The Thing upon which we rode was a torrent roaring through it.
A deeper blackness enclosed us--a tunneling.
Through that we flowed.

Out of it we darted into a widening filled with wan light drifting down through a pinnacle fanged mouth miles on high.
Again the cleft shrunk.

A thousand feet ahead was a crack, a narrowing of the cleft so small that hardly could a man pass through it.
Abruptly the metal dragon halted.
Norhala's chanting changed; became again the arrogant clarioning.

And close below us the huge neck split.

It came to me then that it was as though Norhala were the overspirit of this chimera--as though it caught and understood and obeyed each quick thought of hers.
As though, indeed, she was a PART of it--as IT was in reality a part of that infinitely greater Thing, crouching there in its lair of the Pit--the Metal Monster that had lent this living part of itself to her for a steed, a champion.