Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930

Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 Page 6

by Various

  The Ape-Men of Xlotli

  _By David R. Sparks_

  A beautiful face in the depths of a geyser--and Kirby plunges into a desperate mid-Earth conflict with the dreadful Feathered Serpent.

  CHAPTER I

  Kirby did not know what mountains they were. He did know that theMannlicher bullets of eleven bad Mexicans were whining over his head andwhizzing past the hoofs of his galloping, stolen horse. The shots weremingled with yelps which pretty well curdled his spine. In thecircumstances, the unknown range of snow mountains towering blue andwhite beyond the arid, windy plateau, offering he could not tell whatdangers, seemed a paradise. Looking at them, Kirby laughed harshly tohimself.

  As he dug the heels of his aviator's boots into the stallion's flanks,the animal galloped even faster than before, and Kirby took hope. Thenmore bullets and more yelps made him think that his advantage mightprove only temporary. Nevertheless, he laughed again, and as he becameaccustomed to the feel of a stallion under him, he even essayed a fewpistol shots back at the pack of frantic, swarthy devils he had fooled.

  _His head wavered back and forth and his hiss filled thenight._]

  Three hours ago he had been eating a peaceful breakfast with his friendand commandant, Colonel Miguel de Castanar, in the sunlit patio of thecommandant's hacienda. Castanar, chief of the air patrol for thedistrict, had waxed enthusiastic over the suppression of last spring'srevolutionists and the cowed state of up-country bandits. CaptainFreddie Kirby, American instructor of flying to Mexican pilots in themaking, had agreed with him and asked for one of the Wasps and threedays' leave with which to go visiting in Laredo. The simple matter of abroken fuel line, a forced landing two hundred kilometres from nowhere,and the unlucky proximity of the not-so-cowed horsemen, were the thingswhich had changed the day from what it had been to what it was.

  The one piece of good fortune which had befallen him since the banditshad surrounded the wrecked Wasp, looted it, and taken its lone pilotprisoner, was the break he was getting now. During the squadron's firsthalt to feed, he had knocked down his guards and made a bolt for thegrazing stallion. So far, the attempt was proving worth while.

  * * * * *

  On and on the stallion lunged toward the white mountains. Kirby's eyesbecame red rimmed now from fatigue and the glare of the sun and the dustof the pitilessly bare plateau. A negligible scalp wound under his mopof straw-colored hair, slight as it was, did not add to his comfort. Butstill he would not give up, for the horse, as if it sensed what itsrider needed most, was making directly for a narrow ravine whichdebouched on the plateau from the nearest mountain flank.

  It was the promise of cover afforded by the jagged rocks and junglegrowth of that ravine which kept hope alive in Kirby's throbbing brain.

  The stallion was blown and staggering. Foam from the heavily bittedmouth flashed back in great yellow flakes against Kirby's dust-cakedaviator's tunic. But just the same, the five mile gallop had carriedboth horse and rider beyond range of any but the most expert rifle shot.And Kirby knew that if his own splendid mount was almost ready to crash,the horses of his pursuers must be in worse shape still. So for thethird time since the fight had begun, he laughed. This time there was noharshness, but only relief, in the sound which came from his dry lips.

  Ten minutes later, he flung himself out of his saddle. Like the caressof a vast, soothing hand, the shadowed coolness of the ravine lay uponhim. As his feet struck ground, they splashed in the water overflowingfrom a spring at the base of an immense rock. At once Kirby dropped thereins on the stallion's neck, giving him his freedom, and as the horselowered his head to drink, Kirby stooped also.

  There was cover everywhere. Kirby's first move after pulling bothhimself and the horse away from the spring, was to glance up the long,deeply shaded canyon which he had entered--a gash hacked into the breastof the steep mountain as by a titanic ax. Then, reassured as to thepossibilities for a defensive retreat, he glanced back toward thedazzling, bare plateau.

  * * * * *

  It was what he saw taking place amongst the sombreroed bandits out therewhich made the grin of satisfaction fade from his broad mouth. His lastglance backward, before bolting into the canyon mouth, had showed him aragged squadron of men left far behind, yet galloping after him still.But now--

  Presently a puzzled frown made wrinkles in Freddie Kirby's widesunburned forehead. He relaxed his grip upon the heavy Luger, which, inhis big hands, looked like a cap pistol, and rubbed his eyes.

  But he was not mistaken. The horsemen had halted! Out there on theglaring, alkali-arid plateau, they were standing as still as so manystatues. Looking toward the canyon mouth which had swallowed theirquarry, they certainly were, but they were halted as completely as menstruck dead.

  "Huh," Kirby grunted, and scratched behind his ear.

  The next second he swung around to look at his horse, uncertain what hewas going to do next, but aware of the fact that right now, with a lotof unknown country between himself and Castanar's sunlit patio, thestallion was going to be a friend in need.

  As he turned, however, prepared to take up the loose reins, somethingelse happened. The stallion let out a neigh as shrill as a trumpetblast. As Kirby jumped, grabbed for the bridle, his fingers found emptyair. Like a crazy animal the stallion leaped past him, barely missinghim. Out toward the plain the horse jumped, out and away from the shadedcanyon mouth, out toward the spot where other horses waited. And despitethe animal's blown condition, the speed he put into his retreat leftKirby dazed.

  * * * * *

  After a helpless, profanity-filled second, Kirby scratched behind hisear again. As certain as the fact that almost his sole hope of gettingback to civilization depended upon the stallion, was the fact that thebrute did not intend to stop running until he dropped.

  "Now what in the hell ever got into his crazy head?" Kirby mutteredgrimly.

  Then he turned around to glance up the shadow-filled slash of a canyon,and sniffed.

  "Huh!"

  Faintly in the air had risen an odor the like of which he had neverencountered in his life. A combination, it was, of the unforgetablestench which hangs over a battlefield when the dead are long unburied,and of a fragrance more rare, more heady, more poignantly sweet than anyessence ever concocted by Parisian perfumer.

  With the drifting scent came a sound. Faint, carrying from a distance,the rumble which Kirby heard was almost certainly that of a geyser.

  There was no telling what had brought the troop of horsemen to a halt,but after a time Kirby knew that the cause of his horse's suddendeparture must have been a whiff of the strange perfume.

  * * * * *

  For a long time he stood still, watching the crazy stallion dwindle insize, watching the line of unexpectedly timid bandits. Then, when itbecame apparent that the horsemen were going to stay put either until hecame out, or showed that he never was coming out, he shrugged, and swungon his heel so that he faced up the canyon.

  The odor was dying away now, and the geyser rumble was gone. In Kirby'sheart came a mingled feeling of tense uneasiness and fascinatedcuriosity. Momentarily he was almost glad that his horse _had_ bolted,and that his pursuers _were_ blocking any lane of retreat except thatoffered by the canyon. If things had been different, the queer behaviorof the Mexicans, the unaccountable actions of his horse and the equallystrange growth of his own uneasiness might have made him uncertainwhether he would go up the canyon or not. Now it was the only thing todo, and Kirby was glad because, fear or no fear, he wanted to go on.

  "I wonder," he said out loud as he started, "just what the denizens ofFirst Street in Kansas would say to a layout like this!"

  CHAPTER II

  At the end of an hour he was still wondering.

  At midday the canyon was chill and dank, lit only by a half light whichat times dwindled to a deep dusk as the rock walls beetled togetherhundreds of feet above h
is head. Always when he stumbled through one ofthe darkest passages, he heard and half saw immense gray bats flappingabove him. In the half-lit reaches, he hardly took a step without seeinggreat rats with gray coats, yellow teeth, and evil pink eyes. But ratsand bats combined were not as bad as the snakes. They were almost white,and nowhere had he seen rattlers of such size. If his caution relaxedfor a second, they struck at him with fangs as long and sharp asneedles.

  The tortured, twisted cedars, the paloverdi, occatilla, cholla, opunti,through which he edged his laborious way, all offered an almost animate,armed hostility.

  Altogether this journey was the least sweet he had taken anywhere. Yethe went on.

  Why had eleven Mexican bandits refused to advance even to within decentrifle range of the canyon's mouth? What was there about the putrid yetgorgeous perfume that had made the stallion go off his nut, so tospeak?

  After a time, Kirby veered away from a fourteen-foot rattler whichflashed in a loathsome coil on his left hand. Hungry, weakened by all hehad been through since breakfast time, he plodded doggedly on.

  But a moment later he stumbled past a twisted cedar, and then stopped,forgetting even the snakes.

  At his feet lay the bleached skeleton of a man.

  * * * * *

  Beside the right hand, in a position which indicated that only the finalrelaxation of death had loosened his grip upon a precious object, lay acylinder, carefully carved, of rich, yellow gold.

  Of the science of anthropology Kirby knew enough to make him sure thatthe dolicocephalic skull and characteristically shaped pelvic and thighbones of the skeleton had belonged to a white man.

  As for the cylinder--But he was not so sure what that was.

  Regardless of the dry swish of a rattler's body on the rocks behindhim, he lifted the object from the spot in which it had lain for no manknew how long. Of much the size and shape of an old-time cylindrical waxphonograph record, the softly gleaming thing weighed, he judged, almosttwo pounds.

  Two pounds of soft, virgin gold of a quality as fine as any he had seenamongst all the treasures brought out of Mexico, Yucatan, and Perucombined!

  But the gold was not the only thing. If Kirby was human enough to thinkin terms of treasure, he was also enough of an amateur anthropologist tohold his breath over the carvings on the yellow surface.

  First he recognized the ancient symbols of Sun and Moon. And then arepresentation, semi-realistic, semi-conventionalized, of Quetzalcoatl,the Feathered Serpent, known in all the annals of primitive Mexicanreligions.

  Good enough.

  But the mere symbols by no means told the whole story of the cylinder.The workmanship was archaic, older than any Aztec art Kirby knew, olderthan Toltec, older far, he ventured to guess, than even earliest archaicMayan carvings.

  God, what a find!

  * * * * *

  For a moment it seemed almost impossible that he, Freddie Kirby, nativeof Kansas, unromantic aviator, should have been the one to discover thisrelic of an unknown, lost race. Yet the cylinder of gold was there, inhis hand.

  After a long minute Kirby looked around him, then listened.

  From up the canyon came the provocative rumble of the geyser. It wascloser now, and Kirby, glancing at his watch which had been spared tohim in the Wasp's crash, noted that just forty-four minutes had passedsince the last eruption. There was nothing to be done about the bleachedskeleton. So, tucking the precious cylinder into his tunic, Kirbyheaded on up the gash of a canyon.

  Far away indeed seemed the neat, maple-shaded asphalt street, the rowsof parked cars and farm wagons, the telephone office and drug store andbank, of the Kansas town where he had grown up.

  Time passed until again he heard the geyser, and again was dizzied bythe perfume. As the fragrance--close and powerful now--died away, heflailed with one arm at a two-foot bat which flapped close to his head.

  And then he trudged his dogged way around a deeply shadowed bend, andfound the chasm not only almost wholly dark, but narrower than it hadbeen at any previous point.

  "Holy mackerel," Kirby groaned. "Phew! If this keeps up, I--"

  He stopped. His jaw dropped.

  "Oh, hell!"

  The beetling walls narrowed in until the gash was scarcely fifteen feetwide. Further progress was barred by a smooth wall which rose sheer infront of him.

  * * * * *

  Kirby did not know how many seconds passed before he made out throughthe gloom that the wall was man-made and carved with the same symbols ofSun, Moon, and Feathered Serpent, which ornamented the cylinder of gold.But when he did realize at last, the shout with which he expressed hisfeeling was anything but a groan.

  It simply meant that the skeleton which once had been a man, had almostsurely found the golden cylinder beyond the wall and not in the canyon.And if the dead man had passed that smooth, carved barrier, another mancould do it!

  Kirby jumped forward, began to search in the darkness for some hiddenentrance.

  Minute after minute passed. He gave another cry. He saw a long, uprightcrack in the stone surface, and a quick push of his hands made thestones in front of him give almost an inch.

  All at once his shoulder was planted, and behind that square shoulderwas straining all the muscle of his two hundred pound body. The resultwas all that he desired. When he ceased pushing, a slab of rock gapedwide before him, giving entrance to a pitch dark tunnel.

  For a moment he held the portal back, then, releasing his pressure, hestepped into the dark passage. By the time a ponderous grating of rocksassured him that the door had swung shut of its own weight, he hadproduced matches and struck a light.

  * * * * *

  The puny flame showed him a curving passage hewn smoothly through theheart of bedrock. Before the flare died he walked twenty feet, and asanother match burned to his fingers, he found the right hand curve ofthe passage giving way to a left hand twist. After that he dared use nomore of his precious matches. But just when the darkness was beginningto wear badly on his nerves, he uttered a low cry.

  As he increased his rapid walk to a run, the faint light he had suddenlyseen ahead of him grew until it became a circular flare of daylightwhich marked the tunnel's end.

  Out of the passage Kirby strode with shoulders square and head up, hiscool, level, practical blue eyes wide with wonder. Out of the tunnel hestrode into the valley of the perfumed geyser.

  "God above!"

  The words were vibrant with hoarse reverence. He saw the sunlight of acliff-surrounded diminutive Garden of Eden. He saw a vale of floweringgrass, of palms and live oaks, saw patches of lilies so huge as totranscend belief, and dizzying clumps of tree cactus almost as tall asthe palms themselves.

  What was more, he saw in the center of this upland, cliff-guardedvalley, a gaping black orifice which every faculty of judgment told himwas the mouth of the geyser of perfume. And beside it, outstretched on asmooth sheet of rock which glistened as though coated with a layer ofclear, sparkling glass, he saw--

  * * * * *

  Kirby blinked his eyes rapidly, hardly believing what he saw.

  On the glistening rock lay the perfectly preserved figure of a SpanishConquistadore in full armor. Morion and breast-plate were in place, andglistened as though they had been burnished this morning. And theSpaniard's dark, handsome, bearded face! Kirby saw instantly that nodecay had touched it, that even the hairs of the beard were perfect. Thewhole armor-clad corpse gleamed softly with a covering of the sameglassy substance which covered the rock.

  Kirby glanced at his watch, saw that twelve minutes must elapse beforethe geyser spouted again. Then his eyes narrowed. He remained standingwhere he was, hard by the mouth of the tunnel, knowing that a wise manwould conduct cautiously his exploration of this valley of wonders.

  Arsenic! Silicon!

  The two words stood out sharply in his thought. In Africa exist
ed plentyof springs whose waters contained enough arsenic to bring death to thosewho drank. Might not the Spaniard's presence here be explained, then, byassuming that the geyser water was charged with a strong arseniccontent, and, in addition, with some sort of silicon solution which,left to dry in the air, hardened to glass?

  Lord, what a discovery to take back with him to Kansas! Almost it madethe discovery of the golden cylinder pale by comparison. Why, thecommercial uses to which this silicon water might be put were almostwithout limit, and the owner of the concession might confidently expectto make millions!

  It was while Kirby stood there, breathless and jubilant, waiting forthe geyser to spout, that he began to feel that _he was being watched_.

  Suddenly, with a start, he shot a sweeping glance over the whole grove.But that did no good. He saw nothing save sunlight and waving greenleaves.

  Eleven days were to pass before he discovered all that was to beinvolved in that sensation of being gazed at by unseen eyes.

  CHAPTER III

  At the beginning of the eleventh morning in the valley, Kirby had againposted himself close to the mouth of the black tunnel, and again feltthat hidden eyes were observing him.

  But this morning differed from the first morning, because now, for thefirst time, he was ready to do something about the watcher or watchers.Exploration of the whole valley had not helped. Therefore, there lay athis feet a considerable coil of rope, the manufacture of which fromplaited strands of the tough grass in his Eden had taken him whole days.With what patience he could find, he was waiting for the gigantic spoutof milky-colored, perfumed water which would mean that the geyser hadgone off and would erupt no more for exactly forty-four minutes.

  Eleven days in the valley!

  While he waited, Kirby considered them. Who had made the beautifulfootprints beside him, when he had slept at last after his arrival here?Why had so many of the queer, fuzzy topped shrubs with immenseyam-shaped roots, which grew here been taken away during that firstsleep, and during all his other periods of sleep? Who had taken them?Early in his stay, he had learned that the tuberlike roots were good toeat and would sustain life, and he supposed that the unseen people ofthe valley took them for food. But who were these people of the valley?

