lly we would speed up a narrow defile, with the broken, tumbling
cliffs rising abruptly over our heads, only to come out above a level
plateau or across a canyon a thousand feet deep or more.

The storm broke upon us. We entered a cloud that wrapped us in its wet
mist and hid the mountains from our sight. The darkness of twilight
settled down, lighted by flashes of lightning darting almost over our
heads. The sharp cracks of thunder so close threatened to split my
eardrums.

The wind increased in violence. The little platform trembled and swayed. I
could see the girls struggling to hold it firm. At times we would drop
abruptly straight down a hundred or two hundred feet, with a great
fluttering of wings; but all the time I knew we were rising sharply.

Mercer and I clung tightly to the platform. We did not speak, and I think
both of us were frightened. Certainly we were awed by the experience.
After a time--I have no idea how long--we passed through the storm and
came again into the open air with the same gray sky above us.

We were several thousand feet up now, flying over what seemed to be a
tumbling mass of small volcanic craters. In front of us rose a sheer cliff
wall, extending to the right and left to the horizon. We passed over its
rim, and I saw that it curved slightly inward, forming the circumference
of a huge circle.

The inner floor was hardly more than a thousand feet down, and seemed
fairly level. We continued on, arriving finally over the mouth of a little
circular pit. This formed an inner valley, half a mile across and with
sheer side walls some five hundred feet high. As we swung down into it I
noticed above the horizon behind us a number of tiny black dots in the
sky--other girls flying out from the city to our meeting.

I have never beheld so wild, so completely desolate a scene. The ground
here was that same shining mass of virgin metal, tumbled about and broken
up in hopeless confusion.

Great rugged bowlders lay strewn about; tiny caverns yawned; fissures
opened up their unknown depths; sharp-pointed crags reared their heads
like spires left standing amid the ruins of some huge cathedral. There
was, indeed, hardly a level spot of ground in sight.

I wondered with vague alarm where we should land, for nowhere could I see
sufficient space, even for our small platform. We were following closely
the line of cliff wall when suddenly we swooped sharply downward and to
the right with incredible s