Although all Atlantis resumed its normal aspect soon after the wall had been repaired, things were never again to be quite as before. It was as though there were some unseen fissure in the life of the Sunken World as well as in its glass boundary; as though the people realized, subconsciously, that they hovered on the rim of a smoldering volcano. Something seemed to be lacking that had been there before, perhaps because something was present that had never been there before; and the corrosive effects of fear, injected for the first time during all the centuries of the Submergence, seemed to dissipate the charmed tranquility of Atlantis and to suggest that inimical and even treacherous forces lurked beyond the marble fountains and palaces and the weird green-golden dome. But the one tangible result of the discovery of the crack was the rise of the Party of Emergence. This despised minority group, whose very name had been a phrase of contempt, now burst into a prominence as surprising to its members as to the people as a whole, and for the first time in history, threatened to become a power in Atlantean politics. Perhaps it was that there were thousands who, beset by a secret dread, looked to the Party of Emergence as their only salvation; perhaps it was merely that they had been shocked into a more liberal-minded attitude, and could view the policy of Emergence with wide-open eyes. At all events, a host of disciples flocked voluntarily to the Emergence banners; and among these were many persons of influence and position, including Peliades, the engineer who had declared the wall unsound, and Chorendos, the Local Adviser of Archeon. And now began a heated and aggressive campaign, conducted incessantly and not without success in the Hall of Public Enlightenment of every town and village in Atlantis--a campaign that threatened to develop into a life-or-death struggle between the regenerated Emergence Party and the more venerable Submergence group. It happened that I myself took an active, if minor part in that contest; and it also happened that the entire Upper World Club was implicated, for we all realized that the cause of Emergence offered us our only opportunity of returning to the upper world. Innumerable were the meetings that we attended, and innumerable the pleas that we made. To give a complete account of all our activities would be impossible, even if I could recall them all; and so I will have to confine myself to describing a particular meeting, which stands forth in my mind as typical.