We waited, perhaps five or ten minutes, crouching by the rock with the silent, shadowy valley around us. There was still no sign of the giant. There were cañons here, into any one of which he might have plunged. The silence was heavy, oppressive, eerie. A haunted silence, as though here were things not to be seen or heard, yet nevertheless making their presence felt. I whispered at last, "Shall we start?" "Yes." I had been lying on my side, raised on one elbow. There came a movement at my belt; I sensed a tiny indefinable creeping movement upon me. My hand went down with a swift, instinctive gesture--as one moves with a startled hand to knock off an insect. And Alt gave a low, sharp cry. We both saw it at once. As I sat erect, a small human figure which had been clinging to my belt at the side, scuttled down my leg and leaped off me to the ground. It vanished in the shadows. We made a hurried, startled search, but it was gone. We had briefly seen it--a man the length of my thumbnail. "Gone, Alt!" We searched no further. Impossible task to find such a figure here on these dark rocks. The thing gave us a shock. We crouched again, waiting, silently listening. This strangely fearsome journey! Nothing alive save ourselves, here in this brooding place of rocks. Nothing to see, or to hear. Yet it seemed as though there might be living multitudes around us. Humans, not moving in space very far, yet journeying. The giant was gone. He had passed us, moving on into largeness. This tiny figure which had been clinging to me was rushing ahead of us perhaps into smallness. Alt's voice checked my reverie. "I think it is safe to go on." We started off again. The crescent pit we found to be some twenty feet deep. There was no trouble descending its broken sides. Alt said: "Coming out, I could have climbed in this size very easily. But I was smaller. I climbed up here--it seemed a thousand feet." The giant had evidently been in here, growing, and had waited until the last moment to scramble out. He had been as surprised as ourselves, no doubt, at the sudden encounter. "There must be many of Togaro's men traveling," said Alt. "They are in every size, traveling, exploring." This darkling abyss of rocks! I conjured enemies lurking in every shadow ready to spring upon us. Giants--or tiny humans smaller than insects. Enemies of every size and of shifting stature. We kept steadily upon our way. The crescent pit opened into a valley with towering mountain ranges for its walls. Then we entered a tunnel mouth. Timing it with unaltering size between one of the pellets, I saw it as a miniature tunnel which our bodies almost blocked. We followed it, from one gloomy cavern to another--a distance seemingly only a few paces. Yet I could envisage that with another pellet it would be a black march of hours in a vast dark void and a desolation of rocks. An army of our enemies might be marching here like that now!