The faces of the two gaped up, ludicrous in their amazement.
"Follow," cried Norhala.
Ventnor leaped wildly for the top, Drake beside him; in the flash of a humming-bird's wing they were gripping me, swearing feebly.

The unseen hold angled; struck upward; clutched from ankle to thigh; held us fast--men and beast.
Away swept the block that bore Ruth and Norhala; I saw Ruth crouching, head bent, her arms around the knees of the woman.

They slipped into the mists; vanished.
And after them, like a log in a racing current, we, too, dipped beneath the faintly luminous vapors.
The cubes moved with an entire absence of vibration; so smoothly and skimmingly, indeed, that had it not been for the sudden wind that had risen when first we had stirred, and that now beat steadily upon our faces, and the cloudy walls streaming by, I would have thought ourselves at rest.
I saw the blurred form of Ventnor drift toward the forward edge.

He walked as though wading.

I essayed to follow him; my feet I could not lift; I could advance only by gliding them as though skating.
Also the force, whatever it was, that held me seemed to pass me on from unseen clutch to clutch; it was as though up to my hips I moved through a closely woven yet fluid mass of cobwebs.