.

THE DRUMS OF THUNDER.
Upon that threshold the mists foamed like breaking billows, then ceased abruptly to be.

Keeping exactly the distance I had noted when our gaze had risen above the fog, glided the block that bore Ruth and Norhala.
In the strange light of the place into which we had emerged--and whether that place was canyon, corridor, or tunnel I could not then determine--it stood out sharply.
One arm of Norhala held Ruth--and in her attitude I sensed a shielding intent, guardianship--the first really human impulse this shape of mystery and beauty had revealed.
In front of them swept score upon score of her familiars--no longer dully lustrous, but shining as though cut from blue and polished steel.
They--marched--in ordered rows, globes and cubes and pyramids; moving sedately now as units.
I looked behind me; out of the spume boiling at the portal, were pouring forth other scores of the Metal Things, darting through like divers through a wave.

And as they drew into our wake and swam into the light, their dim lustre vanished like a film; their surfaces grew almost radiant.
Whence came the light that set them gleaming?
Our pace had slackened--I looked about me.

The walls of the cleft or tunnel were perpendicular, smooth and shining with a cold, metallic, greenish glow.
Between the walls, like rhythmic flashing of fire-flies, pulsed soft and fugitive glimmerings that carried a sense of the infinitely minute--of electrons, it came to me, rather than atoms.