I am afraid that Stranahan’s remarks diverted my attention and made me miss part of the performance, for when next I turned my eyes to the stage, the scene was much changed. A great claw-like steel device was reaching out from the interior of the machine, seizing one of the men, wrenching him from his position as though he had been a misplaced screw, and casting him bleeding to the floor. And while he lay there moaning and helpless, a clamor of shouts was heard from off stage, and a score of tattered men came rushing in and threw themselves down before the machine as if in reverence. And, as though endowed with intelligence, the machine seemed to hear, for it reached out the same great claw-like hand, clutched one of the men at random, and thrust him into the place of the rejected one. And now the arms of the newcomer began to work up and down, up and down unremittingly, accompanying the steel rods in the same even and automatic fashion as the arms of his predecessor. The next feature on the program was a long oration delivered in Agripides’ most celebrated words; following which the actor prepared the way for the climax by a few explanatory comments. “Members of the National Assembly,” said he, still using phrases first uttered three thousand years before, “I wish you to look carefully at Axios, which, as you know, is one of the leading commercial cities of our age. First gaze upon its domes and towers as they are now familiar to you; then behold them as they will be when the unleashed waters of the Atlantic come sweeping across them; then open your eyes wide for a foreglimpse of our land in the golden era after the Submergence.” * * * * * Even as the last words were uttered, my attention was drawn to the huge amorphous mass which lay cloaked in white linen at one side of the stage. Invisible hands seemed to take hold of the covering; slowly it was lifted into the air, then slowly pulled to one side and out of sight. At first I could only gape in astonishment--the strangest of all conceivable things was being unbared! Distinctly I was reminded of the paintings I had seen in various of the halls of Archeon--that which stared before me was a city in miniature, but a city such as I would have expected no Atlantean to conceive. Not the faintest resemblance did it bear to this undersea realm of statue-like temples and many-columned palaces; rather, it was like a city of the modern world. Row upon unbending row of box-like edifices, apparently of granite or brick, loomed at irregular heights and with flat, ungarnished roofs; tier after tier of little oblong windows looked out from the smoke-stained sides of the towers; slender defiles, so narrow that they reminded one of light-wells, separated the opposing ranks of masonry; and at the base of these dreary gray pits swarmed masses of dark-robed men and women, jammed together so compactly that one wondered if they were not standing on each other’s toes.