They cowered panting and stared out.

The scene upon which Graham looked was very wild and strange.  The snow had now almost ceased; only a belated flake passed now and again across the picture.  But the broad stretch of level before them was a ghastly white, broken only by gigantic masses and moving shapes and lengthy strips of impenetrable darkness, vast ungainly Titans of shadow.  All about them, huge metallic structures, iron girders, inhumanly vast as it seemed to him, interlaced, and the edges of wind-wheels, scarcely moving in the lull, passed in great shining curves steeper and steeper up into a luminous haze.  Wherever the snow-spangled light struck down, beams and girders, and incessant bands running with a halting, indomitable resolution, passed upward and downward into the black.  And with all that mighty activity, with an omnipresent sense of motive and design, this snow-clad desolation of mechanism seemed void of all human presence save themselves, seemed as trackless and deserted and unfrequented by men as some inaccessible Alpine snowfield.

“They will be chasing us,” cried the leader.  “We are scarcely halfway there yet.  Cold as it is we must hide here for a space—­at least until it snows more thickly again.”

His teeth chattered in his head.

“Where are the markets?” asked Graham staring out.  “Where are all the people?”

The other made no answer.

“Look!” whispered Graham, crouched close, and became very still.

The snow had suddenly become thick again, and sliding with the whirling eddies out of the black pit of the sky came something, vague and large and very swift.  It came down in a steep curve and swept round, wide wings extended and a trail of white condensing steam behind it, rose with an easy swiftness and went gliding up the air, swept horizontally forward in a wide curve, and vanished again in the steaming specks of snow.  And, through the ribs of its body, Graham saw two little men, very minute and active, searching the snowy areas about him, as it seemed to him, with field glasses.  For a second they were clear, then hazy through a thick whirl of snow, then small and distant, and in a minute they were gone.

“Now!” cried his companion.  “Come!”

He pulled Graham’s sleeve, and incontinently the two were running headlong down the arcade of iron-work beneath the wind-wheels.  Graham, running blindly, collided with his leader, who had turned back on him suddenly.  He found himself within a dozen yards of a black chasm.  It extended as far as he could see right and left.  It seemed to cut off their progress in either direction.

“Do as I do,” whispered his guide.  He lay down and crawled to the edge, thrust his head over and twisted until one leg hung.  He seemed to feel for something with his foot, found it, and went sliding over the edge into the gulf.  His head reappeared.  “It is a ledge,” he whispered.  “In the dark all the way along.  Do as I did.”