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.