We came upon Nereid and Arturo within a few hours. The passage was strewn with the Middge refugees. Out of the million in the abyss, perhaps a hundred thousand actually got into the tunnel. And only two thousand survived. We passed them hourly; families resting, encamped, to take up again the burden of the march. We passed them dead, or dying--burned and maimed at the tunnel-entrance, or before they got into the tunnel--struggling on now, falling at last. The tunnel was heavy with gases. Sometimes, when we thought our last choking breath had been drawn, side rifts would seem to bring us purer air. We had started without equipment or food, or water, but there were hundreds of loaded _arras_ in the long line of refugees. We very soon found one whose owner had succumbed. Arturo and Nereid, when we overtook them, we found them well supplied. They had waited until a wave of flame had surged to the tunnel-entrance. They had even gone back there once; then despaired of us, and left. We heard, soon after we four were again together, a muffled, terrible roar far away in the earth, and felt the tremble of it. It was the earthquake under the Pacific, though we could no more than guess it then. The tunnel shook; part of the roof near us fell, crushing a score of the Middge. We saw then that behind us the tunnel was blocked. The air ahead soon grew purer. No Middge could follow us, but those in advance were in less distress. We made better time, but at that it seemed an endless struggle. Weeks of August’s close, and of September. We lost all possible track of them. We did not know until afterward that it was probably September 29 when the first pitiful little vanguard of our party reached the new world. The food and water were running low. The _arras_ had all given out and were abandoned. The changing air-pressures, the new quality of air, affected us all somewhat, but the animals were stricken, a few at a time. We left them, pitifully breathless, gasping. There was one stage of the march where for what might have been a week we were halted by a subterranean river torrent. We waited, helpless, despairing. But the water in the cross passage into which our tunnel abruptly ended, at last roared away. New air came to us, dank, with a rotting, salt tang to it. We traveled, those final days, with the surviving Middge scientists. They told us that they had a weapon; a huge affair, for long range operation. It was not assembled. But when we reached the surface-- Ah, how many times in those days of struggle we voiced the thought: “When we reach the surface!” To come out upon a friendly earth. To join, with this weapon, the earth’s armies against the Gians. “When we reach the surface--” “Why,” said Tad, “everything will be all right then. What can those Gian women and men do against our earth? Say, what is this Middge weapon?”