Not ten yards ahead of us and still deep within the luminosity had appeared the regal head of Norhala, the lovely head of Ruth.

The two rose out of the glow like swimmers floating from the depths.

Now they were clear before us, and now we could see the surface of the cube on which they rode.
But neither turned to us; each stared straightly, motionless along the axis of the sinking cone, the woman's left arm holding Ruth close to her side.
Drake's hand caught my shoulder in a grip that hurt--nor did he need to point toward that which had wrung the exclamation from him.

The funnel had broken from its slow falling; it had made one swift, startling drop and had come to rest.

Its recumbent side was now flattened into a triangular plane, widening from the narrow tip in which we stood to all of five hundred feet where its base rested against the blue wall, and falling at a full thirty-degree pitch.
The misty-edged circle had become an oval, a flattened ellipse another five hundred feet high and three times that in length.