Chamberlin tried to reason. "It can't be--why, it's two hundred feet
high--it's just a gas bag, like Stimson said. It's--"
He stopped. The thing had moved again, more rapidly and with purpose.
The great column rose, then pressed down into the ground and pushed the
main bulk up out of the shadows. There was a moment of confusion while
our senses tried to grasp shape and scale at the same time, and then it
all came into focus as the thing arose into the light. At one instant we
were sane humans, trying to make out a great billowy form wallowing in
the darkness below. In the next instant we were madmen, staring into a
human face a hundred feet wide, that peered back at us from the level of
the cliff top! For a second we were all still--we four, and that titanic
placid oriental face hanging before us in the moonlight. Then the great
eyes blinked sleepily and the thing started to move toward us.
I cannot recall in detail what happened. I remember someone screamed, an
animal cry of pure terror. It may have been me, although Baker claims to
be the guilty one. In any case the four of us arose as one and plunged
headfirst off our rock into the tangle of brush at the top of the cliff.
I think that only the vines saved us from certain death in that first
mad instant. I know that we were wrestling with them for what seemed
like an eternity. They wrapped around my legs, tangled in my arms. They
were like clutching hands, holding me back in a nightmare-like struggle,
while the thing in the crater came closer. Then abruptly I realized that
they _were_ hands, human hands seizing us, pulling us back from the
cliff and then skillfully tieing us up.
It was all over in a moment. The madness was ended. We were once more
rational humans, tied hand and foot, and propped against the rocky ledge
in front of a dozen yellow-robed men. For a time we just breathed
heavily--ourselves and our brown skinned captors alike. Then one of the
latter spoke.
"You can stand now, yes?"
Baker struggled to his feet in reply. The rest of us did likewise, aided
not unkindly, by the yellow-robed men. Baker found his voice.
"Thank you," he said. In the brightening moonlight we looked more
carefully at our captors. They were of small stature, evidently
Japanese, and, by their costume, all priests.
Baker laughed briefly and glanced at the rest of us. "It would appear,"
he said dryly, "that we have been taken."