We were ready with our pellets. But a sudden activity in the road made
us pause. The crowd of little people were hostile to Polter. A sullen
hostility. They milled about him as he stood there, gazing down at
then sardonically.

And abruptly he shouted at them in English. "You speak my language,
some of you. Then listen."

The crowd fell silent.

"Listen. This iss your future Queen. Can you see her? She iss small
now. But she has the magic power. Soon, she will be large. Like me."

The crowd was shouting again. It surged forward, but it lacked a
leader, and those in advance shoved backward in fear.

Polter spoke again. "This girl from my world, you will like her. She
iss kind and very beautiful. When she iss large, you will see how
beautiful."

A little stone suddenly came up from the throng of little people and
struck Polter on the shoulder. Then another. The crowd, emboldened,
made a rush; surged against his legs.

He shouted, "You do that? Why how dare you? I show to you what giants
do when you make dem angry!"

From down by his knees he plucked the small figure of a man. The crowd
scattered with shouts of terror. Polter had the struggling
eighteen-inch figure by the wrist. He whirled it around his head like
a nine-pin and flung it over the canopy of the dock far out into the
shimmering lake!

CHAPTER VII

_Within the Golden Cage_

The trees around us expanded to towering forest giants. The underbrush
rose up over our heads. We had taken only a taste of the diminishing
drug; Glora showed us how to touch it to our tongue several times, to
adjust our size as we became smaller. It was no more than a minute of
diminishing. We could hear the roar of the crowd, and Polter's voice
shouting. We ran forward through the great forest. It was a fair
distance out to the starlit road. We saw it as a wide shining
esplanade. The people now were giants twice our height! Polter,
himself towering with a seeming fifty foot stature, was standing by
the gigantic canopy of the dock. He had dispersed the crowd. There was
an open space on the esplanade--a run for us of about a hundred feet.

"We've got to chance it!" I murmured. "Make a run of it--now."

We darted across. In the confusion, with all eyes centered on Polter,
we escaped discovery. It was dim under the dock canopy. Polter had
backed from the road and was walking to the barge. It lay like the
length of an ocean liner, its sail looming an enormous spread above
i