  Who had laid beside him during his first sleep the immense lily withperfume like that which came with the milky geyser spray--that spray ofdeath and delight mingled? Why had someone scratched a line in the earthfrom him directly to the distant orifice of the geyser? Was this, as hebelieved, a signal to come not only to the edge of the orifice, _but tolower himself down into its depths_? And if the line were intended as asignal, did the persons who came to the valley while he slept, alwayseluding him, wish him well or mean to do him harm?

  Last question of all: had the beautiful girl's face he believed he hadseen just once, been real or an hallucination? It had been while he waskneeling at the very edge of the geyser cone, staring down its manycolored throat, that the vision had appeared. Misty white amidst thegreen gloom, the face had been turned up to him, smiling, its lipsforming a kiss, and its great eyes beckoning. Had the face been real ora dream?

  Eleven days in the valley! Now, with his braided rope ready at last, hewas going to do something which might help to answer his questions.

  * * * * *

  Kirby reached out and began to run his grass rope, yard by yard, throughhis hands, searching carefully for any flaw. A canyon wren made the airsweet above him, while the morning sun began to wink and blink againstthe shadows which still lay against the face of the guardian cliffs.Kirby glanced at his watch and got up.

  Crossing beyond the mouth of the geyser, he grinned good morning at hisfriend the Conquistadore, and marched on into the shade of the live oakwhich grew nearest the geyser. Here he made one end of his rope fast tothe gnarled trunk, inspected his pistol, patted his tunic to make surethat the cylinder of gold was safe, then stood by to await the geyser.

  With the passing of three minutes there came from the still emptyorifice a sonorous rumbling. Kirby grinned.

  From deep in the earth issued a sound of fizzing and bubbling, andthen, to the accompaniment of subterranean thunder, burst loose themilky, upward column which had never ceased to awe the man who watchedso eagerly this morning. As the titanic jet leaped skyward now, theslanting rays of the sun caught it, and turned the water, fanning out,into a fire opal, into a sheet of living color.

  Kirby, hard headed to the last, drew from the supply in one pocket ofhis tunic, a strip of one of the tuberlike roots, and munched it.

  The thunder ceased. The waters receded.

  After that Kirby hesitated not a second. Promptly he moved forward,flung his coil of line down into the geyser tunnel, and swung on to theline. By the time he had swallowed the last bite of his breakfast, theworld he knew had been left behind, and he was climbing down to a new.

  * * * * *

  It became at once apparent that the gorgeously colored, glassy-smooththroat glowed with tints which were unfamiliar to him. He could perceivethese new shades of color, yet had no name for them.

  As he stopped after fifty feet to breathe, the color phenomenon made himwonder if the tuber roots he had been eating had affected his vision;then decided they had not. In addition to food value, the roots had somepower to stimulate courage and a slight mental exhilaration. But thedrug had proved non-habit forming, and Kirby knew that his powers ofperception were not now, and never had been, affected.

  He swung down further.

  Just a moment after he began that progress was when things began tohappen to him. First he heard what seemed to be the low titter of ahuman voice laughing sweetly. Next came a far off, unutterably lovelystrumming of music. And then he realized that, at a depth of about ahundred feet, he was hanging level with a hole which marked the mouthof another tunnel.

  This new tunnel sloped down into the earth on his right hand. The floorand walls were glassy smooth, and the angle of descent was steep, but byno means as steep as the drop of the vertical geyser shaft in which henow hung.

  Laughter, music, the new tunnel suddenly aroused an excitement whichmade him quiver.

  "When I saw _her_," he gasped, "she was standing here, in the mouth ofthis tunnel, looking up at me!"

  Violently, Freddie Kirby forgot the maple-shaded street of his Kansastown, forgot everything but desire to reach the mouth of the new tunnel,where the girl of the exquisite face and beckoning lips had stood.Tightening his grip on the rope, he began to swing himself back andforth like a pendulum.

  It seemed probable that when the geyser water shot up past thehorizontal tunnel, its force was so great that no water at all entered.He redoubled his efforts to widen his swing.

  * * * * *

  Then his feet scraped on the floor, and in a second he had alightedthere. He still hung stoutly to his line, however, for the tunnel slopeddown sharply enough, and was slippery enough, to prohibit themaintenance of footing unaided.

  The music which issued from the depths of that stunningly mysteriouspassage swelled to a crescendo--and stopped. Kirby clung there to hisprecarious perch, his feet slipping on the glass under them with everymove he made, and feelings stirred in his heart which had never beenthere before.

  Then, as silence reigned where the music had been, something promptedhim to look up. The next instant he stifled a cry.

  With widening eyes he saw the flash of a white arm and the gleam of aknife hovering over the spot where his taut rope passed out of thegeyser opening into the sunshine of the outer world. Again he stifled acry. For crying out would do no good. While the suppressed sound wasstill on his lips, the knife flickered.

  Then Kirby was shooting downward, the severed line whipping out afterhim. The first plunge flung him off his feet. A long swoop which he tookon his back dizzied him. But as the fall continued, he was able to slowit a little by bracing arms and legs against the tunnel walls.

 
; "Holy Jeehosophat!" he gurgled.

  But there seemed to be no particular danger. The slide was as smooth asmost of the chutes he had ever encountered at summer swimming pools. Ifever the confounded spiral passage came to an end, he might find that hewas still all right. As seconds passed and he fell and fell, it seemedthat he was bound for the center of the earth. It seemed that--

  * * * * *

  He swished around a multiple bend, and eyes which had been accustomed todarkness were blinded by light.

  It was light which radiated in all colors--blue, yellow, browns,purples, reds, pinks, and then all the new colors for which he had noname. Somehow Kirby knew that he had shot out of the tunnel, whichemerged high up in the face of a cliff, and that he was dropping throughperfumed, brilliant air resonant with the sound of birds and insects andhuman cries. The funny thing was that the pull of gravity was not right,somehow, and he was dropping fairly slowly. From far below, a body ofwhat looked like water was sweeping up to meet him. Kirby closed hiseyes.

  When he opened them again, his whole body was stinging with the slap ofhis impact, and he found that it was water which he had struck. Theproof of it lay in the fact that he was swimming, and was approaching ashore.

  But such water! It was milky white and perfumed as the geyser flow hadbeen, and it seemed luminous as with a radium fire. Had he not realizedpresently that the fluid probably contained enough arsenic to finish athousand like him, he would have thought of himself as bathing in thewaters of Paradise.

  But then he began to forget about the poison which might already be atwork upon him.

  Ahead of him, stretched out in the gorgeous, colored light, ran a beachwhich was backed by heavy jungle. And on the beach stood the lovelycreatures, all clad in shimmering, glistening garments, whose flutelikecries had come to him as he fell.

  * * * * *

  Kirby looked, and became almost powerless to continue his swim. Thebeauty of those frail women was like the reputed beauty of brightangels. That paralyzing effect of wonder, however, did not last long.

  The girls moved forward to the water's edge, and, laughing amongstthemselves, beckoned to him with lovely slender hands whose every motionwas a caress.

  "Be not afraid," called one in a curious patois dialect, aboutfive-sixths of which seemed made up of Spanish words, distorted butrecognizable.

  "The water would kill you," called another, "as it killed the Spaniardin armor. But we are here to save you. I will give you a draught todrink which will defeat the poison. Come on to us!"

  Kirby's heart was almost literally in his mouth now, because the girlwho promised him salvation was she whose lips had formed a kiss at himfrom the green-gloomy throat of the geyser.

  His feet struck a shale bottom. Panting, he stood up and was consciousof the fact that despite his forlornly dripping and dishevelledcondition, he was tall and straight and big, and that for some reasonall of the girls on the gleaming sand, and one girl in particular, wereanxious to receive him here.

  The one girl had drawn a small, gleaming flask of gold from the mistybodice of her gown, and was holding it out while she laughed with redlips and great, dazzling dark eyes.

  "_Pronto!_" she called in pure Spanish, and other girls echoed the word."Oh," went on the bright owner of the flask, "we thought you would_never_ have done with your work on the rope. It took you so long!"

  * * * * *

  Kirby left the smooth lake behind him and stood dripping on the sand.The moment the air touched his clothes, he felt that they werestiffening slightly. Yet the sensation brought no terror. He could notfeel terror as he faced the girls.

  "Give him the flask, Naida!" someone exclaimed.

  "Ah, but the Gods _have_ been kind to us!" echoed another.

  The girl with the flask made a gesture for silence.

  "Is it Naida you are called?" Kirby put in quickly, and as he spoke theSpanish words, the roll of them on his tongue did much to make him knowthat he was sane and awake, and not dreaming, that this was still theTwentieth Century, and that he was Freddie Kirby.

  Answering his question, Naida nodded, and gave him the flask.

  "A single draught will act as antidote to the poison," she said.

  "I drink," said Kirby as he raised the flask, "to the many of you whohave been so gracious as to save me!"

  A flashing smile, a blush was his answer. And then he had wetted hislips with, and was swallowing, a limpid liquid which tasted of somedrug.

  "Enough!" Naida ordered in a second.

  As she reached for the flask, her companions closed in as though aceremony of some sort had been completed.

  "Is it time to tell him yet, Naida?" piped one of the girls, youngerthan the rest, whom someone had called Elana.

  "Oh, _do_ begin, Naida," chorused two more. "We can't wait _much_ longerto find out if he is going to help us!"

  Kirby turned to Naida, while a soothing sensation crept through him fromthe draught he had taken.

  "Pray tell me what it is that I am to be permitted to do for you. Ican promise you that the whole of my life and strength, and suchintelligence as I possess, is yours to command."

  * * * * *

  Excited small cries and a clapping of hands answered him. As for Naida,her face lighted with glowing joy.

  "Oh, one who could say that, _must_ be the friend and protector of whomwe have stood in such bitter need!"

  "What," asked Kirby, "is this need which made one of you cut my rope, sothat I should come here?"

  A momentary silence was broken only by the hum of insects in theperfumed air, and by the golden thrilling of a bird back in the jungle.Then Kirby beheld Naida bowing to him.

  "So be it," she said in a voice low and flutelike. "I will speak nowsince you request it. Already you have seen that you are here in ourworld because we conspired amongst ourselves to bring you here. Ourreason--"

  She paused, looked deep into his eyes.

  "Amigo," she continued slowly, "we whom you see here are the People ofthe Temple. For more centuries than even our sages can tell, ourprogenitors have dwelt here, where you find us, knowing always of yourouter world, but remaining always unknown by it. But now the time hascome when those of us who are left amongst our race need the help of onefrom the outer races we have shunned. Dangers of various orders confrontus who have waited here for your coming. When we first discovered you inthe Valley of the Geyser, the idea came to me that we must make youunderstand our troubles, and ask of you--"

  But then she stopped.

  As Kirby stared at her, the gentleness of her expression was replaced bya swift strength which made her majestic.

  The next moment bedlam reigned upon the beach.

  "_They are after us!_" gasped one of the girls in terror. "Quick, Naida!Quick! Quick!"

  * * * * *

  Whatever it was that threatened, Naida did not need to be told that theneed for action was pressing. She shouted at her companions some orderwhich Kirby did not understand. From a pouch at her side, she snatchedout a greyish, spherical vegetable substance which looked almost like atennis ball. Then she braced herself as if to withstand an assault.

  "Stand back!" she cried to Kirby.

  He had long ago ceased to wonder at anything that might happen here.Disappointed that Naida's story had been interrupted, wondering what waswrong, he obeyed Naida's order to keep clear.

  As he fell back and stood motionless, there came from behind a densescreen of shrubs which would have resembled aloe and prickly pearbushes, save that they were as big as oak trees, a ghastly howling. Thenext second, hopped and hurtled across the beach toward the girls, agroup of hair-covered, shaggy creatures which were neither apes nor men.The faces, contorted with lust, were hideously leathery and brown, theforeheads small and beetling, and the mouths enormous, with immenseyellow teeth.

  Helpless, Kirby realized that Naida
and all the others had clapped overtheir faces curious masks which seemed to be made of some crystallinesubstance, and that now others had armed themselves with the tennisballs. And that was the last observation he made before the battleopened furiously.

  With a cry muffled behind her mask, Naida leaped out in front of hersquadron and cut loose her queer vegetable ball with whizzing aim andforce.

  Full into the snarling face of one of the ape-men the thing smashed,filling the air all about the creature with a yellow, mistlike powder.Kirby was half deafened by the yells of rage and terror which went upfrom the entire attacking band. The creature who had been hit fell tohis knees the while he made agonized tearing movements at his face anduttered shrill, jabbering yelps.

  Other balls flashed instantly from Naida's ranks, and each brought aboutthe same ghastly result as the first. But then Kirby saw that the wholejungle seethed with the hairy, awful men.

  "Keep back!" Naida shrieked at him through her mask. "We have no maskfor you. If the powder from our fungi touches you, it will be the end!"

  * * * * *

  With gaps in the advancing line filled as soon as each screeching apewent down, the attackers leaped on until Kirby knew they would be uponthe girls in a matter of seconds. A sweat broke out on his neck.

  But then an idea gripped him, and suddenly, without even a last glanceat Naida, he leaped away even as she had commanded.

  A great boulder lay on the shore fifty yards away. Toward it Kirbystreaked as though he had become coward. But he had not turned coward.

  By the time he reached the shelter which would protect him from thefungus mist, a turning point had come in the battle. The ape-men hadclosed in on the girls, were swarming about them, and the mist balls hadalmost ceased to fly. But the thing which gave Kirby hope was that theapes were not attempting to harm the girls. They seemed victors, butthey were not committing atrocities.

  It was the sharp intuition that something like this might happen whichhad sent Kirby fleeing from the fight. He believed he might yet proveuseful.

  The thickest group of attackers were jostling about Naida. As thescreams and sobs of the girls quivered out, mingled with the gutturalroaring of the men, Naida was shut off by a solid wall of aggressors.

  Then Kirby saw her again. But now two of the most powerful of theape-men had caught her up and was carrying her. Her kicking and writhingand biting accomplished nothing. The apes were headed directly back tothe jungle.

  * * * * *

  Now, however, most of the yellow mist had disappeared, and that was allKirby had been waiting for. With a growling shout, he tore out frombehind his boulder, his Luger ready. Naida's captors were in fullretreat, and other pairs of men were snatching up other girls andhopping after them. Toward Naida Kirby ran madly but not blindly.

  "Naida! Naida!" he bellowed.

  He got in two strides for every one the apes made.

  "Naida!" he shouted, and at last saw her look at him.

  Her face was pallid with loathing and terror. As her glimmering darkeyes met his, they flashed a plea which made his heart thrash againsthis lungs.

  With a final roar of encouragement Kirby closed in on the hair-coveredmen, and fired instantly a shot which caught one full in the heart. Thecreature wavered on its legs, looked at the unexpected enemy withdismayed, swinish little red eyes, and relaxing his hold upon Naida,dropped without making a sound.

  After that--

  But suddenly Kirby found himself unable to comprehend fully the otherterrific results of his intervention. Before the echoes of his shotdied, there came to him the rumble of what seemed to be tons of fallingrock. In the bright air a slight mist was precipitated. To all of whichwas added the effect upon the ape-men of fear of a weapon and a type offighter utterly new to them.

  Kirby had fired believing that he would have to fight other ape-menwhen the first fell. But not so. Instead of that--

  * * * * *

  He blinked rapidly as he took in the scene.

  Naida had been released. Lying on the sand beside the dead ape-man, shewas looking up at him in stupefied wonder. And her other captor, insteadof remaining to fight, had clapped shaggy hands over his ears, and wasleaping headlong for the protection of the jungle!

  Moreover, the soprano cries of the girls and the deep howls of the menwere rising everywhere, and everywhere the ape-men were dropping theircaptives and plunging away after their leader.

  "Huh," Kirby muttered aloud, and wondered what the citizens of Kansaswould have to say about _this_.

  Naida looked at the dead and bleeding ape-man and shuddered, and then atthe score or so of others brought down by the puff balls. Then shelooked up at Kirby, raised her arms for his support, and smiled up intohis brown face.

  Kirby forgot Kansas, lifted her, warm and alive, radiantly beautiful, inhis arms.

  "Our friends the enemies," she whispered as she remained for a second inhis embrace and then drew away, "will attack no more this day--thanks toyou."

  There was no possible need for another shot, Kirby saw. In terrifiedsilence, the first of the apes had already floundered behind the pricklypear and aloe bushes, and the last stragglers were using all the powerin their legs to catch up. On the beach, Naida's followers were pickingthemselves up, and already a few of them had burst into ringinglaughter.

