e only--These.

"Visioning!" he said. "Don't think that I accept them in their entirety.
Part truth, part illusion--the groping mind dazzled with light of
unfamiliar truths and making pictures from half light and half shadow to
help it understand.

"But still--SOME truth in them. How much I do not know. But this I
do know--that last vision was of a cataclysm whose beginnings we face
now--this very instant."

The picture flashed behind my own eyes--of the walled city, its
thronging people, its groves and gardens, its science and its art; of
the Destroying Shapes trampling it flat--and then the dreadful, desolate
mount.

And suddenly I saw that mount as Earth--the city as Earth's cities--its
gardens and groves as Earth's fields and forests--and the vanished
people of Cherkis seemed to expand into all humanity.

"But Martin," I stammered, fighting against choking, intolerable terror,
"there was something else. Something of the Keeper of the Cones and of
our striking through the sun to destroy the Things--something of them
being governed by the same laws that govern us and that if they broke
them they must fall. A hope--a PROMISE, that they would NOT conquer."

"I remember," he replied, "but not clearly. There WAS something--a
shadow upon them, a menace. It was a shadow that seemed to be born of
our own world--some threatening spirit of earth hovering over them.

"I cannot remember; it eludes me. Yet it is because I remember but a
little of it that I say those drums may not be--taps--for us."

As though his words had been a cue, the sounds again burst forth--no
longer muffled nor faint. They roared; they seemed to pelt through air
and drop upon us; they beat about our ears with thunderous tattoo like
covered caverns drummed upon by Titans with trunks of great trees.

The drumming did not die; it grew louder, more vehement; defiant and
deafening. Within the Thing under us a mighty pulse began to throb,
accelerating rapidly to the rhythm of that clamorous roll.

I saw Norhala draw herself up, sharply; stand listening and alert. Under
me, the throbbing turned to an uneasy churning, a ferment.

"Drums?" muttered Drake. "THEY'RE no drums. It's drum fire. It's like a
dozen Marnes, a dozen Verduns. But where could batteries like those come
from?"

"Drums," whispered Ventnor. "They ARE drums. The drums of Destiny!"

Louder the roaring grew. Now it was a tremendous rhythmic cannonading.
The Thing halted. The tower t