e burning skin; laved the fevered
lungs.

Again the sky was split by the lightnings. And roaring down from it in
solid sheets came the rain.

From the Pit arose a hissing as though within it raged Babylonian
Tiamat, Mother of Chaos, serpent dweller in the void; Midgard-snake of
the ancient Norse holding in her coils the world.

Buffeted by wind, beaten down by rain, clinging to each other like
drowning men, Ventnor and I pushed on to the elfin globe. The light was
dying fast. By it we saw Drake pass within the portal with his burden.
The light became embers; it went out; blackness clasped us. Guided by
the lightnings, we beat our way to the door; passed through it.

In the electric glare we saw Drake bending over Ruth. In it I saw
a slide draw over the open portal through which shrieked the wind,
streamed the rain.

As though its crystal panel was moved by unseen, gentle hands, the
portal closed; the tempest shut out.

We dropped beside Ruth upon a pile of silken stuffs--awed, marveling,
trembling with pity and--thanksgiving.

For we knew--each of us knew with an absolute definiteness as we
crouched there among the racing, dancing black and silver shadows with
which the lightnings filled the blue globe--that the Metal Monster was
dead.

Slain by itself!

CHAPTER XXX. BURNED OUT

Ruth sighed and stirred. By the glare of the lightnings, now almost
continuous, we saw that her rigidity, and in fact all the puzzling
cataleptic symptoms, had disappeared. Her limbs relaxed, her skin
faintly flushed, she lay in deepest but natural slumber undisturbed by
the incessant cannonading of the thunder under which the walls of the
blue globe shuddered. Ventnor passed through the curtains of the central
hall; he returned with one of Norhala's cloaks; covered the girl with
it.

An overwhelming sleepiness took possession of me, a weariness ineffable.
Nerve and brain and muscle suddenly relaxed, went slack and numb.
Without a struggle I surrendered to an overpowering stupor and cradled
deep in its heart ceased consciously to be.

When my eyes unclosed the chamber of the moonstone walls was filled
with a silvery, crepuscular light. I heard the murmuring and laughing of
running water, the play, I lazily realized, of the fountained pool.

I lay for whole minutes unthinking, luxuriating in the sense of tension
gone and of security; lay steeped in the aftermath of complete rest.
Memory flooded me.

Quietly I sat up; R