e was propelled forward, until a cushion
of air seemed to block his further progress.

Dark as it was, and silent, Jim had the consciousness of other human
beings about him, of a vast, unseen multitude that was watching him.

Suddenly the droning of a chant began to fill the place, as if a
priest were intoning hymns. As that chant rose and fell, voices all
about took up the echoing refrain. Jim tried to reach Lucille, but he
could move his arm only a few inches against that resilient force
pressing in on all sides of him.

Then, in an instant, a blinding, stabbing light shot through his
eyeballs. He heard Lucille scream, old Parrish yelp, and, with eyelids
screwed tight against the intolerable glare, fought once more
desperately and ineffectively to reach Lucille's side.

* * * * *

Slowly Jim managed to unscrew his eyes. He began to realize that he
was standing in what appeared to be an enormous amphitheatre. But high
up, upon a narrow tongue of flooring that ran like a bridge from one
end to the other, with Lucille on his right and Parrish on his left.
Nothing visible seemed to be restraining them, and yet they were as
securely held as if fastened with tight chains.

Jim's brain reeled as he looked down. Imagine a bridge about half-way
up an amphitheatre of a hundred stories, the ground beneath packed
with human beings no larger than ants, the whole of the vast interior
lined with them, tier above tier, faces and forms increasing from
pismire size below to the dimensions of the human form upon a level,
and, again, fading almost to pin-points at the summit of the vast
building, where the soft glow of the artificial light filtered through
the glass of the roof.

He clutched at the air, felt the soft pressure of the force that was
restraining him, looked at Lucille, and saw her half-unconscious with
fear, leaning against it, leaning against that soft, resilient,
cushionlike, invisible substance; looked at Parrish, whom the shock
had thrown into a sort of semi-catalepsy--Parrish, mouthing and
staring!

He looked forward to where the tongue of flooring ended. Here, upon a
stage, flanked with huge carven figures, a group was gathered. At
first he was unable to discern what was being enacted there, so
brilliant was the light that glared overhead.

It was the Eye, a round disc perhaps ten feet in diameter, that
all-seeing Eye of Atlantis that guarded the great city, but how it
worked