Chapter XXVI: The shrouded figure is a statue on an island. Pym and Peters get to the island, losing their canoe and all its contents to a raging cataract. The island is white the water surrounding it painfully hot. They live on the nasty white island plants.

More Tsalalian natives come to the island, with European prisoners. Pym and Peters hide and watch as they all go into an enormous stone edifice. They hear "Tekeli-li" shrieked a dozen times within. Tsalalians stampede out of the edifice, sans prisoners (and sans two Tsalalians). They enter the structure, noting its incredibly ancient and construction and exactly fitting stone blocks. Suddenly, they hear a cacophony of shrieking.

Chapter XXVII: They see a red light moving away down a tunnel. Peters finds a weird lantern that gives off a sickly green light, filled with a roiling liquid. They move down the tunnel. Peters finds a spiked pole, pentagonal in cross-section, with a razor-sharp edge on one end. They discover an large oval stone platform in the midst of a bunch of broken ones, Peters, going a little apeshit, decides they must set in a smooth tunnel. They manage it, and board it, bringing along a bunch of the spiked poles, weird lanterns, and white plants. Once they set foot on the platform, it starts moving of its own volition. How spooky.

They travel at an immense speed. There are discs on the wall they can't explain. They figure out how to change speed based on where they stand on the platform. They go for a long time. Pym determines that the lamps go on when touched, causing a weird tearing sensation. They travel for about three days. They slow down, and it starts getting really cold. The platform slows down near a wharf-like thing. They step off.

They head out of the tunnel towards daylight, and encounter weird white penguins. They kill a few so that they can wear the skins against the cold, and eat the meat.

Reaching the surface, they discover a dead city in a freezing polar waste. They go back and travel on the platform for a few more hours, until they hit another wharf. They emerge and see an enormous tower, topped by a blue light at the top. It's unholy and monstrous, etc., etc., etc. They see fresh tracks in the snow.

Chapter XXVIII: They travel the mile towards the tower. It's really cold. They nearly die. They come across a dead European body. Head smashed in. Tragic, really. They enter the tower.

The tower seems to be heated somehow. They find a ramp ascending into darkness, and start moving up it.

Entering a side passage, they discover a well-shaft which emanates heat and glows red. Peering into it, they see a red glow almost a mile below. There are six exits from the chamber, five equidistantly spaced and an anomalous sixth archway. They enter that and begin another winding ascent.

They come to a chamber crammed with what looks like long spun structures made of salt crystals, but in many sizes and shapes, and glowing with a weird blue light if you look at them out of the corner of your eye. They hear a weird singing kind of sound, too, simultaneously attractive and repulsive. They flee deeper into the tower.

They come to another chamber, filled with stone diases and flat, round projections from the floor and walls. There is an unkempt heap of crystals surrounding one dias, but without blue light or song. Above them is a weird, incomprehensible mural. Pym picks up a cyrstal with a jagged end to use as a weapon.

They find living runners and roots of plants emerging from two archways and climbing up the ceiling, disappearing up the endlessly spiralling ramp. They hear something coming down, and dash into one of the darkened rooms of the other three archways. Thick red light floods the central room, and they see a pentaform. They don't like it. It goes through another darkened exit, and they follow it.

There, they find the four remaining Europeans, and the two Tsalalians, laying on a block of stone. The air of the room is tropical and foul. The pentaform pushes one of the captives into a pit at the base of the platform and horrible cries issue from it, as of a man being tortured in the most painful fashion imaginable, underscored by a curious, unnerving churning sound. The pentaform leaves.

They sprint to the altar, but when Pym touches it, he is struck immobile. Peters whacks him with a metal pole, and Pym can move again. They remove the remaining three Europeans from the altar carefully, without touching it. They flee.

As they run out of the tower, a pentaform spots them and pursues. In desperation, Peters throws a lantern at it, and the glass shatters. The seething liquid within grows madly, turns from green to red, and melts the pentaform. It then begins heading for the humans. They run like the dickens. They make it to through the cold to the tunnels, and hop on the platform, which starts moving.

Chapter XXIX: They chat with the men - DeLance, Marburg, and yet another Vredenburgh(!) They think their ship might still be there. The man with the broken head had been killed by a pentaform, which smashed his skull like a pumpkin when he tried to resist.

After hours and days of travel, they find themselves pursued by three polar things. They throw all but one of their remaining lamps at them, and meet with success - the liquid within eats the pentaforms. The problem is, Our Heroes are now being pursued by the liquid, which is pretty definitely alive. But then, the seething red liquesence turns and smashes through a weak part in the wall for no apparent reason. Their platform suddenly stops and they are thrown off. The liquid thing, incalculably larger, explodes out the tunnel. For some reason, it stops ten feet from where they are. They flee.

They walk for a day and finally reach the island. The cataract is, mysteriously, gone. They take a canoe and leave. The further they get from the island, the colder it becomes. They land on an ice-flow and stay there until they are fortuitously picked up by the exploring vessel Nancy. It takes them home. Pym keeps the crystal shard as a souvenir.

Notes from Rachel

The lanterns sound like an effective, if ludicrously dangerous, weapon against the pentaforms, if we can find any. Perhaps they contain the "proto-Shoggoth" raved about by Danforth? It is interesting to note that one of the lanterns used by Peters and Pym survived and may have been taken back to civilization, as did also, perhaps, one of the mysterious sharp metal poles and, of course, Pym's crystal shard.

WHO HAS THEM NOW?