silver ingots, each one surely weighing a quintal, between
tremulous shapes of buildings which pointed lustrous towers
upward through fathoms of green water. It was many minutes
before I dared enter one of those great silent halls.
Dragging my heavy leaden-soled boots, I pushed through a
shapely silver doorway, and a fish darted past me as I
entered. Who could imagine the wonder of that vast room! The
mosaic that covered the walls and ceilings was of gold and
jewels, not porphyry and serpentine, such as delight the
wondering visitor to Venice, but precious stones--rubies,
sapphires, emeralds, amethysts as richly purple as grape
clusters, topaz as clear and mellow as honey.

Behind a traceried grillwork lay heaped a mound of treasures
such as no human eye will ever see again. I lifted a little
tree fashioned all of gold,--each leaf wrought of the
metal--and strung with jewelled fruits on which ruby-eyed
golden birds fed. In despairing rapture I clutched after a
neck ornament hung with pendulous pearls as large as plums.
But as I reached for it, I felt that something was looking at
me from the corner. Not Acuma; no human being was in sight.
Peering out through the glass visor of my helmet, I saw fixed
on me from low down beside the doorway two inky, moveless
eyes as large as saucers. They were not human eyes, nor did
they belong to any sea creature I had ever beheld or read of.
They were round and fixed, pools of bottomless blackness,
staring at me through two varas of clear, swaying water. I
took an uncertain step backwards, and as I did so I felt
something soft and heavy laid slowly and slimily upon my
shoulder....