  "Come on, all of you," Naida said to them, and, including Kirby in herglance, added, "We may as well go to the caciques now, and have it overwith."

  CHAPTER IV

  It was with Naida at his side and the other girls grouped about them,that they started their journey to the "caciques," whoever they mightbe, "to have it over with," whatever that might mean. As they strodealong in silence, Kirby did what he could to straighten out in his mindthe many curious things which had happened since he sat testing his ropein the upper world this morning.

  In final analysis, it seemed to him that, extraordinary as hisexperience had been, there was nothing so much out of the way about it,after all. The only unusual thing was the existence of this inhabitedpocket in the earth. For the rest, the strange colors to which he couldnot put a name, were simply some manifestation of infra-reds andultra-violets. And then the startling effect of his single shot at theape-men--that was simply the old story of savage creatures running froma new weapon and a new enemy; naturally the shot had sounded loud inthis enclosed cavern. Lastly, the pull of gravity down here seemed upsetsomehow. But why should it not seem so, at this distance within theearth? The American was no scientist; the conclusions he reached seemedvery reasonable to him.

  All told, the last thing Kirby found he needed to do was pinch himselfto see if he was awake.

  A place of indefinite extent, the cavern seemed to be exactly what hehad already judged it--a giant pocket within the earth. The ceiling, orthe sky, was of some kind of natural glass--no doubt the same kind whichwas crackling on his clothes now--and from it emanated the brilliant,many colored glow which lighted the cavern. Radium? Perhaps it was that.Perhaps the rays were cast off from some other element even lessunderstood than mysterious radium. As for the plant and animal life withwhich the cavern teemed, it was amazing.

  * * * * *

  But Kirby did not give himself up to silent observation any longer.

  "Will you finish telling me," he asked of Naida, "about the task I am toperform for you here?"

  Naida, walking with lithe strides along a path jungle-hemmed on bothsides, smiled at him.

  "You are to be our leader."

  "Yes?"

  Now both Naida and the other girls became sober.

  "You will lead us in a revolt."

  "Ah!" Kirby whistled softly.

  "In a revolt against the caciques--the wise men--whose kind havegoverned the People of the Temple since the beginning."

  Her statement was received with acclaim by the whole troop, who crowdedclose around, the while they smil
ed at Kirby.

  "You mean I am to lead a revolt," he asked, "against these same caciqueswhom we are going now to face?"

  Naida nodded emphatically.

  "Yes, if revolt proves necessary. And it probably will."

  "Hum." Kirby scratched behind his ear. "You'd better tell me what youcan about it."

  * * * * *

  Then, as they hurried on, Naida spoke rapidly.

  The situation before the People of the Temple was that for a long timenow, the only children to be born had been girls. Worse still, not evena girl had been born during a period equal to sixteen upper-world years.The only remaining members of a race which had flourished in thisunderground land for countless thousands of years, consisted of thecaciques, a handful of aged people, and the thirty-four girls, includingNaida, who accompanied Kirby now.

  On one hand was promised extinction through lack of reproduction. On theother, even swifter and more terrible extinction at the hands of theape-men, whom Naida called the Worshippers of Xlotli, the Rabbit God,the God of all bestiality and drunkenness.

  It was the menace of the ape-men, rather than the less appalling one oflack of reproduction, which was making the most trouble now. Ages ago,when the People of the Temple had flourished as a race, they had beenuntroubled by the Worshippers of Xlotli. But now the ape-men were by farthe stronger; and they desired the girls who had been born as the lastgeneration of an ancient race. The battle of this morning had been onlyone of many.

  Dissension between the caciques, who ruled the People of the Temple, andtheir girl subjects, had arisen on the subject of the best way ofdealing with the ape-man menace.

  * * * * *

  Some time ago, Naida, heading a council of all the girls, had proposedto the caciques that support be sought amongst the people of the upperworld. This would be done judiciously, by bringing to the lower realm afew men who were wise and strong, men who would make good husbands, andwho could fight the ape-men.

  This proposal the priests had promptly quashed. They would neverreceive, they said, any members of the teeming outer races from whom thePeople of the Temple had so long been hidden. Those few who hadblundered into the Valley of the Geyser during the centuries, and whohad never escaped, were enough. Better, said the caciques, that acompromise be arranged with the subjects of the Rabbit God.

  Flatly then, the priests had proposed that some of the girls, the numberto be specified later, should be given to the ape-men, and peace won.During the time of reprieve which would thus be afforded, prayers andsacrifices could be offered the Lords of the Sun and Moon, and toQuetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent. In answer to these prayers, theGods would surely send the aged people who alone were left asprospective parents, a generation of sons.

  Once the priests' program of giving up some of the girls to the ape-menhad been made definite, it had not taken Naida and the others long todecide that they would never submit. And then, while matters were at anacute stage, a tall, blond white man had come to the Valley of theGeyser--Kirby.

  * * * * *

  As Naida had finished her story, Kirby mustered a smile despite thesoberness which had come upon him.

  "So the white man came," he repeated after her, "and all of you decidedforthwith to stage your revolt."

  "Why not?" Naida answered. "We observed you until we were sure youpossessed the qualities of leadership we wanted. After that, we did whatwe could to coax you to come here."

  Kirby grinned at that.

  "Now," Naida ended simply, "we will go to the caciques. If they acceptyou, and grant our requests to them, there will be peace. If they rage,it will be war."

  Suddenly she drew closer to Kirby as they swung along, and slipped herhand into his, looking up at him in silent entreaty.

  "How much farther," he asked in a voice which became sharp, "until wereach the headquarters of these caciques?"

  "They live in a castle which our ancestors built ages ago on a protectedplateau," Naida answered tensely. "It is a good distance still, but wewill cover it soon enough."

  They crossed now one edge of a shadow-filled forest composed principallyof immense, pallid palmlike trees. Farther on, the path wound through abelt of swampy land covered by gigantic reeds which rustled above theirheads with a glassy sound, and by things which looked like the cat-tailsof the upper world, but were a hundred times larger. Everywhere hoveredodd little creatures like birds, but with teeth in their long snouts andsmall frondlike growths on each side of their tails. About some swampplants with very large blooms resembling passion flowers, flitted dragonflies of jeweled hues and enormous size, and under the flowers hoppedstrange toadlike creatures equipped with two pair of gauzy wings.

  * * * * *

  Finally, through a tunnel composed of ferns a hundred feet high, theyemerged to a still densely overgrown but higher country which Naida saidwas a part of the Rorroh forest.

  In the forest, Kirby gained a hazy impression of bronzy, immense cycadsand what appeared to be tree chrysophilums with gorgeous blossoms. Thenhe received a much clearer impression of other trees with blossoms ofbright orange yellow and very thick petals, each tipped with a glassysharp point. The disconcerting thing about the tree was that, as theyapproached, the scaly limbs began to tremble and wave, and suddenlylashed out as though making a human effort to snatch at the brighttravelers.

  Naida and all the others hurried along without offering comment, andKirby asked no questions.

  Once he thought he saw a group of gorilla creatures parallelling theircourse back amongst the forest growth, but if Naida observed theanimals, she paid no attention. The one thing which had any effect uponthe company was the appearance, presently, of two vast, birdlikecreatures. As these things approached, Naida signaled to all to crouchbeneath the shelter of a tall rock beside the path.

  Enormous, the birds had bat wings, and carried with them, as theyapproached, the stink of putrid flesh. The long beaks were overfull ofsharp teeth. The heads, set upon bodies of glistening white-grey, wereblack. Reddish grey eyes searched the jungle as the creatures flappedalong. But, the Pterodactyls--if they were that--passed above Naida'sband without offering attack, and presently Naida gave the command toadvance again.

  * * * * *

  In time, they came to a chasmlike gorge across which was suspendeda slender long thread of a bridge. Not far above the bridge, aconsiderable river emptied itself into the gorge in a mirrorlikeribbon. Kirby could not hear the torrent fall--or rather could nothear it strike any solid bottom. But from somewhere in the unlighted,unfathomed depths of the abyss rose strange bubbling and whistlingsounds.

  At the bridge, Naida paused and pointed to the land across the river.And as Kirby looked in the direction indicated, he beheld a rockyeminence rising for several hundred feet straight up from the expanse ofa level, tree and grass covered plain. Atop of the plateau, glimmeredthe complex towers and turrets, the crenellated walls of a castle which,in its grey antiquity, seemed as old as the race of men.

  "It is behind those walls that the caciques dwell," Naida said quickly."It is behind the castle, in a series of separate houses, that the oldermembers of the race dwell. We shall go and look upon them presently. Butfirst we will force an interview with the caciques."

  In silence Kirby took her hand, and, with the others following, theymoved out upon the swaying, perilous causeway which hung above thechasm. After that, the trip across the plain to the foot of the plateaucliffs was quickly accomplished.

  Here, however, Kirby thought they must face trouble, for he found thatthe great walls, of a sparkling, almost glassy smoothness, shot up to aheight of at least three hundred feet, and that no path of any sort wasvisible.

  "We're here," he said, "but how can we get up?"

  * * * * *

  But understanding began to dawn as Naida laughed, and produced from thepouch at
the side of her gauzy dress four pliable discs of a substancewhich resembled rubber.

  "You are very strong, are you not?" she asked.

  "Yes."

  "Then you will have no trouble in following us up the cliff. Our SerpentGod, Quetzalcoatl, taught us how to climb long ago."

  With that she handed Kirby the set of vacuum discs, and producinganother for herself, moistened them in a pool of water close at hand.Then, as all of the girls followed her action, she strapped them to herhands and feet, and in a moment they had begun the ascent.

  "Why," Kirby said presently, "with these things you could hang by yourfeet and walk on a smooth ceiling!"

  Naida laughed, and they worked their way upward.

  When the climb was accomplished and the discs were put away, Kirby foundhimself standing on the outer edge of a mediaeval paradise, of amagnificent plateau partly fortified by nature, partly by the hand ofman.

  "Ah!" he cried in deep admiration, then followed Naida.

  The building--the castle--in the near distance, resembled a castle ofSpain, save that there was greater beauty and subtlety of architecture.Turreted on all four corners, constructed of material which looked likeblocks of natural glass, the fairylike structure was crowned by agigantic tower of something which resembled obsidian. Up and up thistower soared until its gleaming black tip seemed almost to touch theglassy-radiant sky of the cavern.

  No people showed themselves, and Kirby saw that the bronze-studdedportals set in the front of the castle were closed.

  Admiringly, he glanced at the surrounding land laid out in checkerboardpatches of gardens and orchards where grew a bewildering variety ofunknown fruits and blooms. Butterflies drifted past, and the air wasfreighted with the scent of flowers. Inside a walled enclosure, Kirbysaw a good-sized plot heavily grown with the plant on which he had beensubsisting. As they passed this ground, each of the girls, Naidaleading, made a strange little bowing, gliding genuflection, and Kirbywondered.

  * * * * *

  Now, however, new sights distracted him as they crossed a portdrawbridge above a deep moat which was a fairyland of aquatic plants.Although not a sound had come from the castle, the great entrance doorswere swinging back.

  "Be ready," Naida whispered, "for almost anything. The doors are beingopened by some of the palace guard. I have little doubt that word waslong ago rushed to the caciques that we are come to them with anupper-world man!"

  Kirby answered with a nod. Then they passed the outer doors, passedinside, and Kirby blinked at what he saw.

  In a long hall decorated bewilderingly with a carven frieze in whichappeared all of the symbols common to early Mexican religions, and manynew ones, stood a row of bright suits of armor of the Sixteenth Century.From each suit peered the glassy face and shovel beard of a deadConquistadore.

  So this was what happened to intruders from the upper world! TheConquistadore who kept his long watch beside the geyser was not the onlyone! Kirby felt an involuntary chill prickle up his back. But he was notgiven long to think before Naida, ignoring the gruesome array, claspedhis arm.

  "Look! Behold!"

  And Kirby saw that with almost magical silence the whole wall at the endof the corridor was sliding back to reveal an enormous amphitheatre inthe center of which stood a vast circular table. Ranged in a semicircleabout that table, stood fifteen incredibly ancient men clad in long,glistening grey robes. Blanched beards trailed down the front of thegarments until they all but touched the floor.

  The caciques!

  Kirby, on the threshold of the amphitheatre, squared his shoulders andheld his head high. Then with Naida on his right, his own eyes boringunyieldingly into the smouldering, narrowed eyes which stared at him, headvanced.

  But in front of him the priests moved suddenly. From Naida burst ashriek. In the radiant glare of the council room flashed the long, thin,cruel blade of a sacrificial knife.

  The cacique who had whipped it from his robe flew at Kirby with a condorswoop, talon-hands outstretched, his wrinkled, bearded face contortedwith fury.

  CHAPTER V

  Before Kirby was more than half set to fight, the priest was clawing athis throat, and a gnarled old fist was poised to drive the knife in adeath stroke.

  Kirby did the only thing he could do quickly--sprang to one side. Themove saved him. The knife whipped past his shoulder, and the caciquenearly fell. But it had been a close enough squeak for all that.

  Nor was it over. After Kirby the priest sprang with unexpected agility,and before Kirby could snatch at his pistol the talon-hands were lungingat his throat once more.

  With the gasps of the girls ringing in his ears, Kirby bunched himselffor another side leap only to find the cacique all over him like anoctopus. Momentarily the knife hung above his chest, and Kirby, dismayedat the powers of his opponent, almost felt that the thing must plungebefore he could break the octopus hold.

  But he had no intention of being defeated, and now he was getting usedto the fight. The priest's left arm swiftly clenched about his neck andshoulders, and the right arm, with the knife, attempted a drive throughto the heart. Suddenly, however, Kirby lurched sideways and backward,and as the octopus grip slackened for a flash, he himself got awrestler's grip that left him ready to do business. As the priest brokefree, he slid around in an attempt to fasten himself on Kirby's back.Quickly, tensely Kirby doubled, and knew that he had done enough. Thecacique shot over his shoulders, described a somersault in midair, andlanded with a sharp crack of head and shoulders against unyieldingstone.

  * * * * *

  From the semicircle of other priests went up a gasp. From Naida came astrangled cry of joy. Kirby made one leap for the knife which had fallenfrom the cacique's hand as he slumped into unconsciousness, and then hestraightened up with the weapon safe in his possession.

  "There, you old billygoat," he croaked in English, "maybe you won't tryany more fast ones for awhile."

  A second later he stepped over the sprawled body to stand beside Naida.

  Upon the wrinkled countenances of the remaining caciques was stamped alook of dismay and hatred which boded no good. It was plain to Kirbythat in battering up the man detailed to kill him, he had committed adesecration of first order.

  "Is there anyone else who cares to fight?" he flung at them in Spanish,showing a contempt as great as their rage.

  The response he got was instant. From one old gullet, then from others,came choking, snarling sounds which presently became words. By thosewords Kirby heard himself cursed with a vituperation which made him,even in his temporary triumph, feel grave.

  But he did not let that soberness trouble him long. For the main pointnow was that no one made a move to fight further, which was what he hadexpected. He had flung them the challenge, knowing that he was possessedof their knife, and suspecting that it was their only weapon. The beliefthat no one would care to try a barehanded conflict, no matter whatinsult was waiting to be avenged, seemed justified as none of thecaciques advanced, and as even the cursing presently ceased.

  "No?" Kirby asked. "There is to be no more fighting?"

  * * * * *

  One of the caciques now came forward a few steps.

  "No," he answered with a lameness which was not to be denied. "But you,a criminal interloper in our realm, have been marked as a victim forsacrifice, and from this there is no power in the universe which cansave you."

  Kirby, after a reassuring glance at Naida, looked at the floored priestwho was sitting up now, looking stupidly about, and feeling himself allover, and Kirby suppressed a grin.

  "Ah, I am to be sacrificed, eh? But what happens until that time comes?Listen my Wise Ones--"

  He stabbed a finger at them, and his eyes flashed.

  "Listen! What you mean to say is that I have defeated you, and you mustlay off me until you can launch another attack. But I have a few thingsto say to that. One is that I am not going to permit myself to
_be_sacrificed. Another is that I demand, right here and now, that you beginto discuss with me certain agreements which are going to regulate thefuture conduct of affairs in this world to which I have come."

  A low exclamation answered that, but it came from no priest. Theyremained sullen and staggered. It was Naida who murmured, and there wasexcitement and pleasure in her voice. Suddenly she placed her lipsagainst Kirby's ear.

  "You must not treat with them," she said. "Tell them you want to see theDuca, and will destroy them all unless he comes!"

