Again our guards ordered us forward, and we marched on. But now only a low wall on each side protected us from the abyss, and there was no wall on the right side against which to cling. But our guards seemed to mind this not at all, and I judged that they had made many trips up and down the stair, to be thus hardened to its dangers. As we descended, Denham explained to me in a low voice the origin of the lights on the roof. These were merely lenses of a kind, he said, which diffused into the cavern real sunlight brought from above. I had already seen and puzzled at the glass globes set on pedestals through the city of cylinders above, but now saw their purpose. Those globes received the sunlight, transmitted it in some unknown fashion down to the globes on the roof, which gave it forth again. Thus it was that day and night in the pit were the same as in the world above, and the light there waxed and waned in accordance with the rising and setting of the sun which these people never saw. We drew closer and closer toward the ground, and now I saw that at the stair's end, where it touched and debouched on the pit's floor, it was closed by a high, heavy gate of metal, barred and spiked, and that on our own side of this gate was a force of some fifty of the guards, armed with long spears and also with curious little cylinders of shining metal which they carried in their belts, and which I guessed were weapons of a kind unknown to myself. As we came down toward them, these guards drew aside and unlocked the big gate. Our own captors unshackled us, and then pushed us through it unceremoniously, so that we stood in the clearing or plaza. And the gate was quickly shut and locked behind us. Standing there, I forgot all else in the fascination of the scene around me. Across the open plaza, which was smoothly floored with stone, a great multitude of people were coming and going, and it was that shifting throng that held my gaze. For in it were men of every race and land and time, men of the far past and men of my own time, all seized and brought here by the Raider to mix and mingle in one vast, variegated throng. Even that first glance showed me that there must be thousands, tens of thousands of men prisoned in this gigantic under-city, and it showed me, too, that even as among the guards and slaves above, there were no women. All were comparatively young men, few being over middle age, and nearly all had the appearance of warriors. Men of a thousand different centuries passed and repassed there before my eyes, men who had been flashed through the ages and brought there by the same alien being that had seized Cannell before my eyes, and that had seized, only a few hours before, the five newcomers who had come down the great stair with Denham and me.