Slowly, painfully, I crept up to it.

It was late afternoon before I grounded my shaky craft on the little beach between the ruined sea-gates and, creeping up the giant steps, made my way to the inner enclosure.
And at its opening I stopped, and the tears ran streaming down my cheeks while I wept aloud with sorrow and with disappointment and with weariness.
For the great wall in which had been set the pale slab whose threshold we had crossed to the land of the Shining One lay shattered and broken.

The monoliths were heaped about; the wall had fallen, and about them shone a film of water, half covering them.
There was no moon door! Dazed and weeping, I drew closer, climbed upon their outlying fragments.

I looked out only upon the sea.

There had been a great subsidence, an earth shock, perhaps, tilting downward all that side--the echo, little doubt, of that cataclysm which had blasted the Dweller's lair! The little squared islet called Tau, in which were hidden the seven globes, had entirely disappeared.