  Understanding burst over Kirby. The Duca! Then these men were only therepresentatives of a High Priest, the Duca!

  "Yes," he repeated resolutely to the assembled greybeards, "a meeting isgoing to be held in this chamber of council at once. But I will notdeal with you! Do you understand me? I must see the Duca. I leave it toyou to decide whether you will summon him, or force me to fight my waythrough to wherever he is staying."

  "The Duca!"

  * * * * *

  The words burst in dismay from the gimlet-eyed cacique who had saidthere would be no more fighting. He looked at Naida, well aware of thefact that it was her interference which had made Kirby extend hisdemand. And his look was black.

  Kirby slid between Naida and the cacique.

  "Yes," he spat out, "the Duca! Will you summon him, or--"

  He did not repeat what he would do as an alternative. A second passed insilence. It seemed as if the cacique who had been speaking was ready toburst.

  "Answer me!" Kirby thundered.

  And then the priest obeyed.

  "Very well," he growled in a voice which quaked with rage. "I obey. Butyou will wish you had never made the demand!"

  The next second he swung on his heel, and leaving his company behind asa guard, headed toward a stair which led upward from one side of theamphitheatre, and which was protected by a door of heavy, grilled metalwork. The stairway seemed to be spiral, and was all enclosed. Kirbyrealized that it must lead into the tall and beautiful tower of obsidionwhich he had seen outside.

  "Oh," Naida whispered as looks and smiles of approval came from all ofthe girls, "you have been magnificent! Mark now, what we must do. Youmust be the one to state our terms, because you have already won avictory for us. Tell the Duca that we will not submit to any compromisewith the ape-men, and least of all will we let any of our number go tothe ape-men."

  A deep flush crept into Kirby's cheeks at thought of what he would liketo do to the man who had proposed that sacrifice.

  "Then tell him," Naida continued, "that we want men brought to our worldfrom the world above. And finally tell him we will live under hisdictatorship no longer, and hereafter demand a voice in all councilsaffecting temporal affairs."

  "All right," Kirby spoke grimly. "I'll tell him. Naida, is this highpriest we're waiting for, the one who proposed sacrifice of some of youto the apes?"

  Naida nodded.

  * * * * *

  Next moment, she, Kirby, and all the others, including the row ofglowering caciques, became silent. At sounds from above, all lookedtoward the grilled doorway to the tower. Then Kirby realized that all ofthe girls, as well as the caciques, were dropping to their knees.

  "No!" he commanded quickly. "Get up! You must not abase--"

  He had not finished, and Naida had scarcely risen, when the heavy doorswung on noiseless hinges.

  The light in the amphitheatre seemed to become more intense. Then,against the great glow, Kirby beheld majesty, beheld one who representedthe apotheosis of priestly rank and power.

  Clad in robes of filmy material which glimmered white beside the grayrobes of his underlings, the Duca wore about his waist the living flameof a girdle composed of alternate cut diamonds and blood red rubies eachlarger than a golf ball. And Kirby, searching for comparisons, realizedthat the Duca's face, upheld to others, would be as remarkable as hisjewels must be when compared to ordinary gems. It was a chiseled face,seamed by a thousand wrinkles, which a god might have carved from ivorybefore endowing it with the flush and glow of life. A mane of snow whitehair cascaded back from a tremendous forehead to fall about thin butsquare shoulders and mingle with the downward sweep of pure whitebeard. The eyes, black as polished jet, flamed now with the glare ofbaleful fires.

  As Naida, stealing close to Kirby, trembled, and even the abasedcaciques trembled, Kirby himself felt as if icy water was trickling overhim.

  He fought the sensation off. For suddenly he knew that in spite of firstimpressions which made the man seem a living god, the old Duca washuman. And what was more, he was in the wrong. All of which being true,the thing to do was keep a level head and fight.

  * * * * *

  All at once Kirby spoke across the silence in the great room.

  "I have sent for you," he said, weighing words carefully.

  "And I,"--the Duca's voice was mellow and deep--"have come. But I am nothere because you summoned me."

  "Oh!" Kirby let sarcasm edge his words. "Well, I won't quibble aboutyour motives for coming. Did my messenger tell you why we are here anddemand your presence?"

  "Your messenger," the old man said calmly, "told me."

  "Very well. Do you consent to listen to Naida's and my terms? If you_will_ listen--"

  "But wait a moment," the Duca interrupted, still calmly, but with a lookin his eyes which Kirby did not like. "Are you asking _me_, to my face,whether I will listen to terms which you offer as self-styled victor ofa battle with my caciques?"

  Kirby nodded. His apprehension increased.

  "Ah," said the Duca softly. And then, amazingly, a smile deepened everywrinkle of his parchment face. "But do you not remember that I said Ihad _not_ come here because you summoned me?"

  "Yes," Kirby said solidly. "I remember very well."

  "The thing which brought me here was the failure of my followers toaccomplish an assignment which I had given them--namely, that of endingyour life."

  "Hum." Kirby scratched behind his ear. "You are _not_ interested inarranging terms of peace, then."

  "I am here,"--suddenly the Duca's voice filled the room--"to do thatwhich my priests were unable to do. And the moment has come when theGods will no longer trifle with you. You dog! You thieving intruder!You--"

  Swiftly the Duca plunged one withered but still powerful hand into thefolds of his robe above the flaming girdle. Then his hand flashed out,and in it he held--

  * * * * *

  But Kirby did not get to see.

  A strangled cry of terror smote his ears. Naida leaped toward him fromone side, while Elana, the lovely youngest girl, sprang from anotherdirection, hurled Naida aside, and stopped in front of Kirby.

  Through the glaring room flickered a tiny red serpentine creature whichthe Duca hurled from a crystalline tube in his hand. As the minute snakestruck Elana's breast, she gave a choked cough, and then, as she halfturned to smile at both Naida and Kirby over her shoulder, her eyes wentblank, and she collapsed gently to the polished stones of thefloor--dead.

  A second later came squirming out from under her the ghastly, glimmeringlittle snake which had struck.

  Slowly, while every mortal in the room stood paralyzed, Kirby steppedforward and set his heel upon the writhing thing. When he raised hisboot, the snake was only a blotch on the floor.

  The Duca was standing as still as girls and caciques. The laughter withwhich he had started to greet what he had thought would be Kirby'sextermination had faded to a look of wonder--and fear. He was an easymark.

  Up to him Kirby rolled, and with all the force of soul and muscularbody, drove his fist into the Duca's face.

  "By God," he roared, "you want war, and you shall have it!"

  The Duca was simply out--not dead. Since Kirby did not want him dead, hedid not strike again, but swung back from the sprawled body, facedNaida, and pointed to the tower door.

  "Up there!" he snapped. "Seize
the tower. I have a reason!"

  At the Duca's crashing downfall, had come to the caciques a tensionwhich made Kirby know they would not be dummy figures much longer. Hiseyes never left them.

  "Quick, Naida!" he snapped again. "We must hold the tower!"

  Naida, all of the girls, were staring dazedly at Elana, dead.

  "The tower!" she choked. "But we cannot go there. It is the Duca's!"

  "Because it is the Duca's," Kirby said firmly, "is exactly why we musthold it. Come, Naida, please--"

  * * * * *

  And then he saw comprehension begin to dawn at last.

  He also saw two of the caciques glide from the wooden line, and slinktoward him past the unconscious Duca, stealthily.

  As Naida suddenly cried out to her companions, pushed at two of them,and then darted like a rainbow nymph toward the silent and forbiddingupward spiral of steps, Kirby faced the gliding caciques.

  One he clutched with viselike hands, and lifted him. As the othershrieked and sprang, he was mowed down by the hurtling body of hisfellow priest which Kirby flung forward mightily.

  The rest of the caciques were howling. While Naida waited beside thetower door, the other girls flashed up the steps. The Duca still laywhere he had fallen, a thread of blood oozing from his mouth. Kirby,after his last look over all, solemnly stooped and gathered in his armsthe limp, radiant little body of the girl who had given her life thather friends might be left with a leader.

  A moment later, he was standing on the steps. Naida, unopposed by thestill stupefied caciques, swung shut the tower door and shot a doublebolt.

  "Naida--" Kirby whispered as he held Elana closer to him, "oh, I am sosorry that we could have won only at such a price."

  As Naida stooped to kiss the pale little forehead with its halo ofgolden hair, sobs came. But then she raised her eyes, and they were, forKirby, alight with the message that she could and would accept Elana'ssacrifice, because she would gladly have made it herself.

  "We will not forget," she whispered. "Carry her tenderly, and come."

  For better, for worse, the Duca's tower was theirs.

  CHAPTER VI

  At the end of an hour, Kirby was taking a turn of guard duty at the footof the steps, while the others remained with Elana in a chamber above.To Kirby, with things thus far along, it seemed that the seizure of thetower had proved a shrewd stroke.

  It seemed that the tower was to the Duca what hair was to Sampson. FromNaida had come the information that the Duca lived hidden within thegreat shaft of obsidion, and appeared but seldom even before hiscaciques. Apparently a large part of his hold upon his subjects wasmaintained by the mystery with which he kept himself surrounded. And nowhis retreat was lost to him! Such had been the moral effect of the lossupon both Duca and caciques, that his whole first hour had gone bywithout their doing anything.

  Kirby, standing just around the first turn of the winding stairway,presently cocked his ears to listen to the conclave being held in theamphitheatre.

  "Why not starve them out, O Holy One?" he heard one of the caciques askof the Duca, only to be answered by a growl of negation.

  The Duca, Kirby had gathered before this, wanted to fight.

  "But there is no food in the tower, is there?" the cacique still pressedon, and this time he was supported by other voices.

  "No," the Duca rumbled back. "But am I to be deprived of my retreat,left here like a common dog amongst other dogs, while these accursedfiends starve slowly to death? No! I tell you, you must fight for me!"

  * * * * *

  But he had told them so several times before and nothing had happened.Kirby grinned at the thought of the caste the Duca was losing by beingdriven to this belittling parley.

  "Holy One," exclaimed a new priest in answer to the urge to fight, "whatcan we do against the golden haired fiend? The stairs are so narrow thathe could defend them alone. And then there are the gates of bronze. Ifwe could shatter the first, at the foot of the steps, we should onlyencounter others. The Duca must remember that his tower was built towithstand attack."

  "Even so," the Duca snapped back, "it must be attacked! I--"

  But then he fell silent, having been made so by the sounds of dissensionwhich arose amongst his caciques. Kirby, laughing to himself, turnedaway from his listening post, and tip-toed up the steps.

  After he had closed and bolted behind him three of the bronze portals sofeared by the caciques, he turned to the entrance of the chamber inwhich he had left Naida and the others. Here all was silent, and hefound his friends grouped about a couch on which lay Elana. Feeling thesolemnity of the moment, he would have taken his place quietly amongstthe mourners.

  Naida, however, came to him at once, and in a low voice asked for newsfrom the amphitheatre, and when Kirby answered that the caciques wereunanimously in favor of leaving them alone until they starved, sheexclaimed:

  "Oh, then it is good news!"

  After that, however, a shadow of doubt flickered in her great eyes.

  "And yet, is it? It means temporary immunity, of coarse.But--starvation!"

  Kirby assured her with a grin.

  "If we had to starve we might worry. But there is more food here thanthe Duca thinks. Look!"

  * * * * *

  From a bulging pocket of his tunic he fished a strip of the roots onwhich he had subsisted so comfortably. Naida's eyes widened, and severalof the girls gave low cries.

  "Yes," Naida exclaimed, "but such food! Why--why, do you know what youare offering us? Why, this is the sacred Peyote! Only the Duca eats it,and, at rare intervals, his priests."

  Kirby was really startled now.

  "But surely you and the others have taken quantities of the stuff awayfrom the Valley of the Geyser. Do you mean--"

  "Because we gathered the Peyote does not mean that we have ever tastedit. We gather it for the Duca. To taste would be complete, uttersacrilege. Have _you_ been eating it?"

  Inwardly Kirby was chuckling at this added proof of the buncumbe withwhich the Duca--and other Ducas--had fooled all.

  "Of course I've been eating the Peyote."

  "And--and nothing has happened to you?" Naida asked.

  "Hardly. I certainly haven't been blasted by the Lords of the Sun andMoon, or the Serpent either!"

  Naida and all the others were silent. The conflict between theirreverence for the food and their clear desire to eat it, now that it wasbecome the food of their leader, was pathetic.

  Kirby put one of the strips in Naida's hand.

  "Why not?" he asked. "We have bested the Duca in fair fight. We haveseized his tower. Why not eat his food?"

  As he had hoped it would, the suggestion at last settled the matter. Amoment later, as Naida nibbled her first bite, she smiled.

  "Why, it--it's good!"

  With the question of provisions settled at least for a time, Kirby'snext thought was of the tower. The present lull of peace seemed made forexploration.

  "Come along," he said to Naida, "we've plenty to do," and then, when heexplained, they set out, accompanied by Nini, a cousin of Naida's, andIvana, a younger sister.

  All of the others remained with little Elana.

  * * * * *

  While they climbed spiral stairs, Naida explained that the chamber theyhad just left was used by the Duca as a place in which he prayed beforeand after contacts with caciques or subjects. A sort of halfway stationbetween earth and heaven, as it were, where the Duca might be purged ofany sullying influence gained from human relationships.

  At thought of the rank, egotistical hypocrisy implied by the story,Kirby smiled grimly. Then they came to a new door, heavier than thatwhich barricaded the prayer chamber. Unlocked, the thing swungponderously at Kirby's push, and with the three girls pressing closebeside him, he entered--and stopped.

  "Naida!" he gasped.

  "Oh, _oh_!" she cried, and while Nini and Iva
na gasped, she clapped herhands in an instinctive, feminine reaction of joy. "But there are thingshere which I believe none but the Ducas of our race have ever seen! Oh!Why, the sacred girdle is as nothing compared to this display!"

  By "display" she meant a treasure which took Kirby's breath away, whichmade his heart act queerly.

  The walls of the chamber were fashioned of polished blocks of obsidionon which stood out in heavy bas-relief a maze of decorative figuresfashioned of pure, beaten gold--the same kind of gold which had goneinto the making of the cylinder of gold. With his first glance at thegorgeously wrought motifs of Feathered Serpent and Sun and Moon symbols,Kirby knew to a certainty whence the golden cylinder had comeoriginally.

  But even the gold--literally tons of it there must have been--wasnothing compared to the gems.

  * * * * *

  They were spread out in blinding array upon a great table in the centerof the room. There were pearls as big as turkey eggs and whiter, softerthan the light of a June morning growing in the East. There were rubies.One amongst the many was the size of a baseball and glowed like theheart of a red star. The least of the two or three hundred gems wouldhave outclassed the greatest treasures of the Crown jewels of Englandand Russia combined.

  Most overwhelming of all, however, was the jewel which rested against asquare of black cloth all its own in the center of the table. While hisheart still acted queerly, while Naida, Nini, and Ivana hung back,delighted, but still too bewildered to move, Kirby advanced and tookgingerly in his hands a single white diamond about eighteen inches long,and almost as wide and deep as it was long.

  The thing was carved with exquisite cunning to a likeness of the livinghead of Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent.

  Kirby dared not guess how many pounds the carven hunk of flashing,blue-white carbon weighed. He knew only that like it there was no otherdiamond in the world, and that the thing was real. Naida and the twogirls were silent now, and suddenly Kirby realized that to their awe ofthe gem was added awe of deepest religious nature. Slowly he put thediamond head of the Serpent back upon its square of cloth.

  "We--we had heard that this thing existed," Naida said presently, voicehushed, "but no one except the holy men of our race has ever beheldit."

  "But, what is it?" Kirby asked. "Whence came it?"

  However, when Naida would have answered, he interrupted.

  "But wait! Tell me as we go. We could stay here for the rest of ourlives without much trouble, but we've got to cover the rest of the towerand get back to the others."

  * * * * *

  It was after they had closed the door to the treasure room that Naidatold him the story.

  "There is not so much to tell," she began. "The diamond itself is sogorgeous that it is hard to talk about. But here is the story. A greatmany ages ago one of the Ducas of our race found the diamond, decided tocarve it into a perfect likeness of the head of the Serpent God. All ofthe craftsmen of the race helped him and when they were done, they tooktheir image to Quetzalcoatl himself, and showed him what they had done.

