He stooped to pick it up; then tugged with both hands. The rifle lay immovable. I bent and strove to aid him. For all the pair of us could do, the rifle might have been a part of the gleaming surface on which it rested. The tiny, deepset star points winked up-- “They're--laughing at us!” grunted Drake. “Nonsense,” I answered, and tried to check the involuntary shuddering that shook me, as I saw it shake him. “Nonsense. These blocks are great magnets--that's what holds the rifle; what holds us, too.” “I don't mean the rifle,” he said; “I mean those points of lights--the eyes--” There came from Ventnor a cry of almost anguished relief. We straightened. Our head shot above the mists like those of swimmers from water. Unnoticed, we had been climbing out of them. And a hundred yards ahead of us, cleaving them, veiled in them almost to the shoulders, was Norhala, red-gold tresses steaming; and close beside her were the brown curls of Ruth. At her brother's cry she turned and her arm flashed out of the veils with reassuring gesture. A mile away was an opening in the valley's mountainous wall; toward it we were speeding. It was no ragged crevice, no nature split fissure; it gave the impression of a gigantic doorway. “Look,” whispered Drake. Between us and the vast gateway, gleaming triangles began to break through the vapors, like the cutting fins of sharks, glints of round bodies like gigantic porpoises--the vapors seethed with them. Quickly the fins and rolling curves were all about us. They centered upon the portal, streamed through--a horde of the metal things, leading us, guarding us, playing about us. And weird, unutterably weird was that spectacle--the vast and silent vale with its still, smooth vapors like a coverlet of cloud; the regal head of Norhala sweeping over them; the dull glint and gleam of the metal paradoxes flowing, in ordered motion, all about us; the titanic gateway, glowing before us. We were at its threshold; over it. CHAPTER VIII. THE DRUMS OF THUNDER Upon that threshold the mists foamed like breaking billows, then ceased abruptly to be. Keeping exactly the distance I had noted when our gaze had risen above the fog, glided the block that bore Ruth and Norhala. In the strange light of the place into which we had emerged--and whether that place was canyon, corridor, or tunnel I could not then determine--it stood out sharply. One arm of Norhala held Ruth--and in her attitude I sensed a shielding intent, guardianship--the first really human impulse this shape of mystery and beauty had revealed. In front of them swept score upon score of her familiars--no longer dully lustrous, but shining as though cut from blue and polished steel. They--marched--in ordered rows, globes and cubes and pyramids; moving sedately now as units.