d the
city showed plainly with the shining water around it. The vegetation
there was growing! And there were dark, horribly formless blobs lurching
outward and rising with monstrous bulk against the background of the
stars!

"Alan! Come, lad!"

With a prayer for Glora trembling on his lips, Alan plunged into the dim
phosphorescent gloom of the tunnel.

CHAPTER X

To Babs and me the ride in the golden cage strapped to Polter's chest as
he made his escape outward into largeness was an experience awesome and
frightening almost beyond description. We heard the alarm in the palace
on the island. Polter rushed to Dr. Kent's laboratory door, looked in,
and in a moment banged it shut. Babs and I saw very little. We knew only
that something terrible had happened; we could see only a blur with
formless things in the void beneath our bars; and there were the
choking fumes of chemicals surging at us.

Polter rushed through the castle corridor. We heard rumbling distant
shouts.

"The drug is loose! The drug is loose! Monsters! Death for everyone!"

The room swayed with horrible dizzying lurches as Polter ran. We clung
to the lattice bars, our legs and arms entwined. There were moments when
Polter leaped, or suddenly stooped, and our reeling senses all but
faded.

"Babs! Don't let go! Don't lose consciousness!"

If she should be limp, here in this lurching room, her body to be flung
back and forth across its confines--that would be death in a moment. I
didn't think I could hold her, but I managed to get an arm about her
waist.

"Babs, are you all right?"

"I'm--all right, George. I can stand it. We're--he is enlarging."

"Yes."

I saw water far beneath us, lashed into a turmoil of foam with Polter's
wading steps. There was a brief swaying vista of a toy city; starlight
overhead; a lurching swaying miniature of landscape as Polter ran for
the towering cliffs. Then he climbed and scrambled into the
tunnel-mouth. Had he turned at that instant doubtless he would have seen
the rising distant figures of Glora, Alan and Dr. Kent. But evidently he
didn't see them. Nor did we.

Polter spoke only very occasionally to Babs. "Hold tightly!" It was a
rumbling voice from above us. He made no move to touch the cage, except
that a few times the great blur of his hand came up to adjust its angle.

The lurching and jolting was less violent in the tunnel. Polter's frenzy
to escape was subsiding into calmness. He traversed t