We avoided attracting attention. No one heeded our wandering, seemingly unmounted _arras_. We found, beside one of the rocky walls of the entrance, the small cavelike recess where Entt had left his aërocar, and here we chained the _arras_. In my heart was a prayer that within a few hours we would be safely back, with the flood-gates closed, and find Arturo and Nereid here waiting for us. Tad was hopeful of it. “Those Gians won’t stay in the gate-house. Why would they? The Middge attacked--they couldn’t figure it would be anything but a last attempt, and they’ve defeated it. To stay there, with the gates likely to break any moment, that would be crazy!” “The Gians are nearly all departed now,” Entt agreed. “Our watchers say the last of them from this surface and the other are started for the locks.” “And if,” Tad added, “Rhana did leave a few to guard the gates, they’d desert--wouldn’t wait there for the flood to kill them. They’re all cowards anyhow, unless they’ve got weapons and you haven’t. Don’t worry, we’ll find the whole place deserted. It’s exactly the time to strike at it now, at the last minute!” It seemed logical reasoning. I could only hope it might prove true. We climbed to the aërocar, where it rested on a rock ledge. It was no more than ten feet long--a narrow strip of gleaming metal. With the currents out of our robes, and hoods flung back, we lay upon the car. Entt was at the controls. The car slowly lifted. We slid silently from the recess. The arriving Middge stared up at us. A guard up on the beacon platform challenged us. Entt called a signal, and he relaxed. We rose and sped forward, gathering speed as we rushed into the darkness. Underneath I could see a long line of the arriving Middge families; but we soon were past them. Flying low. Presently there were no houses, no signs of human life. A rocky, barren surface; sometimes a black area of squat forest trees; to the right I made out the outlines of a rocky wall which we were following. Then we turned toward it, into a mile-wide passage. We seemed nearly always ascending; but of that I could not be sure. The glaring white beacons along here, placed to blind and turn back the monsters, had been extinguished and broken by the Gians. It was a dark, sinister passage, turning, rising, dipping; narrowing almost to a small tunnel; or again opening into a great rocky amphitheater, with an extent I could not estimate. Half an hour’s flight. Tad and I saw almost nothing; but to Entt the way was clear. I became aware that the air had changed. A fetid quality had come to it. The passage ceiling had lifted. We were beyond the confines of the connecting passage. The abyss of the monsters lay before us! CHAPTER XIX. WITHIN THE GATE-HOUSE.