  "Quetzalcoatl was pleased. So pleased, that he promised all of the wisemen that he would cease to prey upon them as he had in the past, andhenceforward would take his toll of sacrifice from the ape-men alone.Them he hated and would continue to hate because they worshipped not himbut Xlotli.

  "And so it came about," Naida went on slowly, looking up at Kirby asthey still mounted wide steps to the upper reaches of the tower, "thatour people gained immunity from a God which had always before harmed anddestroyed them. Our race presently began to build this castle here onthe high plateau, and Quetzalcoatl kept his compact with them. He stillcomes out of his chasm at intervals and preys upon the ape-men, but noone of our race has seen him for thousands of years, and he has alwayslet us alone. And there is the whole myth and explanation of why thegreat diamond is revered among us as a holy of holies."

  * * * * *

  They had mounted to a new door which Kirby guessed might give entranceto the Duca's living quarters. But he was in no mood to open it atonce.

  "Wait a minute," he said as they all paused. "You say that, althoughnone of your race has seen Quetzalcoatl since the diamond head wascarved, he still comes out of his chasm and makes trouble for theape-men. Just what does that mean?"

  "Why--" Naida looked at him wonderingly. "I mean what I have said. TheSerpent comes out of his chasm and--"

  "What chasm?" Kirby asked sharply.

  "Why, the one we crossed this morning. It extends to the far reaches ofour country, beyond the Rorroh forest, where the ape-men dwell but whichour people never visit. It is in that distant part of the chasm that theSerpent dwells."

  "But--but--Oh, good Lord!" Kirby whistled softly. "Naida, do you mean totell me that Quetzalcoatl was not simply a mythical monster, but anactual, living serpent which is alive _now_?"

  Naida and the others shrugged.

  "Why not?" she answered. "Sometimes we have captured a few ape-men, andthey tell us stories of how Quetzalcoatl kills them. _They_ say he isvery much alive."

  "But," Kirby mumbled in increasing wonder, "is this living creature thesame which your ancestors worshipped first as long ago, perhaps, as amillion years?"

  "That," Naida answered unhesitatingly, "I'm not sure of. Our caciquesbelieve that the Serpent, although it lives longer than any othersentient thing, finally dies and is succeeded by a new Serpent which isreproduced by itself, within its own body."

  So overwhelming did Kirby find this unexpected sequel to their discoveryof the great diamond head, so staggered was he by the fact thatQuetzalcoatl, of Aztecan myth, might exist as a sentient creature herein this cavern world, that he had little heart left for exploring otherwonders.

  * * * * *

  Nevertheless, he presently pushed open the new door before which theyhad paused, and behind it found, as he had expected, the Duca's livingquarters.

  These were as severe as the jewel chamber had been gorgeous. A thinpallet spread upon a frame of wood formed the bed, and beside it stood asingle stiff chair. That was all. The walls of glistening obsidion werebare.

  There was, however, a door in one circular wall, and as Kirby flung thisopen, his previous disappointment changed to delight. For shelves alongthe walls of the small chamber held roll after roll of parchment coveredwith script. And in one corner lay six undamaged, almost new Mannlichersand several hundred rounds of ammunition!

  "Naida," he exclaimed, "do you know what those are?"

  "I suppose that they are weapons of the sort you used against theape-men this morning?"

  Kirby grinned.

  "They are the same kind I used, and then some. With these weapons we cando what we never could with the smaller one. How did they get here?"

  "They came when I was much younger," Naida answered with a shade ofsadness in her voice. "The men who had them penetrated the Valley of theGeyser, coming by a different route from the one you followed. When theDuca learned they were there, he sent such men of the race as were stillable to fight to kill them. That order of the Duca's was one of thefirst things to turn me against him. The men were not harming us, andthey should have been permitted to go away. But the Duca insisted thatthey be killed, and in the fight were lost eight of our youngest andstrongest men."

  * * * * *

  Kirby stooped to inspect the rifles.

  "Has no one learned to use these weapons?"

  "No," Naida answered. "The Duca kept them for himself."

  "We think," put in Ivana, "that he hoped to learn to use them, and wasafraid for us to have the knowledge."

  Kirby filled one of the magazines, and felt the heft of the gun withpleasure.

  "Very well," he said. "It looks to me as though your time to learn theart of shooting has come at last. Come, I think we had better be gettingback downstairs."

  Kirby took three guns hims
elf, and with the others lugging the rest,they started back. The parchment rolls, he decided, must be left forexamination later on.

  They were all elated when they rejoined the girls in the prayer chamber,and high spirits were still further increased by the report, promptlygiven, that all had remained quiet in the amphitheatre. Save only forthe presence of Elana, radiant and calm in death, the give and take ofquestions would have been accompanied by actual gaiety.

  But the time of peace did not last much longer. While Naida was in themidst of answering incessant questions about the wonders of the jewelchamber, Kirby heard a sound from below, and suddenly went over to thedownward-winding steps.

  "Listen," he called sharply back to the others.

  He had not been mistaken. Many footsteps echoed from the amphitheatre,and he made out that the caciques were coming toward the bolted gate atthe foot of the steps. While he listened, and Naida came eagerly to hisside, silence fell.

  But then clear words came up to them.

  "Let the upper-world man come to the foot of the steps," called theDuca. "I have an offer to make him!"

  CHAPTER VII

  To himself Kirby chuckled. Such real entreaty filled the Duca's voicethat there seemed no danger of further treachery from him at themoment.

  With a grin, Kirby took Naida's hand and led her down the steps,unbolting each bronze gate but the last.

  "What do you want?" he asked in a cool voice a moment later, when hestopped on the final step and faced the Duca from behind the protectionof the final gate.

  Clearly the parley was going to be a blunt one.

  "I want you to leave our world," the Duca rumbled promptly.

  He was drawn up in a posture intended to display dignity. But his leftcheek, where Kirby had hammered him, was pulpy and discolored, andsomehow he seemed to Kirby more than ever merely human.

  "Under what conditions am I to leave?"

  "If you will vacate my tower at once," the Duca said with a flush ofeagerness which he could not conceal, "I will permit Naida and one of mycaciques to escort you back to the Valley of the Geyser. I will alsogive you directions by which you may travel in safety from there to theouter world."

  Kirby, wanting more details, made himself seem thoughtful.

  "And what will happen to me, and to the girls, if I decline?"

  Encouraged, the Duca made an impressive gesture.

  "You will be left in the tower to die of starvation. Mine is not acomplicated offer. It should require no complicated decision. What isyour answer?"

  Kirby dropped his carefully assumed mask of thought.

  "My answer is this," he lashed out. "I will not leave! The tower isours, and we will hold it until you have accepted Naida's peace terms onyour priestly oath!"

  "But if you stay in the tower you will starve!" thundered the Duca.

  "No, we won't starve! We won't starve because we eat the food ofDucas!"

  * * * * *

  In silence, Kirby took from his pocket a strip of the sacred Peyote andbit off one end of it. Suddenly the hush in the amphitheatre becamecomplete. As he watched Kirby chewing, the Duca gasped and choked.

  "Moreover," Kirby announced with slow emphasis, "I have taken possessionof the weapons which you took from men of the upper world, and whichhave already sent men of your race to their death. I have no wish tokill either you or your caciques, but if you do not presently discusspeace with me, you will certainly find yourself embroiled in a strugglemore bitter than the mild one of this morning."

  With that said, he swung on his heel, and taking Naida's hand again,started with her up the steps.

  "I have nothing more to say," he called over his shoulder to a Ducawhose white haired majesty had been stripped from him.

  "We're getting on," he whispered to Naida a moment later. "The bestthing for us is just to sit still now, and wait."

  With the questions he wanted to ask Naida about her world becominginsistent, he found himself, as a matter of fact, glad for the prospectof further respite. As both of them rejoined the girls in the Duca'sprayer chamber, the first thing he did was to take from his tunic thecylinder of gold which he had found in the canyon.

  "What is this, Naida?" he asked, hoping to start talk that would makeall of them forget the Duca and politics, and at the same time help himto learn much that he wished to know.

  But a queer thing happened. Naida's reaction to the carven gold was asunexpected as it was marked.

  "_Oh!_" she cried in a voice which suddenly trembled with surprise, withblank dismay. Somehow, the cylinder of gold brought to her face thingswhich not even the Serpent's head of the diamond had evoked.

  * * * * *

  The prospect of a long session of talk began to fade out in Kirby'smind.

  "But Naida, whatever is there about this fragment of gold to startle youas it does?"

  By this time all of the thirty-odd other girls had come flocking aboutthem, and all were staring at the cylinder as fascinatedly as Naida.

  "Do you see what he has there?" Naida finally asked, ignoring Kirby inher continued excitement.

  "Do we _see_?" answered the girl she had addressed. "Naida, surely it isthe carving which was lost!"

  Naida was quivering with feeling now.

  "Do you realize what it means to our cause that it should have beenreturned to us in this way?"

  The girl to whom she had spoken, and the others, simply looked at her,but in one face after another presently dawned awe and joy.

  Kirby stood still, puzzled and interested, until at last Naida wasrecovered enough to speak to him.

  "Where did you get this thing which you call 'a fragment of gold'?" sheasked in a hushed voice.

  "I found it," Kirby answered, "lying beside the skeleton of anupper-world man, while I was ascending the canyon which brought me tothe Valley of the Geyser."

  "And you do not know what the cylinder is? But no, of course you couldnot."

  "_What_ is it, Naida?"

  * * * * *

  Naida glanced at her friends, then laid her hand on Kirby's.

  "Next to the great diamond, it is the most cherished possession of ourrace. In some respects it is even more holy than the Serpent's head. Thecylinder happens to be the first work in gold which was ever produced byour people. It was made when the race was new. It was because our firstwise men had found they could create things of beauty like thiscylinder, that they decided to attempt the creation of the Serpent'shead, which is supposed to have brought all of our blessings upon us."

  Kirby thought he was beginning to understand the excitement which hisintroduction of the cylinder had created. He also thought he could seewhat Naida had meant by implying that the cylinder could be made to aidtheir cause.

  "Tell me," he asked in a mood approaching reverence, "how the cylindercame to be lying beside a dead man's bones."

  "It was stolen," Naida answered in the breathless silence which theothers were keeping. "When I was very young, an upper-world man foundhis way here, and the Duca captured and meant to sacrifice him. Butwhile they were leading him to the temple where such special ceremoniesare held--the building stands on another plateau, beyond this--the manbroke away. Some of the priests in the procession were carrying thecylinder, for it was an occasion of great importance. The prisonerknocked them down, got the cylinder away from them, and finally escapedby the same route over which you came."

  "And he escaped," said Kirby wonderingly, "only to be killed by arattlesnake before he ever reached the civilized world. But do you meanthat you never knew your sacred cylinder was so close to you all theseyears?"

  Naida shook her head.

  "We never got to the canyon of which you speak, for a special reasonwhich I shall explain some day. And besides that, I think the Duca wasafraid of this man who fought so bravely. So he counted the cylinder aslost. And that is one of the reasons why he killed the men with therifles, who appeared in the V
alley a few years later."

  * * * * *

  Kirby looked at her thoughtfully. The mood for discussing all thewonders of this lower world, which had made him bring out the cylinderoriginally, had quite vanished.

  "I suppose," he said, "that anyone who was responsible for the return ofthe cylinder to its rightful owners, would be held in some respect?"

  Naida nodded vigorously, while little lightnings of excitement flickeredin her eyes.

  "He might be held in more than respect."

  "What, then, do you suggest that we do next?"

  Again the small lightnings darted, and Naida reached for the cylinder.

  "Do you mind if I take it for a moment?"

  "Of course not."

  Promptly then she faced around.

  "Wait here, everyone," she ordered.

  And with that she waved the cylinder in a flashing little arc beforetheir eyes, and darted to the door.

  It was all so unexpected that she was gone before Kirby could speak.Slowly, with all of the suddenly gay company of girls following afterhim, he went to the doorway, and stood on the steps leading to theamphitheatre.

  * * * * *

  A minute passed. He heard voices downstairs. He heard Naida's voiceringing clearly, though he could not distinguish her words. He heard agreat cry from a score of male throats. More minutes passed. Words thatwere low and tense poured out in a rumbling volume. Above the rumble,Naida's voice presently sounded again, clear and sweet, but incisive.Then, when no more than five or six minutes had gone, Kirby heard theclang of the bronze gate at the foot of the steps, heard light, swiftfootsteps ascending.

  "Naida!" he called softly.

  She flashed upward toward him around the last curve in the stairway.Straight to his outstretched arms she went.

  "It is done! It is done!" she whispered.

  "Tell us!" cried first one girl and then others.

  Naida drew away from Kirby at last.

  "I told the Duca," she said to all of them, "that our leader would keepthe cylinder for a period of time equal to one upper-world year. If theDuca grants all the terms of peace which we will ask of him, and if heaccepts the upper-world man as our temporal ruler, and all goes well fora year, then we will consider replacing the cylinder where it belongs."

  "And what," Kirby asked exultantly, "does the Duca say?"

  Suddenly, without warning, Naida dropped before him on one knee, andfrom that position gazed up at him laughing.

  "He says he will make you our King, to govern all temporal affairswithin our realm! He is waiting for you to come and hold a conclavenow."

  "_What?_"

  Still kneeling half in fun, half in sincere reverence, Naida held outthe precious, potent cylinder of gold.

  "Guard it carefully!" she exclaimed. "So long as you keep it away fromthe Duca, making him hope to win it back, he will consent to almostanything. Yes, he is waiting with the caciques in the amphitheatre now;waiting to draw up terms of peace."

  CHAPTER VIII

  To be King amongst these people! A queer sensation tugged at Kirby'sheart as he descended the steps with Naida at his right, and all ofher--and his--dainty and gracious friends following after. Yet, intenseas his emotion was, never for a second was he able to doubt the evidenceof his senses which told him that all of this was real. As theydescended the black steps of the tower, Naida's sweetness, her grace,the warm humanity of her, made him humble with gratitude for theextraordinary fortune which had come to him, an unromantic aviator bornin Kansas.

  Then they were standing in the brilliant light of the amphitheatre, andthe Duca, surrounded by his caciques, was advancing to meet them.

  It was not a long conference which followed. Kirby saw from the startthat the Duca was indeed ready to come to terms. So treasured an object,it seemed, was the cylinder of gold, that the mere fact that Kirbypossessed it made the Duca respect the possessor, whether he would orno. With this initial advantage, it did not take long to make demandsand win acceptance.

  It was agreed that some systematic campaign of extermination should beplanned and carried out against the ape-men. Further, the project foreventually bringing other upper-world men to the realm was accepted.Most notable of all, it was agreed that while the Duca should retain avoice in the regulation of temporal affairs, Kirby should possess anabsolute veto over his word.

  Naida said there must be some formal ceremony to celebrate Kirby'sascendency to power. To this the Duca consented, and established thedate as a fortnight hence, and the place as the temple on the plateaubeyond the plateau of the castle, where the Ducas had been invested withtheir robes of state from time immemorial. At the end, it was decidedthat little Elana should be left in the prayer chamber until a burialceremony could be held on the morrow.

  * * * * *

  In less than an hour, Kirby, Naida, and the others withdrew from theamphitheatre to return to the regular dwelling places of the girls. Deepin his mind, Kirby did not know how sincere the Duca was, and fearlingered, somehow, but he put it aside for the present.

  As they came out of the castle, proceeding in a gay procession acrossthe drawbridge above the moat of beautiful aquatic plants, Kirby sawthat the light from the glass sky was fading to a glow like that ofspring twilight in the upper world. Naida answered his question aboutthe phenomenon by saying that day and night in the cavern correspondedto the same period above. What quality of the glass sky gave out light,she did not know, but it seemed definite that the element was sensitiveto the presence of light in the upper world, and when the sun sankthere, the glow faded here.

  A flower embroidered path led them around the castle to a group oflittle crystalline houses all overgrown with bougainvillea vines andhoneysuckle. In front of the first, Naida paused, and while the otherswent on to the other houses, she looked at Kirby.

  "It is Elana's dwelling," she said simply, "and it will be vacant now.Elana would want you to take it. Will you, please?"

  The twilight was deepening swiftly. Kirby nodded reverently, then drewclose to Naida.

  "Naida?"

  "Yes?"

  He took her hand.

  "I can stay here, I can consent to become, after a fashion, a King, onlyif you will reign with me as Queen. Will you, Naida? Will you love me asI have learned to love you during this single day in Paradise?"

  She did not answer. But presently Kirby's mind went blank for sheer joy.For then Naida raised her face, and he kissed her lips.

