Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 124, No. 3 — page 98: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

472 Score upon score of them they were— huge, enigmatic. Their flaming levins threaded the shimmering veils, patterned them, as though they were the flying robes of the very spirit of fire! And the tumult was as ten thousand Thors smiting with hammers against the enemies of Odin! As a forge upon whose shouting anvils were shaped a new world! A new world? A metal world! The thought spun through my mazed brain, was gone—and not until long after did I remem- ber it! For abruptly all that clamor died; the lightnings ceased; all the flitting radi- ances paled and the sea of flaming splen- dors grew thin as meving mists. The colossal, storming shapes dulled with them, seemed te darken into the murk. Through the fast-waning light and far, far away—miles it seemed on high and many, many miles in length—a broad band of fluorescent amethyst shone. From it dropped curtains, shimmering, nebulous, scintillant as the marching folds of the aurora; they poured, cascaded, from the amethystine band. Huge and purple-black against their opalescence bulked what at first I thought a mountain, so like was it to one of those fantastic buttes of our desert Southwest when their castellated tops are silhouetted against the setting sun; knew instantly that this was but subconscious striving to trans- late into terms of reality the incredible. It was a—city! A city fully five thousand feet high and crowned with countless spires and tur- rets, titanic arches, stupendous domes! It was as though the man-made cliffs of lower New York were raised scores of times their height, stretched a score of times their length; as ‘though Titans ten times the bulk of man had built them. And weirdly enough did it suggest those same towering masses of masonry when one watching from Brooklyn Bridge sees them blacken against the twilight skies. The pit darkened as though night were filtering down into it; the vast, purple- shadowed walls of the city sparkled out with countless lights! From the crowning _arches and turrets leaped broad filaments of flame, flashing, electric. ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. Was it my straining eyes, the play of light and shadow—or were those high-tilung ex- crescences shifting, changing shape? Again that icy hand stretched out of the un- known, stilled my heart. For they were shifting—arches and domes, turrets and spires; were melting, reappearing; in fer- ment; like the lightning-threaded, rolling edges of the thunder-cloud! I wrenched my gaze away; saw that our platform had come to rest upon a broad and silvery ledge close to the curving frame of the portal and not a yard from where upon her block stood Norhala, arm clasped about the rigid form of Ruth. I heard a sigh from Ventnor, an exclamation from Drake. Before one of us could find tongue to cry out to Ruth, the cube glided to the edge of the shelf, dipped out of sight. That upon which we rode trembled and sped after it. | There came a sickening sense of falling: we lurched against each other; for the first time the pony whinnied, fearfully. Then with an awful, an incredible speed we were flying down a wide, a glistening, a steeply angled ramp; into the pit, straight toward the half-hidden, soaring and precipitous es- carpments flashing afar. Far ahead raced the Thing on which stood woman and maid. Their tresses streamed behind them, mingled, silken web of brown and shining veil of red gold; little clouds of sparkling corpuscles threaded them, like flitting swarms of fireflies; their bodies were nimbused with tiny, flickering tongues of lavender flame! About us, above us, began again to rum- ble the countless drums of the thunder! CHAPTER XVII. THE PORTAL OF FLAME. T was as though we were upon a meteor { hurtling through space. The split air shrieked and shrilled, a keening barrier against the avalanche of the thunder. The blast bent us far back on thighs held rigid by the magnetic grip. The pony spread its legs, dropped its head: thinly through the hurricane roar- GOMLGDOO SS (CO