Through them, beyond them, around and about them, drifted and eddied a horde⁠—great as that with which Tamerlane swept down upon Rome, vast as the myriads which Genghis Khan rolled upon the califs⁠—men and women and children⁠—clothed in tatters, half nude and wholly naked; slant-eyed Chinese, sloe-eyed Malays, islanders black and brown and yellow, fierce-faced warriors of the Solomons with grizzled locks fantastically bedizened; Papuans, feline Javans, Dyaks of hill and shore; hook-nosed Phoenicians, Romans, straight-browed Greeks, and Vikings centuries beyond their lives: scores of the black-haired Murians; white faces of our own Westerners⁠—men and women and children⁠—drifting, eddying⁠—each stamped with that mingled horror and rapture, eyes filled with ecstasy and terror entwined, marked by God and devil in embrace⁠—the seal of the Shining One⁠—the dead-alive; the lost ones!

The loot of the Dweller!