His torso, shoulders and neck were black with clinging tiny human figures! They hung upon his straps like clustering insects. They were in their normal size, Drake judged. They had climbed upon him when he was small. He seemed to be carrying a hundred or more. He stood a moment, then stepped cautiously up to the flat roof of a near-by house. It cracked with his weight. He leaped over it, into another street. He may have crushed scores of people who were gathered there. Drake could hear faint screams. The giant leaped again, found a broader street, ran down it toward the lake, and waded into the water. A hundred such incidents. A hundred such giants simultaneously appearing at the signal of the dawn. They were carrying ten thousand people at the least. They appeared from everywhere, laden with the tiny clinging figures. From the distant hills of the open country still more of them came running, dashing through the city, wrecking its houses, trampling the crowds in the streets; heading for the lake. The water was soon lashed into a turmoil. The giants were all a prearranged height. The water rose only to their hips. It beat white against them as they forced their way through it toward the island where the monstrous vehicle was waiting to receive them. Drake understood it now. In smallness the Togarites had been secretly working; gathering their followers from among the people. It was an exodus now to the island where the expedition to conquer the earth was ready to depart. There were giants rising from the island now. More of Togaro's followers, gathered there in smallness, growing now to join this arriving throng of their fellows. One giant, taller than all the others, loomed into the sky, black against the blood-red dawn. He was standing in the lake, far away, so that only his head and shoulders were above the horizon. It may have been Togaro, directing the embarkation. He was monstrous; and the vehicle on the water, lying quiescent now with its stern looming on the curve of the little globe, was monstrous. The giants were clustered out there, climbing with their human freight into the doorway of the ship. And they were still arriving. The city was wrecked with their passage. The broken streets were littered with mangled forms of the trampled crowds. The sunrise came. The blurred little sun was red. It bathed the shattered, screaming city with crimson; it painted the running giants; it turned the foaming waters of the lake to blood. When the turmoil was over and the littered giants had all embarked, off there against the red morning sky the monstrous vehicle was again expanding. CHAPTER XXI _Riding the Giant_