Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 27, 2025
We were aware of him climbing over the noisome litter of the dead giant's body which blocked the tunnel's further end. We heard his astonished exclamations. But evidently he did not suspect what had happened, thinking only that the stupid messenger had miscalculated his growth and had been crushed. We emerged into a less dim area. Polter did not stop at the fallen giant.
It was covered with a scrawled handwriting in pencil, but its giant characters seemed thick blurred strokes of charcoal. We could not read it; we were too close. Alan and Glora held it up against the tunnel wall. From a distance I could make it out. It was a note written in English, signed "Polter," evidently to one of his men. It read: The two prisoners, kill them at once. That is better.
I dumped the pellet out. It was spoiling! The exposure to the air and the moisture of my tongue, had ruined it! I realized the catastrophe, as I held its crumbling, deliquescing fragments on my palm it melted into vapor and was gone! We couldn't make ourselves smaller! Now we'd have to wait until Polter opened the cage.
Babs and I, from our smaller viewpoint, with the landscape so frequently blurred by distance and Polter's movements, seldom recognized where we were. But I realized going out was far easier in every way than coming in. Easier to determine the route, since usually the diminishing caverns and gullies made the upward step obvious.... We knew when Polter scrambled up the incline ramp.
With a muttered curse at his own reluctance, Alan seized the small pellet. I stopped him. "Wait!" The men momentarily were engaged in a low-voiced, earnest discussion. I dared to hesitate a moment longer. "Glora, where will you be?" "Here. Right here. I will hide." "We want to go after Mr. Polter," I gestured. "Into the little piece of golden rock.
Then in the blur I saw horror sweep his expression. His fingers involuntarily loosened. I got a breath of blessed air, gasping, and my sight cleared. Walls were closing around us! We were in a pit barely ten feet wide, with the top a few feet above Polter's head. The nearer wall shoved us again. Our bodies almost filled the shrinking pit! Polter lurched and cast me off.
Further on, the other men were dispersed, with one or two in the distant bow. Polter reclined on a cushioned couch amidships. Looking along the dark widely level bottom of the boat there were only the feet and legs of men visible. Alan whispered, "Let's get closer." We were insects soundlessly scuttling unnoticed in the dimness.
I wiped it away with a torn sleeve and stood panting, gazing at the glowing distance around me. I was a Titan, standing there. The body of Polter was shrinking at my feet. The circular abyss of emptiness came nearer as this rocky eminence contracted. Suddenly my attention went to the sky overhead. Vague distant lights were there. Then a broad flat blur seemed spread over me.
I've taken God, I don't know how much I've taken of the drug!" They were shrinking down by my boot tops. Alan shouted suddenly, "There's Babs! Thank God, she's all right." She was so small that I couldn't see her, or even hear her, though she must have been calling to them. Alan again screamed up at me with his little voice: "She's here, George! You go on and get Polter!
There was a brief swaying vista of a toy city; starlight overhead; a lurching swaying miniature of landscape as Polter ran for the towering cliffs. Then he climbed and scrambled into the tunnel-mouth. Had he turned at that instant doubtless he would have seen the rising distant figures of Glora, Alan and Dr. Kent. But evidently he didn't see them. Nor did we.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking