I tried the rope hastily, but it held firm, so I hastily began to climb up it, by means of the thick knots along its length. Scrambling up with panicky swiftness, I reached the rail, pulled myself over, and lay gasping for a moment on the stair. Then, leaning over the rail, I signaled to Lantin, whom I could see but dimly in the darkness. Bracing myself against the wall of the stair, I pulled in the rope until after a seeming eternity my friend's head appeared above the wall. He scrambled over, and then, winding the rope around my body and tossing the hook as far away as possible, I stood for a moment motionless. Across the plaza, and below us, was the gate, flooded with crimson light and alive with activity. The mobs of the city's dwellers were pressing against the gate, while the guards were repelling them by thrusting through the bars with their long spears. And from all the long streets that stretched away into the darkness there came the sound of many running feet, and the cries of excited men. Certainly the riot which our friends had kindled to aid us was no mean one. * * * * * A moment only I watched the scene below, then turned, and with Lantin beside me, began the long climb up the spiral stair. As we toiled up along the steeply slanting spiral, the clamor at the gates below gradually lessened in volume as we drew away from it. That the riot below had not yet been quelled, though, was evident, for before we had been on the stair ten minutes, a tiny beam of blue light flashed out at the gate, a narrow little shaft of azure light that clove up to the shaft above us, and seemed to stab straight up to the metal cover of that shaft. I remembered Denham's words concerning the signaling of the guards, and wondered if that was the cause of the little light. In a minute it vanished, but as we raced on up around the great spiral, a faint sound came down to us from far above, a grating clash of metal that we could barely hear. "The temple floor!" I cried to Lantin. "They've swung it aside! They've uncovered the shaft of the stairway!" He did not answer, out of breath from the toilsome climb. Before many more minutes had passed, we had progressed half-way from the floor of the cavern to its roof, up the stair. Abruptly something hissed down from above through the circle of the spiral stair. The hissing was repeated, and now I saw that it had been caused by a number of thick ropes that had been dropped from above, and that now swung free at the center of the stairway's spiral. I grasped Lantin, flung myself flat on the stair, pulling him down with me. And not a moment too soon, for peering cautiously over the low wall, I saw dark shapes flashing down along those swinging cables, in long strings, one after another. When they had passed, we jumped to our feet and sped on. "The guards from above," I told my companion. "Let's hope that all above have gone down."