  It made no difference then that, despite the day's victory, Kirby couldsee trouble ahead, and feared, rather than rejoiced at, the Duca's tooeasy acceptance of terms. The future could take care of itself. Thismoment in the dusk belonged to him and Naida.

  * * * * *

  The two weeks which passed for Kirby after that particular twilight spedquickly. During the first morning, all attended the ceremony which washeld for Elana's burial in the plot of gardened ground where lay herancestors. Ensuing mornings were devoted to conferences in theamphitheatre with Duca and caciques.

  After the fourth day Kirby, at Naida's insistence, moved into splendidquarters in the castle--a suite of chambers across the amphitheatre fromthose in which the caciques dwelt. In practically forcing the move onKirby, Naida won his consent finally by agreeing to have their weddingceremony performed on the day of his coronation; then she would come tothe castle with him.

  The afternoons of that first fortnight before the wedding and coronationwere spent in hunting and fishing. Also Kirby and Naida visited oftenthe aged people of the race, who dwelt in crystalline, vine coveredhouses like those of the girls, but removed from them. Naida's relativeswere dead, but she had relatives there, and to all these aged ones, whosat living in the past, she did what she could to explain presentdevelopments in the affairs of the younger generation.

  Last but not least, Kirby set aside certain hours each afternoon whichhe devoted to the
formation of a rifle squad amongst the girls. Sixrifles he had, and in turn he trained each of the girls in their use,having set up a range at the foot of the plateau cliffs. The results hegained made him feel that the day would come soon enough when he woulddare launch an offensive against the ape-people; and especially pleasingwas the sense of power over the Duca which he gained. The Duca showed nosign of treachery. Yet Kirby did not trust him. Never did he quiteforget the misgivings which had lingered in his mind after the firstconclave.

  * * * * *

  As for his relationship with Naida, that grew with every moment theycould steal to spend with each other. And side by side with theirgrowing knowledge of each other grew, for Kirby, an increasing store ofknowledge of the realm.

  He learned, amongst other things, what seemed the origin of the worshipof the Serpent, Quetzalcoatl, amongst primitive Mexican races. The timehad been when the People of the Temple had mingled freely with the racesabove them; and, that they might have ready means of egress to theworld, they had built the tunnel through which Kirby had entered theValley of the Geyser. Thus, going and coming as they did, they hadspread their cult of the worship of Quetzalcoatl; and when, eventually,strife arose between the peoples of upper world and lower, and thePeople of the Temple withdrew to their realm, they left behind them theSerpent myth which was to live through countless centuries.

  The tunnel, Naida said, had been abandoned when her people left theupper world once and for all, and its use for any reason prohibited.This, Naida gave as the reason why none of them went near the tunnelnow, and why the cylinder of gold had lain in the canyon undiscovered.It was the explanation she had promised on the day in the tower, whenfirst she saw the cylinder.

  So the days passed, until the day set aside for wedding and coronationdawned. On that morning, Kirby, having concluded a long conference withthe Duca, was walking with Naida in the gardens outside the castle.

  "Tell me," he said to her: "do you yourself believe that this Serpenthas the powers of a God?"

  Naida looked at him quickly, a sudden fright in her eyes.

  "I believe the Serpent exists to-day, somewhere in the distant reachesof the chasm, beyond the Rorroh forest."

  "Yes, but do you believe the Serpent is God?"

  * * * * *

  Actually frightened now, she looked swiftly about. But when she saw thatthey were alone, confidence returned.

  "No!" she exclaimed. "I do not believe Quetzalcoatl is a god. I believehe is the most terrible creature anywhere in our realm, and that menfirst worshipped him through fear. I believe our race would be better ahundred times if they had never made him their God."

  Kirby whistled.

  "Then you do _not_ believe that the Ducas of past ages talked with him.You do not believe it was Quetzalcoatl's pleasure over the great diamondwhich made him cease preying on your people?"

  "No! Long habit makes me show respect for these myths, and adhere to thecustoms of our cult, but I do not believe. I think our race gainedimmunity for the Serpent's ravages, not through a compact withQuetzalcoatl, but because our builders were intelligent enough to erectthe castle up here on the plateau, where Quetzalcoatl could not reachthem. To tell the truth, I think the whole cult is false and wrong, andI wish Quetzalcoatl were dead and gone from the world!"

  Kirby smiled. In spite of Naida's reverence for certain features of thecult, he had long suspected that her true feelings were those she hadjust expressed. And he was glad for this new bond of understandingbetween them. He glanced at her with understanding and perfect trust.

  "Naida, since we have talked so frankly, there is one more thing which Imust bring out."

  She looked up at him.

  "What is it?"

  "The Duca."

  * * * * *

  She drew closer, her perfumed body brushing his, her great eyescaressing him.

  "Naida, I am afraid of the man."

  "And so am I!" she confessed suddenly.

  "It has all been too easy," Kirby said in a slow voice. "There is nodoubt whatever that our possession of the cylinder of gold has had greatinfluence on the Duca, and yet--"

  He paused, taking her hand.

  "And yet," she went on for him, "you do not believe he would haveconceded what he has, unless he intends to make trouble?"

  Kirby nodded twice, emphatically.

  "Well, you have trained all of us to use the rifles."

  He smiled gravely at her understanding.

  "Yes, I have. And your skill, and that of the others, with the rifles,will always help us. Yet even so--"

  Closer still she drew now, and there was sadness in her eyes.

  "I think I see," she said in a voice which choked. "When do you think hewill make a move to start trouble?"

  Kirby hesitated, then drew a long breath.

  "To-day!"

  "On--on the day of our union?" Naida echoed in dismay. "Can you tellwhere or how he will strike at us?"

  Kirby shook his head.

  "There are a hundred things he could do. Naida, I--I--Well, somehow I amafraid of the ceremony this afternoon--the wedding ceremony!"

  * * * * *

  He felt a little shiver go through her, and would have taken her in hisarms, save that a gay cry rang in the garden then.

  "Naida, Naida!" It was her cousin, Nini, a bronze-haired youngster aselfin and Pucklike as her name. "I thought we should never find you! Doyou realize this is your _wedding_ day, and that you're acting as ifthere was nothing to be done?"

  Nini darted a mocking glance at Kirby, who grinned.

  "Do come, Naida!" cried another girl. "Your gown is ready, and we wantyou to ourselves for awhile."

  Other girls joined them, some singing and some carrying an obligato onthe sweet, flutelike instruments which Kirby had first heard as he hungin the throat of the geyser. In front of them all, Kirby laughed andkissed Naida on the forehead. But as he took leave of her thus, hewhispered:

  "We must not let our guard relax for a second this afternoon. And Ithink there is a more definite precaution which I will take, besides."

  CHAPTER IX

  Some hours later, Kirby smiled with tight-lipped satisfaction at thoughtof that precaution which he had taken. What it was only he, Nini, Ivana,and three other girls knew, which secrecy pleased him as much as theprecautionary measure itself.

  Seated alone in a dimly-lighted, thick-walled cell of the ancient templein which the dual ceremony of wedding and coronation would take place,he was waiting for the moment when the festivities would begin. Thus farthe Duca had done nothing. Yet Kirby's uneasiness would not leave him,and he continued to be thankful that, if trouble should start, the Ducamight not find as many trumps in his hand as he expected.

  A couple of hours after Kirby had left Naida and the other girls in thegarden, all had begun the two-mile journey from the castle to the smallplateau on which stood this temple, where the ceremony would be held.Now, while Kirby waited alone, the Duca and his caciques had gone toanother wing of the temple. Naida, attended by her bridesmaids, had beenassigned to a cell of their own, and the rest of the girls were waitingin the nave of the temple. Unable to attend the walk from their plateauto this, the old people of the race had remained in their crystalhouses.

  With ten minutes more to wait, Kirby rose from a bench on which he hadbeen seated, and began to pace his cell. It was this archaic pile ofstone, he finally decided, which was causing his depression. Unlike thebright and cheerful castle, this place, older than any other building inthe realm, was squat, thick-walled, and gloomy. Here, in the dusky cellswhich lined labyrinthine corridors, the early generations of the racehad found protection from outside dangers. All of which was all right,Kirby thought, but just the same he wished he had insisted upon beingwedded in the brilliant and cheerful amphitheatre.

  * * * * *

  But presently he stopped pacing
and faced the door of his cell. Then hebreathed a sigh of relief.

  From down the twisting corridors which wound out to the central nave,stole the high sweetness of soprano voices, the whisper of flutes, andthe mellow resonance of little gongs of jade and gold. It was the signalfor which he had waited.

  It had been the Duca's instructions that he should come out into thetemple when the music began, and meet Naida there. Both would advance tothe altar, and when they were in place, the Duca would come to them.Kirby, therefore, after a glance at the blue trousers and tunic oftanager scarlet which the girls had made for him, opened the door of hiscell, and stepped out.

  In a moment he traversed the windings of the corridor, and halted undera flat arch at one side of the temple nave.

  As he paused so, to await the appearance of Naida and her bridesmaidsunder a similar arch directly across the temple, he held his breath. Noteven nymphs could be as graceful as were the twenty-six girls who wereperforming the dance of Life Immortal, which tradition decreed should begiven before the ceremony by which, in this realm, two souls werewedded. The flash of rainbow gowns was like the swirling of light in asky at dawning. The music of voices, flutes, and the little gongs ofjade, would have stirred the souls of the dead.

  If only the confounded sense of approaching disaster would leave him,Kirby thought grimly, this would be a magnificent moment. As it was, heturned his eyes away from the girls, and began to examine the temple.

  Just as Naida had told him the case would be, he found both sides of thenave surrounded by arches similar to the one under which he wasstanding. Everywhere, dim and tortuous corridors led to cells like theone he had just left. Then, in one end of the nave, loomed a closed doorfrom behind which the Duca and caciques would appear when the couple tobe wedded were in place, before the altar.

  The altar itself, a rectangular mass of some jadelike stone, stood at adistance of perhaps twenty paces in front of the closed door. On top ofthe greenish stones, resting on a cushion of some crimson material,flashed the crown which would be used at the coronation. Kirby's eyeswidened as he beheld a single rose-cut diamond two inches in diameter,mounted in an exquisitely simple bandeau of wrought gold. But, a momentlater, even the crown which would be his--if nothing happened--seemedonly a bauble compared to the other prize which he had won in this worldbeneath the world.

  Naida!

  * * * * *

  He realized that the dance was ended, the music stilled, and that therainbow garbed girls had formed a double line in the center of thetemple. Suddenly his heart beat fast, and for just a moment, as he daredlook full and deeply at Naida, and she smiled back at him across thedistance, he even forgot to be depressed.

  But even as he advanced to meet her, his uneasiness returned.

  Now the girls were singing again, their voices raised in a triumphantchorale as beautiful as Naida's face with its warm red lips and smilingeyes, as beautiful as her wedding gown that might have been woven, inits filminess, of mist from the sea. The bridesmaids, silent, theirlovely faces alight, paused. But Naida came on.

  From her floated to Kirby a fragrance more overwhelming than even theperfume of the geyser. Presently he felt her hand on his arm, and atlast they stood side by side. Now again, his premonition of evil lefthim for a flash; but again it returned.

  "I love you," he whispered.

  "I love _you_."

  "But I am still afraid."

  Naida's smile faded.

  "And I too. Oh, I've been terribly afraid! We will keep our guard!"

  "Yes."

  * * * * *

  In front of them, on the altar, the crown diamond winked and shimmeredin a dim light. The swelling chorus of triumph, in which the bridesmaidshad joined now, made the whole temple ring. Slowly, while Naida movedeasily beside him, Kirby began to march to the altar.

  Then it was done, and they were halted. After both of them had given alingering glance at the crown whose diamond shimmered now within theirreach, they raised their eyes to the closed door behind the altar.

  The thing was swinging open. An inch it moved, two inches.

  Kirby waited, never taking his eyes away from the widening crack. With acrashing final volume of sound, the chorus swept magnificently to itsclimax. Then the door was flung wide.

  Still Kirby stood stiffly before the altar, with Naida drawn upsplendidly beside him. After two seconds, however, he moved.

  Duca and caciques were not standing in the corridor.

  In the semi-darkness, the only figures visible there were squatting,grotesque things whose bodies were covered with whitish hair and whoseleathery faces were disfigured by gashes of mouths filled with enormousteeth.

  A feeling of standing face to face with final disaster, turned Kirbysick. As he jerked back from the altar, sweeping a paralyzed Naida withhim, the ape-men let out gibbering howls, half-human. With gigantic,hopping strides, the foremost rank of the creatures swung forward,straight into the temple.

  CHAPTER X

  Kirby, already falling back toward the other girls, caught Naida up inhis arms, and ran.

  "Nini!" he bellowed. "Ivana! Get the rifles!"

  While the two whom he had ordered sprang to a corridor, and four othersfollowed, Kirby fell in with the others and dropped Naida on her feet.Sick as he was, there was still a ray of hope, because the hard-headedprecaution he had taken against treachery this morning was to have Niniand Ivana bring the rifles here and hide them.

  The first of the ape-men, snarling, laughing, had hopped beyond thealtar, and the yellow foam of madness was slavering from his jaws. Overhis shoulder he howled some jargon which made his hairy legion struggleto catch up with him.

  "Have you got any puff balls?" Kirby snapped at Naida.

  She shook her head numbly, just as Nini and Ivana swung forward with theMannlichers.

  "No. But you had sense enough to bring the rifles! Oh, what does itmean?"

  "The Duca has sold himself out to the ape-man! He was helpless againstus, and has brought them to destroy us for him. Here, Ivana, give me arifle! Everyone for herself!"

  The next moment he had a Mannlicher at his shoulder.

  * * * * *

  As the thing kicked, an ape who would have reached him in two more jumpscrashed over with his heart torn out, the temple echoed with sound whichthreatened to rip its solid walls apart, and bright flashes at Kirby'sright and left told him that other rifles were getting under way.

  He fired again, twice more, slaughtering an ape with each shot. The fiveother rifles were creating havoc.

  Blocked by a dozen torn and bleeding bodies on the floor, thereenforcements which still poured from the corridor, began to millaround amongst themselves, and the forward charge slowed down. All thepanic which had sent the ape-men scuttling from the beach at their firstexperience of gunfire, seemed ready to break loose again now.

  Kirby felt it was good enough for the work of a minute.

  "Get into line as I showed you how!" he shouted. "Rifles in the frontrank, the others behind them. We're all right now! Keep firing!"

  "Keep behind me!" he ordered Naida, still unarmed.

  Then he placed a shell in the chest of one brute who was broader andheavier than the others--a leader--and saw that he had increased thedemoralization; and from the hastily-formed front rank a volley leapedhot and jagged.

  Then the rout which had threatened broke loose. As eight ape-men slumpedinto blubbering, bleeding heaps, the milling remainder of the hordeturned, and in a fighting, scrambling frenzy attempted to get back tothe corridor.

  Kirby let his triumph take the form of thoughts about what he would doto the Duca when that personage could be rounded up.

  "Follow after them!" he ordered. "Don't stop until we have located theDuca. He is the one we must settle--"

  * * * * *

  But he never finished.

  As he himself, holding fir
e for a second, prepared to follow up theretreat, he found himself confronted by the utterly unexpected.

  A voice unquestionably the Duca's began to shout orders at the ape-menfrom somewhere down the corridor! And, riot or no riot, the tones ofthat voice seemed to inspire the creatures with more fear than the riflefire.

  So suddenly the change came, that by the time Kirby flung his rifleagain to his shoulder, the crazy retreat had been halted, and as hefired again, the ape-men swung in their tracks and began to charge!

  There was no time to guess by what power the Duca had turned the tables.There was not even time for orders. Kirby fired twice, knowing that theape-men had been infused with some spirit which would bring them on inspite of rifle fire.

  Naida, unarmed, cried out behind him, and he shoved his gun at her.

  "Take it!"

  He had just inserted a new clip. He handed her others.

  "Fire for your lives!" he shouted to the girls.

  "But you!" Naida gasped. "You are unarmed!"

  "I'll be all right."

  On the floor lay a jagged, hand-chipped knife of obsidion which hadfallen as some ape died. Kirby grabbed it.

  * * * * *

  In another second the flood of ape-men had burst in all its fury overhim. Crashing, thundering shots were dinning in his ears, animal deathscreams and the Valkyrie battle cries of the girls filled the temple. Hecould not tell how many of the apes were fighting him. As a cave-man'sclub whizzed past his head, he drove his knife once, and yanked itdripping from hairy, yielding flesh to plunge it again. A suddenside-step carried him away from another assailant. He dropped the knifeto snatch the gigantic club of one of the creatures he had killed.

