h a rhythmic, JOCUND stride they leaped upon the city.

Under the mallets of the smiting arms the inner battlements fell as
under the hammers of a thousand metal Thors. Over their fragments and
the armored men who fell with them strode the Things, grinding stone and
man together as we passed.

All of the terraced city except the side hidden by the mount lay open to
my gaze. In that brief moment of pause I saw crazed crowds battling
in narrow streets, trampling over mounds of the fallen, surging over
barricades of bodies, clawing and tearing at each other in their flight.

There was a wide, stepped street of gleaming white stone that climbed
like an immense stairway straight up the slope to that broad plaza at
the top where clustered the great temples and palaces--the Acropolis of
the city. Into it the streets of the terraces flowed, each pouring out
upon it a living torrent, tumultuous with tuliped, sparkling little
waves, the gay coverings and the arms and armor of Ruszark's desperate
thousands seeking safety at the shrines of their gods.

Here great carven arches arose; there slender, exquisite towers capped
with red gold--there was a street of colossal statues, another over
which dozens of graceful, fretted bridges threw their spans from
feathery billows of flowering trees; there were gardens gay with
blossoms in which fountains sparkled, green groves; thousands upon
thousands of bright multicolored pennants, banners, fluttered.

A fair, a lovely city was Cherkis's stronghold of Ruszark.

Its beauty filled the eyes; out from it streamed the fragrance of its
gardens--the voice of its agony was that of the souls in Dis.

The row of destroying shapes lengthened, each huge warrior of metal
drawing far apart from its mates. They flexed their manifold arms,
shadow boxed--grotesquely, dreadfully.

Down struck the flails, the sledges. Beneath the blows the buildings
burst like eggshells, their fragments burying the throngs fighting for
escape in the thoroughfares that threaded them. Over their ruins we
moved.

Down and ever down crashed the awful sledges. And ever under them the
city crumbled.

There was a spider Shape that crawled up the wide stairway hammering
into the stone those who tried to flee before it.

Stride by stride the Destroying Things ate up the city.

I felt neither wrath nor pity. Through me beat a jubilant roaring
pulse--as though I were a shouting corpuscle of the rushing hurricane,
as tho