she was about, I was off my feet; she was running at full speed up the rising platform and with a sudden jerk we were in the air. I heard the beating of her wings, and lay still lest I should baffle her purpose. I lay on my back between her wings, and shuddered as I saw their points broken against the lips of the chasm. A deep-mouthed clangour filled my ears; and for a moment my eyelids fell in palsied terror. When I raised them and looked down, the vast crystal of Oomalefa had vanished and the great promontory stood gaping, with the surf hissing and baying as it leapt over the upper surface.