  Quicker in every movement than the ape-men, he laid on, right and left,with such power that blood spurted in a dozen places, and heads weresplit open on every side. And because of his speed, the frantic, clumsyblows and knife thrusts which were directed at him proved harmless.

  A terrific drive which smashed a snarling face into pulp, left Kirbyfree for a second, and he emerged from the first round of battle readyto cut in and help the girls. But then he saw that he had gottenseparated from the main body.

  "Naida!" he called. "Naida!"

  A series of shots answered him, and as several apes fell, a gap wasopened through which he saw her conducting a well ordered retreat of allthe girls toward the dark corridors surrounding the temple. Again Kirbyfell to with his club, swinging, hacking, fighting with his wholestrength to catch up. He made headway, and hope began to come again. Theape-men would not kill, or even harm, the girls. What they wanted was tocarry them off. If he and Naida together could get their party roundedup in the corridors, the chances were good.

  "Naida!" he shouted again. "Coming!"

  Battering down an ape in front of him, he jumped up on the corpse, andsaw that already the vanguard of girls had reached the first shelteringcorridor. Naida had been cut off from the others by eight or ten apes.But even so her fire made her mistress of the situation, and she seemedall right.

  It was just as Kirby started to jump down from the corpse that he sawsomething which put another complexion on the matter, and left himfrozen where he was.

  * * * * *

  Behind Naida, directly in the path in which her slavering aggressorswere slowly forcing her, a huge stone slab in the temple floor had begunto tilt up as if it were a trapdoor raised by an invisible hand. Withinthe yawning opening, Kirby caught a glimpse of stone steps winding downinto blackness.

  In a flash he saw that it was Naida, and her alone, that the ape-menwere after. The Duca's determination was to capture her, and it was thepresence of this trapdoor, making capture possible, which had brought onthe second charge of the apes.

  A scream, high and wild, from Naida released Kirby from his trance ofhorror. He leaped off the corpse, and smashed a suddenly presented skulllike an egg shell. Momentarily he saw Naida, too terrified to fire,staring at the open trapdoor. Kirby felled two apes and felt their bloodon his arms.

  "Ivana!" he yelled. "Help Naida, for God's sake!"

  An answering shout, not from Ivana alone but from many girls, encouragedhim, and he swung his club with a speed and force which would letnothing stand before him. But then another scream from Naida rang in hisears.

  "Naida!" he shouted. "It's all right! We're coming!"

  He knew, though, that it _wasn't_ all right. Fighting like a maniac, heopened another lane down which he glimpsed her. Fighting still, in alast terrific effort to force his way down the lane to her side, he sawthe black opening gape at her feet; and, as Naida screamed again, adozen hairy arms reached it at once, twisted the empty rifle out of herhands, and lifted her shining body as if it had been a feather.

  Shouts and murderous fire were coming from the other girls, and Kirbyswung his club as never before. But even as he fell upon the last two orthree apes which kept him away from Naida, those who had snatched her,bolted down the steps.

  Kirby was left with the memory of Naida's great eyes fixed upon his,fear-filled, beseeching his protection. In a second, the ponderoustrapdoor crashed into place, and she was gone.

  CHAPTER XI

  Dazed and grief-stricken, Kirby stood in the bloody, corpse-filled naveof the temple, surrounded by thirty-two girls whose faces were blanchedand most of whose eyes were tear-bright. The fight was over, and theywere assembled to decide what must be done, but for a time no onespoke.

  Gaining the trapdoor just as it was pinioned from beneath, Kirby hadtorn at it with bare hands. But that had been hopeless. Then he hadbegun to fight again. But that had been hopeless also. With howls andscreams they started to retreat, and it had not taken Kirby long to findout that every part of their raid had been carefully planned, even tothis retreat under fire. Straight into the damp black tunnel which ledaway from the corridor behind the altar, the ape-men had leaped. AndKirby, in hot pursuit, had heard the Duca's voice driving them on. Toomuch the soldier to follow in that darkness where the Duca knew everyfoot of the way, and he knew nothing, Kirby had seen that he must goback to the girls and take stock.

  Now he looked at the strewn ape corpses, smelled the corrosive reek ofburned powder, and tried to put aside his grief.

  "The Duca," he said at last, "must have been planning this with the apesever since the first morning in the castle."

  Ivana, Naida's sister, nodded.

  "The Duca brought the ape-people here, kept them in the tunnel, and thenherded them back when their work was done. I suppose it was one of thecaciques who opened the door when the time was right."

  "Does anyone think we ought to try the tunnels now?" Kirby asked.

  * * * * *

  Several girls shook their heads. He knew that already they felt he hadbeen wise in giving up the pursuit. Ivana spoke.

  "If the Duca and his horde stay underground, we shouldn't have a chanceagainst them. And if they don't, we're better here."

  Kirby shot a searching glance at her, somehow sure that her thoughtswere running parallel with his.

  "You don't think they're going to stay here, do you?"

  "No, and you don't either," Ivana answered.

  "It seems to me that they will retreat into the Rorroh as fast as theycan," Kirby then observed.

  "And do you think the Duca and all the caciques will go with the apes?"This time it was Nini who spoke, and with the council so well launched,Kirby began to feel better.

  "I think," he answered Nini, "that the Duca has gone over to Xlotlialtogether. We fooled him to-day. Instead of killing or capturing usall, he--he only got Naida. But he won't give up. I think he is takingthe apes off to some place from which he can launch a new attack. Andwe've got to stop him before he is ready to deliver another blow."

  "What do you mean?" Ivana now asked.

  "Do you know where the villages of the ape-people are?"

  "Yes. None of us has been very far into the Rorroh, but I
could guesswhere some of the villages may stand."

  * * * * *

  Silence fell after that, but Kirby knew from the glint in Ivana's eyes,and the quick breaths which other girls drew, that they understood.

  "Ivana," he said suddenly, "will you go with me into the Rorroh jungle,and stay with me, facing down every danger it may conceal, until we havefound Naida and brought her back?"

  A flush of life crept into Ivana's pallid cheeks.

  "Yes!"

  Kirby faced the other girls, all of them keyed up now.

  "Nini, will you go?"

  Nini, bronze-haired, dainty nymph of a girl, who had yet the stamina ofa man, looked at him with brave eyes. Then her hands tightened on herrifle, and she stepped forward.

  "When will you have us start?" Ivana asked in a low voice.

  "Now!" Kirby answered, and, taking up the rifle which lay besidehim--the same with which Naida had fought--he looked at the othergirls.

  "There is not one of you," he said slowly, "who would not go willinglyon this quest. But the pursuit party must be small and mobile. Andthere is another duty. To all of you I leave the care of the castle andthe plateau. Take the three rifles I shall leave behind, do what you canto reassure the old people, and hold the plateau safe until we return."

  A murmur of girls' voices sounded in the temple. Kirby motioned to Niniand Ivana, and followed by a low cheer, they moved off together.

  * * * * *

  The night was on them, where they crouched in a cave above a swiftlyflowing river. Kirby, rifle across his knees, sat peering out across theblack, invisible stretches of the forest. His nostrils quivered to thismingled smells of fresh growth and fetid decay of the grotesque land. Inhis ears shrilled the creaking and scraping of insects, the flap ofunseen wings, the distant bellowing grunt of some unseen, unknownanimal.

  "I cannot sleep," Ivana said presently, from back in the cave.

  "Hush," he whispered, "you will wake Nini."

  "But I am already awake!" came her answer. "I--I cannot forget the whitesnakes which slid from that tree when you tried to cut firewood."

  "Hush," Kirby murmured again. "Presently the moon will rise on the earthabove, and light will come here. Even if the jungle is terrible, wereyou not born with courage? Go to sleep now, both of you, because youmust relieve me soon."

  As silence fell again, he knew that the real thing behind theirnervousness was their ghastly doubt about what the night was bringing toNaida. But none of them spoke of Naida. So sickening were thepossibilities that Kirby would not permit conjecture to occupy even hismind when, at length, the sound of even breathing told him that Nini andIvana slept.

  After dreary passing of an hour, a faint light grew over the jungle,silver and clear, and Kirby let his mind run back to the two desertedape-men communities which they had found and searched before dusk sentthem to the cave. From the signs of hasty departure, it looked as thougha far-reaching order had taken the brutes away from their dwellings, andsent them--somewhere.

  That somewhere seemed likely to be the great central community whichIvana said was rumored to exist in the far reaches of the Rorroh. Theproblem was how to locate the community through the hideous country. ButKirby presently drove the question from his head. To-morrow's evilscould best be faced when morrow dawned.

  * * * * *

  Enough light had grown now so that the swirling bosom of the river, anda strip of sand directly below the cliff in which their cave was set,were visible. As Kirby let his eyes wander to the lush growth beyond thesand, he heard something which made him stir uneasily. Some creaturewhich suggested power and hugeness immeasurable was moving there.

  The brush parted, and he saw plainly an animal with the bulk of atwo-story house. On two feet the nightmare thing stood, as lightly as acat, and then came down on all four feet as it ambled out on the sandand extended into the lapping river a tremendous beak studded withteeth. A smell of crushed weeds and the musty odor like that of a lionhouse filled the night. The tyranosaur--it was more like a tyranosaurthan anything else--breathed heavily and guzzled in great mouthfuls ofwater.

  Kirby sat perfectly still. He hoped the thing would go away. But thetyranosaur did not go away. All at once it hissed loudly and stood up,its eyes glowing green and baleful, and Kirby leaned forward.

  From the water was slithering another creature with a gigantic,quivering, jelly body. Kirby saw to his horror that, in addition to fourshort legs with webbed, claw-tipped feet, there sprouted from the body anumber of octopus tentacles. From the scabrous mottle of the head,cruel, unintelligent, bestial eyes glared at the rearing tyranosaur.

  * * * * *

  One of the serpentine tentacles whipped out, slapped against thetyranosaur's fore-shoulder to call forth a hiss and a short bellow. Thenother tentacles waved in the moonlight, and in a flash the tyranosaurwas enmeshed as by a score of slimy cables. He was not altogetherhelpless. Suddenly the steam shovel of a beak buried itself in the jellybody of the water animal, and there spurted out a flood of inky liquid.The water animal emitted a sickening gurgle. But the tyranosaur'sadvantage was only temporary. Closer and closer drew the ugly, scabroustentacles. The tyranosaur never had a chance. Its green eyes flared, theshovel beak plunged and slashed, but never for a second did thetentacles relax. As Kirby stared, he saw the water animal begin to backup, dragging its gigantic enemy with it. For a second the whole nightwas hideous with the sound of hisses, gurgles, dashing water. Then theriver boiled once and for all, and both animals sank in its depths.

  Kirby chafed cold hands together and shivered a little, then turned tosee if Nini and Ivana had heard the struggle.

  Fortunately, however, they still slept. And as if this peace which wasupon them were an omen of good, the jungle continued quiet for the nexthour. Kirby wakened them at last, and after a snatched nap, was in turnawakened.

  The three of them started again when the first glimmerings of dawn cameto the forest. Of food there was plenty--fruits which grew in profusion,and some roots which Nini grubbed out of the earth. Having started alongthe first trail which they encountered beside the river bank, they ateas they walked.

  * * * * *

  Kirby judged they had kept their steady gait for more than two hoursbefore a slight widening of the trail roused him from the preoccupationinto which he had fallen.

  "See there," he exclaimed to both girls, and pointed at a grove of treeswith fanlike leaves which towered up to the right of the trail. "Whatare those big bundles fastened to the lower limbs?"

  Ivana glanced at Nini, who nodded as if in answer to a question.

  "This must be one of the places where the ape-people leave their dead,"Nini answered. "The bundles--But come over to them."

  Kirby forced his way ahead until he stood beneath a huge, unsavorybundle wrapped in roughly woven brown fibre, and wedged in a forkbetween two limbs. Judging from the ugly odor which overhung the grove,there could be no question about what the bundle contained. Nini andIvana, glancing at the scores of similar bundles which burdened thetrees of the whole grove, made wry faces. Kirby slung his rifle in thecrook of his arm, and nodded toward the trail.

  "There must be a village somewhere near," he said.

  A mile farther on they found what they were seeking, a colony of seventyor eighty conical dwellings of mud and thatch, which were ranged in adouble circle about a central common of bare, well-trodden earth. Ittook no long reconnaissance to discover that the town was desertedcompletely of all inhabitants.

  Ivana beckoned and darted to one of the nearest huts, and Kirby,following her, found lying on the uneven earth floor within, ahalf-skinned animal which resembled a small antelope. An obsidion knifebeside the carcass, the disordered condition of a couch of grass, thesour odor of recent animal occupancy, all told their story.

  "The owner left in a hurry," Kirby observed aloud.

/>   Nini, who had gone beyond, to a larger hut which might have belonged toa king ape, called out excitedly to them.

  "A great number of apes have eaten a hurried meal here!"

  * * * * *

  Kirby entered the shadowed, foul-smelling interior of the central hut tofind her statement true. Broken meats, some raw, some cooked, lay on thedirt floor, and scattered bits of fruit were mingled with them. Theashes of a burned out fire at the hut entrance were cold, but had notbeen for long.

  "Do you think--" Ivana began.

  "I think the whole of the Duca's horde came this way, fed, and went on,taking everyone with them," Kirby finished.

  "But which direction did they take?" asked Nini, who was standing at thedoor of the big hut and had already begun to examine the crowding,green, inscrutable walls of jungle which foamed up to the clearing onall sides.

  No less than seven trails wound away into the dark country beyond, andKirby saw that the question would not be an easy one.

  Having hastily circled the clearing and peered down one trail afteranother without finding a clue, he knew that it was the Duca'sintelligence which had made the ape-people depart without leaving eventracks behind them. He did not like the situation.

  "Well," he rumbled to his companions, "we may as well take our choice.One chance in seven of coming out right!"

  But the words were hardly out of his mouth before he pulled himself upwith a jerk, and cursed himself for having given in.

  "Ivana! Nini!" Sharpness, a sudden ring of hope edged his voice. "Am Iseeing things, or is that--"

  * * * * *

  As he pointed to a huge aloe bush down one of the trails to their left,they started to run. Then Kirby knew that he was not seeing things. Whathis first inspection of the trails had failed to show, he saw plainlynow.

  Tied loosely to one branch of the aloe bush, almost concealed amidst thedeep green of foliage, was a bit of white cloth! In a second Kirby washolding out to his companions a tiny strip of Naida's wedding gown.

  "She knew we would come!" He stared down the trail with narrowed, keeneyes.

  How Naida had contrived to leave her signal was more than they knew. Thefact that she _had_ done so, sent all three of them down the trail atdriving speed.

  An hour passed, then another, and the morning which had been barely bornwhen they first took the trail, wore on to the sultriness and vast,colored light of a tropical noon. Twice the main trail forked, and twicethey found an unobtrusive bit of cloth to guide them beyond the works.When the hands of Kirby's still useful watch pointed to twelve, theypaused to eat and rest. Then they pushed on.

  Meanwhile, the country through which they passed left Kirby with a clearunderstanding of why Naida and her people had shunned the Rorroh forestdown the centuries of time.

  Just one thing which stuck in his head was the sight of a small creaturelike a marmoset, sticking an inquisitive nose into the heart of asickly-sweet plant which resembled a terrestrial nepenthe. No sooner hadthe little pink snout touched the green and maroon splotched petals,than the plant writhed, closed its leaves, and swallowed the monkeywhole. Little squeaks of agony and terror sounded for a moment, andceased.

  * * * * *

  At midafternoon they paused in a spot where a forest of trees withwhorled tops were slowly being strangled to death by immense orchids ofevery conceivable shape and color, and by a kind of creeping mistletoewhich grew almost as they watched. Here also, the ground was coveredwith fluffy, grey-green moss which seethed constantly as if it were acarpet of maggots. Both Ivana and Nini warned Kirby on his life not totouch or go near the moss, and a moment later he knew why.

  From the forest came the flash of a small, five-toed horse being pursuedby some animal with a hyena head that barked. At the edge of the mossyglade the hyena swerved aside, but the terrified horse plunged straightout on the carpet of moss. Instantly the air was filled with the soundof animal screams, and a series of tiny, muffled explosions. A cloud ofgreenish-red mist swirled about the horse. Quivering, still screaming,the animal went down on its knees, and as the reddish green smoke fellon him and settled, it became a mass of growing moss spores.

