He felt the thing that carried him rise to a greater altitude,
and below he glimpsed momentarily the second white-robed figure;
then the creature above sounded a low call, it was answered from
below, and instantly Bradley felt the clutching talons release
him; gasping for breath, he hurtled downward through space.

For a terrifying instant, pregnant with horror, Bradley fell;
then something swooped for him from behind, another pair of
talons clutched him beneath the arms, his downward rush was
checked, within another hundred feet, and close to the surface
of the sea he was again borne upward. As a hawk dives for a
songbird on the wing, so this great, human bird dived for Bradley.
It was a harrowing experience, but soon over, and once again
the captive was being carried swiftly toward the east and what
fate he could not even guess.

It was immediately following his transfer in mid-air that Bradley
made out the shadowy form of a large island far ahead, and not
long after, he realized that this must be the intended
destination of his captors. Nor was he mistaken. Three quarters
of an hour from the time of his seizure his captors dropped
gently to earth in the strangest city that human eye had ever
rested upon. Just a brief glimpse of his immediate surroundings
vouchsafed Bradley before he was whisked into the interior of one
of the buildings; but in that momentary glance he saw strange
piles of stone and wood and mud fashioned into buildings of all
conceivable sizes and shapes, sometimes piled high on top of one
another, sometimes standing alone in an open court-way, but
usually crowded and jammed together, so that there were no