light sprang into being.
Momentarily it blinded him, then revealed strange, incomprehensible
scenes. It appeared that two short shafts of incandescent flame
roared through transparent columns of glass on either side of the
passage some fifty yards distant. Subconsciously Nelson realized that
these columns began and ended in stonework that was smooth and well
joined.

* * * * *

As his eyes became accustomed to the glare he distinguished beside
each light pillar two bronze doors, some eight feet high and
semicircular in shape. These had been evidently pulled back to expose
the lights. Then his breath stopped in his throat, for there, standing
beside them, was a gleaming group of six or eight of the strangest
creatures Nelson could ever have imagined. They were men--there was no
mistaking that--men of normal size, but they were so helmeted and
incased in a curious type of armor that for a moment he believed them
gargoyles.

Quite motionless he stood, clutching the cold barrel of the Winchester
in a spasmodic grip and staring up at those two watch-towers, built
like gigantic swallows' nests into sheer rock wall. He could see the
warriors stationed there, peering curiously down at him from the
depths of heavy, bronze helmets--helmets which in shape much resembled
those of an ancient Grecian hoplite, for the nose guards and cheek
pieces descended so low as to completely mask the features of those
strange guards. For crests these helmets bore exquisitely wrought
bronze dolphins, with brilliant blue eyes of sapphire. But what
fascinated Nelson most was the curious armor they wore. Beneath breast
plates of polished bronze, these strange warriors wore what seemed to
be a kind of chain mail--yet it was not that, for the texture had more
the appearance of some heavy but pliant leather, finished with a
metallic surfacing.

Suddenly the spell of mutual amazement was broken, for a tall warrior
in a breast plate that glittered with diamonds and seemed altogether
more ornate than the rest, clapped a short brass horn to his lips and
blew a single piercing note. At once there appeared on the tunnel's
floor, not a hundred yards from the startled aviator, a rank of
perhaps twenty soldiers, accoutred exactly like those he beheld by the
light boxes. They came scrambling over the boulders, their shadows
grotesquely preceding them. In their hands were long shafted spears,
and on their left arms rectangular