It was Nereid’s father. He came and held Nereid in a close embrace, then shook hands with the rest of us. He was an old man, sixty, or eighty, I could not have said which. White of skin, with tawny hair long to his shoulders--a wavy mass of hair, grown dull and dead looking with his age. But he was a sturdy vigorous old fellow, no taller than Entt, slight of build, erect and straight for all his years. And dignified; his loose, dark robe fell to his knees; a girdle bound his slim waist; on his chest was an ornament in beaten white metal of strange device. I recognized it--the device Arturo, and later myself, had used on our flash lights as a signal. He stood me off and regarded me. “So this--you call ‘Jeff’?” He gestured to me apologetically. “I cannot talk the language of yours--the young learn--I am old.” His gaze swept me from head to foot. “Strange dress--he is so big, Arturo, as you said it.” “But it’s too late for that,” Arturo rejoined swiftly. He added to me: “They worship size, these Gian women. I had planned, Jeff, to send you to the Empress Rhana--you are so tall and strong--taller than any man here. She would have liked you.” So that was it. I began vaguely to understand. But only vaguely; it was still all so strange. They were all talking at once. Partly in my own language; partly in this other, which was wholly unintelligible. Fen, like them all, was plainly agitated. I grasped a few details, mostly from Tad’s swift explanations. There were two races--one small, white-skinned; the other larger--the gray women and their men, who were the ruling class. They were called the Gians. Tad explained: “They have a word _dgie_--it means large. Nereid’s people are the _Mdj_. You can’t pronounce it, but it suggests Middge--we call them that.” The Middge were the workers--oppressed, downtrodden. They had been for months upon the verge of a revolt. Fen was helping its secret organization; weapons secretly were being manufactured in the underground fire caverns where the Middge worked. But the news of the oncoming water had suddenly stirred the Middge public here to panic; this abortive mob attack on the fortress was the result. The whole City of the Mound was in a turmoil. It could do nothing but harm to the Middge cause. Such fragments I gleaned. Fen knew that the Gians had opened the great gates to drain our upper oceans. He knew of the demonstration against the Castle, but was powerless to stop it. He had stayed at home to await our coming. His eyes were not affected; he had been indoors, and had escaped the light. But Entt and Nereid, even now, were almost blinded. They sat together for the few moments while this swift talk proceeded. Our roof was so low that in a bound I could have leaped its parapet and vaulted to the ground. The city lay upward on the slope of the mound near at hand; in the gloom its dull winking lights were visible. The cries of the mob still sounded loudly. * * * * *