ugh I were one of the hosts of smiting spirits of the bellowing
typhoon.

Through this stole another thought--vague, unfamiliar, yet seemingly
of truth's own essence. Why, I wondered, had I never recognized this
before? Why had I never known that these green forms called trees were
but ugly, unsymmetrical excrescences? That these high projections of
towers, these buildings were deformities?

That these four-pronged, moving little shapes that screamed and ran
were--hideous?

They must be wiped out! All this misshapen, jumbled, inharmonious
ugliness must be wiped out! It must be ground down to smooth unbroken
planes, harmonious curvings, shapeliness--harmonies of arc and line and
angle!

Something deep within me fought to speak--fought to tell me that this
thought was not human thought, not my thought--that it was the reflected
thought of the Metal Things!

It told me--and fiercely it struggled to make me realize what it was
that it told. Its insistence was borne upon little despairing, rhythmic
beatings--throbbings that were like the muffled sobbings of the drums of
grief. Louder, closer came the throbbing; clearer with it my perception
of the inhumanness of my thought.

The drum beat tapped at my humanity, became a dolorous knocking at my
heart.

It was the sobbing of Cherkis!

The gross face was shrunken, the cheeks sagging in folds of woe; cruelty
and wickedness were wiped from it; the evil in the eyes had been washed
out by tears. Eyes streaming, bull throat and barrel chest racked by his
sobbing, he watched the passing of his people and his city.

And relentlessly, coldly, Norhala watched him--as though loath to lose
the faintest shadow of his agony.

Now I saw we were close to the top of the mount. Packed between us
and the immense white structures that crowned it were thousands of the
people. They fell on their knees before us, prayed to us. They tore at
each other, striving to hide themselves from us in the mass that was
themselves. They beat against the barred doors of the sanctuaries; they
climbed the pillars; they swarmed over the golden roofs.

There was a moment of chaos--a chaos of which we were the heart.
Then temple and palace cracked, burst; were shattered; fell. I caught
glimpses of gleaming sculptures, glitterings of gold and of silver,
flashing of gems, shimmering of gorgeous draperies--under them a
weltering of men and women.

We closed down upon them--over them!

The dreadful sobbi