Although at times during my first months in Atlantis I may have felt out of place and wished that the waters would open above me and bear me back to my own land, yet my longings were never mixed with misgivings and my regrets never tinged with fears. Even in my most pessimistic moments, I had no doubt but that the Sunken World was secure; that no menace to life or tranquility lurked in its well-ordered depths; that I might live out my days unmolested and in a peaceful routine. Hence I was all the more shocked at discovery of that peril which was to give Atlantis the aspect of a beleaguered city, and to overcast its beauty with foreboding and horror. I had been in Atlantis over a year when the crisis occurred. It was a crisis as startling and unexpected as the flaming of a meteor out of a calm sky; and yet, had we but known it, it had been preparing its way insidiously during the days of fancied safety, like some mortal disease that burrows through tissues which are apparently sound. And, like such a disease, it might have been checked had it only been discovered in time. I remember that one night, after many onerous hours devoted to my “History of the Upper World,” I slept but poorly, with an intermittent slumber disturbed by nightmares of huge towers crashing to destruction. And during the wakeful intervals my thoughts framed other nightmares, and I was agitated by a vague alarm and excitement, though I could not understand why. Not until much later did it occur to me that some telegraphic force, akin to the magnetic will power of the Atlanteans, may have conveyed to me the deep unrest that surcharged the atmosphere. But whether or not this explanation be valid, I know that in the morning, when I had dressed and stood in my roof-bedroom gazing down into the streets, I became acutely conscious that something was wrong. Every few minutes a native or group of natives could be seen rushing by at a speed I had never before observed among the unhurried Atlanteans; and it seemed to me that their faces were convulsed as though with pain or fear; while the voices occasionally borne up to me had the nervousness, almost the hysteria, of men in a panic. What could have happened? I wondered. Had the Atlanteans all suddenly gone mad? Or were they facing an insurrection or a civil war? Or had the government perhaps been overthrown by a band of insurgents? Or had there been an earthquake through which I had somehow slept? Or was there an invasion from the upper world, and had some of our countrymen, seeking for clues of the lost X-111, discovered the Sunken World and entered? All these possibilities, as I turned them over in my mind, seemed so fantastic that I had to discard them. Yet it still filled me with apprehension to observe the natives scurrying about the streets--apprehension that was to be speedily justified. * * * * *