  Before Kirby's eyes, the pitiful animal was covered by a shroud of greenthat spread over him and cloaked him, licking over all with tiny soundslike far off muffled drums as fresh spore cases developed and burst. Thescreams died. Even as Kirby drew the girls to him and they passed on,the horse's nostrils, eyes, mouth were filled with choking green moss;and he lay still.

  * * * * *

  On and on, deeper into the jungle Kirby pushed, and never for a momentdid his companions falter. But the way was not so easy now, for nerveswere jaded, muscles sore, and no human will could have been powerfulenough to cast aside the growing fear for Naida.

  Fear came finally to a head when, toward dusk, Kirby sighted a forkahead of them, approached it confidently to look for Naida's sign, andfound nothing.

  "Oh Lord!" he muttered, and realized that it was the first time any ofthem had spoken for long.

  "There must be something to guide us!" Ivana exclaimed as she searchedwith questing eyes through the swiftly deepening gloom of evening.

  Nini, making an effort to keep up hope in spite of the paleness whichcame to her lovely face, darted down both paths, glancing as she went atevery bush and shrub. But she returned in a moment, and as she shookher head, her great eyes were somber.

  Kirby grunted, scratched behind his ear. Then, however, he stifled anexclamation, and clutched at the hands of both girls.

  On one of the two trails appeared suddenly in the dusk an ape-creature.Kirby saw at once that the thing was small--a female undoubtedly--andthat it had spied them and was moving toward them with all speed. Andborne in upon him most certainly was the fact that the ape-woman wasmaking signals of peace. In her outstretched hand flickered through thegloom a strip of cloth that was gauzy and white.

  Again--a strip of Naida's gown.

  "If you know any words of her tongue, call to her," Kirby said sharply.

  * * * * *

  Ivana obeyed. All three of them started forward. The ape-woman, afterreturning the hail in creaking gutturals, came up to them, and with anunexpected look of pathos and entreaty in her face, began to address thegirls with a flood of talk.

  Word after creaking word she poured out while Nini and Ivana listened insilence. Finally Kirby could stand the suspense no longer.

  "What is it, Ivana? What does she say? Your eyes are lighting up withhope! Tell me--"

  Ivana smiled and turned toward him, while the ape-woman still looked herentreaty.

  "She says," Ivana announced bluntly, "that she and the other womenamongst their people, do not want any of the girls of our race to betaken by their males. Already the men are quarreling about Naida. Theywill not look at their own women. Naida told this woman that we would befollowing, and sent her to lead us to the place where the ape-people areassembling!"

  Kirby felt his lips tightening in a grim smile at the thought thatjealousy was not unknown even to the semi-human creatures of thisneither world. He looked at Nini and Ivana during a stretched outsecond. Then he moved.

  "Good," he snapped. "We go on at once."

  That was his only recognition of what was surely one of the importanthappenings of a lifetime. But for all that, his tired brain, which solately had felt the chill of black depression, was suddenly set on firewith triumph and thanksgiving.

  CHAPTER XII

  As they marched rapidly, the ape-woman, who called herself Gori,succeeded in making them understand that most of the ape-tribes,commanded by the Duca and his caciques, were assembled in the centralcommunity toward which they were heading, that grave danger of some sortthreatened Naida, and that the need for haste was great. But what thedanger was, the two girls could not understand.

  "We can't make out what is going to happen
--what they plan to doto-night," Ivana whispered at last to Kirby. "All Gori says is that wemust rescue Naida and take her away, and must take the Duca away so thathe cannot influence the men any more. And she keeps repeating that wemust hurry."

  "And you can't find out what we must rescue Naida _from_?"

  Ivana shook her head.

  "I'm afraid we're facing something of an appalling nature, as dangerousto ourselves as to Naida. But I know nothing more."

  By the time the silver glow which corresponded to moonlight flooded thejungle, Gori had left the open trail, and was leading them acrosscountry which humans could not have negotiated without the guidance sheoffered. Advancing cautiously always, she stopped for long seconds at atime to reconnoitre, shifting her huge ears about and changing theirshape, twitching her nostrils, and glancing hither and thither withbright little eyes. Sometimes they passed immense spike-tipped flowersten feet in diameter, with fleshy yellow leaves which gave out anauseating stench. Vines with long, recurved thorns and blossoms of deepscarlet, laced the undergrowth together and made passing dangerous.Fire-flies drifted past, and all above and about them flapped moths asbig as bats.

  Kirby, his clothes almost torn from his body, sweat pouring from everypore, heard the labored breathing of the girls, and wondered how theycould hang on. But they did, and after a long time, Gori, halting in themidst of a slight clearing, held up a warning hand.

  * * * * *

  A queer sensation came over Kirby. As he stared and listened, herealized that the twinkles he saw far ahead were not fire-flies, as hehad thought, but lights. In the frosted moon glow, Nini and Ivana drewclose, and Kirby clasped their hands and pressed them for a second. Tootired to exult further he was, even though they seemed close to theirgoal of goals.

  Gori swung her hairy arm in a signal, and with rifles clasped carefully,they began to advance. When, five minutes later, they stood in the heartof a rank glade beyond which they could see nothing, Gori spoke to thetwo girls in her creaking whisper, and Nini laid a restraining hand onKirby's.

  "We have gone as far as Gori dares! She says we must climb a tree here,and watch what will go on in a clearing just beyond this thicket."

  "And we still don't know what we're getting into," Kirby muttered.

  But at any rate they had reached the end of their march.

  Exultation did come to Kirby now, but still he was too completelyfagged, as were both girls, to give much sign. Gori pointed to a treesome fifty feet away, which shot up to a great, foliage-crowned height.They moved toward it, and in a moment were climbing, Gori first, thegirls after her, and Kirby last.

  "Here we are," Ivana presently whispered, at the same time drawingherself out on a limb just beneath one on which Gori and Nini hadcrawled.

  Kirby found himself hedged in by tasselated leaves through which hecould not see. The foliage thinned, however, and soon Ivana halted,perched herself in a comfortable position. Kirby, making himself at easebeside her, and seeing that Nini and Gori were in place, turned his eyesslowly, expectantly downward.

  * * * * *

  At first, all that he saw from his bird's-eye perch, was a circularclearing two hundred yards across, which was surrounded on all sides bylowering jungle. In the exact center of the circle, like a splotch ofink on gray paper, there gaped a deep hole which might have measured sixfeet in diameter. Around this hole, eight poles as tall and stout astelephone poles stood up in bristling array. The moonlight showed thatthe whitish earth of the clearing was tamped smooth as though thousandsof creatures had danced or walked about there for centuries. But not aliving form was visible.

  A grunt of disappointment escaped Kirby after that one look. When helooked beyond the clearing, however, a change came to his feelings.

  A quarter of a mile away, lights were twinkling--the same ones which hadbeen visible on the last stretch of the journey. And the moonlighttouched the little conical roofs of fully two hundred huts of theape-people. No sound was audible save the soughing of night wind in thetrees, the shrilling of insects. Nevertheless, there stole over Kirbyall at once a feeling that the great ape-village was crowded tooverflowing. What was more, he felt himself touched by an eerysensation--familiar these days--of evil to come.

  Ivana, seated with her rifle across her knees, stirred on the limbbeside him.

  "Oh," she whispered suddenly, "I am afraid of this place!"

  Kirby took her hand.

  "I know. Maybe it is the sensation of all the legions of the apes herdedtogether so silently in their village. I wish we knew what to expectfrom them. I wish--"

  * * * * *

  But he broke off, and called softly to Nini on the limb above. Shelooked down with a drawn expression about her mouth.

  "Are you all right?" Kirby whispered.

  "Yes. But--Well, are both of _you_ all right? Gori says we have reachedhere in time, but I--" A gasp of uneasiness escaped her, and Kirby heardIvana echo it. "There is something about that black, silent hole outthere in the clearing, and about those poles sticking up like fangs,that makes me terribly, terribly afraid. Oh, what are they planning?Where is Naida? What are they going to do to her?"

  Kirby whistled in a low key. He had not thought about the black hole inthe clearing.

  "Hum," he muttered, "that's interesting. Ivana, Nini, what do yousuppose--"

  But he got no answer. Gori's twitching lips grimaced them to silence.

  The next instant, the stillness of the night was hurled aside by ahowling, gurgling shout from a hundred, a thousand hystericallydistended ape throats. With the sickening sound came from the villagethe sullen roaring of drums.

  * * * * *

  Ten minutes later, a Kirby who was cold with apprehension and wonderlooked down from his leaf-crowned height at such a spectacle as he knewhuman eyes had never before seen. The shouting had died away, the drumswere silenced. Crammed into the clearing, their foul, hairy bodiespacked close together, the silver light glinting against rolling redeyes and grinning white teeth, stood fully a thousand apes!

  Once the first tumult of shouting in the village had died, they had comeon in silence, and in orderly procession. Those who bore thedrums--huge gourds with heads of stretched skin--had formed a lineentirely around the outer diameter of the circular clearing. Thenothers, lugging vats of a dark, heady-smelling liquor, had depositedtheir burden beside the drums, and formed a second circle. The balanceof the thousand had crowded itself together as best it might, leavingbare the center of the clearing with its black hole and fangs of poles.Kirby, looking down at these legions, did not wonder that cold sweatwetted his back.

  Capable of thinking about only one thing--Naida--he was trying with allhis strength not to think. Ivana, her face blanched in the light whichfiltered their camouflage of leaves, sat rigid, her hands locked abouther cold rifle. On the branch above, Nini and Gori were as still asmummies. No one had spoken since the vanguard of apes had appeared.

  But at last Nini leaned close to Kirby.

  "Have you any idea of what all this means?"

  A draught of hot night air carried up a stench of drunkenness, and thegoaty odor of massed animal bodies.

  "No," Kirby whispered. "I suppose, from Gori's having brought us here,that Naida is going to appear somehow. We've simply got to trust thatGori knows what she is about."

  "But listen--" Ivana suppressed a shudder. "Suppose they should bringNaida here presently to force her to take part in some ceremony at whichwe can only guess. Gori, who thinks we can work miracles, supposes wecan rescue Naida. But I--I'm not so certain. Is there _anything_ we cando?"

  * * * * *

  It was exactly that question which had made Kirby fight to keep himselffrom thinking. His face turned gray before he answered. But answer hedid, finally.

  "Yes, there is one thing we can do, Ivana. We've got to be frank witheach other, and so far, this is th
e _only_ thing I've been able tofigure out. If Naida is brought here, and they make any move to harm heror torture her, we can, and we will, shoot her quickly, before harm orpain comes."

  A grim silence settled once more. During the last miles of march in thejungle, there had persisted in Kirby's heart the hope that there wouldbe at least _something_ favorable in whatever situation they mightencounter. His spirits were so low now that he dared not speak again.

  Amongst the noiseless sea of ape-men below them came, every now andagain, a little ripple of motion as some anthropoid shadow fell out ofhis place, approached the liquor vats, and swilled down the black brew,a quart at a gulp. But mostly there was little commotion. Ivana drew asibilant breath and said that she wished something would happen.

  "I wish," Kirby answered tensely, "that we knew _what_ is going tohappen."

  But the nightmare waiting was not to go on forever. Kirby leaned forwardand pointed.

  It was only instinct that had made him know action must come. For asecond, no change in the expression of the ape-men, no movement in theircrammed ranks, was visible. Then, however, a queer, subdued gruntingrumbled deep down in many throats, and those who had faced thehundred-foot space in the center of the clearing squatted down on theirhams.

  In the back of the crowd necks were craned. The stronger shoved theweaker in an effort to get a better view of the cleared stage, and a fewape-men who had been drinking hurried on unsteady legs to their places.

  "The drums!" Kirby whispered then.

  * * * * *

  With almost military precision, the scores of leather-faced creatureswho had led the procession into the clearing, clasped the skin-headedgourds to their shaggy bellies, and stood with free arm raised asthough awaiting a signal. Nini moved in her position, and Kirby feltIvana shiver and edge close to him.

  From the front rank of the crowd, there sprang up a great male creaturewith the face of a gargoyle and the body of a jungle giant. Just once hereeled on his feet, as though black alcohol had befuddled him, then hesteadied himself, flung both arms above his head, and rolled out acommand which burst upon Kirby's ears like thunder.

  It was as if the whole cavern of the lower world, and the whole of theround earth itself, had been rocked uneasily, dreadfully by thebellowing, crashing explosion of the drums. Maddened by the turmoil hehad let loose, the gargoyle-faced giant ape-man leered about him withblood-shot, drunken eyes, and beat on his cicatrized chest with massivefists. Suddenly he let out a bellow. Straight up into the air he sprangin a wild leap. When he came down, he was dancing, and the portentious,the sickeningly mysterious ceremony for which such solemn preparationhad been made, was begun.

  Kirby drew a rasping breath. Knowing that there must be some definitereason for the dance having begun just when and as it had, he lookedbeyond the solitary dancing giant, on beyond the crowded legions of theapes, toward the village. There, where the main trail from the communityapproached the clearing, he saw precisely the thing which he had bothhoped desperately and dreaded terribly to find.

  * * * * *

  Headed directly toward the clearing, moving down the trail with slow,majestic pace, came a procession headed by a bodyguard of ape-men andaugmented by other men whose nakedness was covered by unmistakable,unforgetable priestly robes of gray.

  All at once the ape-people in the clearing began to scuffle apart,opening a lane down which the procession might pass to the centralstage with its dancer, its ink spot orifice, and its fangs of tallpoles. Kirby, watching the congregation, watching the majestic approachof gray robes through the night, wiped away from his forehead a sweat offear.

  "I think," Nini called in a voice pitched high to outsound the drums,"that the--the Duca is with them!"

  "Yes." Kirby pointed jerkily. "In the middle of the procession, there,surrounded by his caciques!"

  The Duca!

  Yet his approach did not hold Kirby. Directly behind the priests wereemerging now from the jungle a new company of ape-men. Squinting hiseyes, Kirby saw that two of them were lugging on a pole across theirshoulders a curious burden--a sort of monstrous bird cage of barkedwithes. Crouched on the floor of the cage in a little motionless, whiteheap--

  But Kirby closed his eyes. Ivana, cowering against him, gulped as thoughshe were going to be sick. Nini leaned down from above and looked atthem with dilated eyes. Although none of them spoke, all knew that theyhad found Naida at last.

  Kirby was the first to pull himself up. Opening his eyes, he stared longat the white gowned, motionless shape within the cage. Next summing upthe whole situation--the cage surrounded by an armed band, the clearingcrammed with a thousand ape-men--he shook his head. Afterward, he made aquick movement with his hands.

  Ivana, seeing that movement, seeing the expression on his face, startedout of her daze.

  "No! No! Oh, there must be some other way out for her! There must--"

  * * * * *

  Her cry, half a shriek, did not change Kirby's look. What he had donewith his hands was to throw a shell into the chamber of his rifle. Nowhe held the rifle grimly, ready to carry it to his shoulder.

  The procession with the bodyguard of ape-men at its head, the renegadeDuca and his caciques following next, and the cage bringing up the rear,advanced relentlessly down the lane to the central stage. Thegargoyle-faced ape-man who held the stage alone danced with increasingwildness, writhing, twisting, with weird suppleness. Upon the dancinggiant the procession bore down, and before him it finally halted.

  The halt left the Duca and the king ape facing each other, and the apeended his dance. After each had given a salute made by raising theirarms, both Duca and the king ape turned to face the creatures who werestanding with the cage slung across their shoulders. Whereupon thebearers of the cage advanced with it until they stood between two of thetall poles. There, facing the ominous hole in the center of theclearing, with a pole on either side of them, the ape-men lowered thecage to the ground.

  Kirby felt his last hope and courage ebbing. Now he noticed that eachpole was equipped with a rope which passed through a hole near its top,like a thread through the eye of a needle. And while he stared at thedangling ropes, the ape-men made one end of each fast to a ring in thetop of the cage. The next instant they leaped back, and began to heaveat the other end of the lines.

  From the drums came a quicker pounding, a more head-splitting volume ofthunder. Over all the ape-people who watched the show, passed a shiverof what seemed to be whole-souled, ecstatic satisfaction. Slowly, as thetwo ape-men heaved hard, the cage swung off the ground, and slowly rosehigher and higher into the moonlit air.

  * * * * *

  When finally the thing hung high above the heads of the multitude,swaying midway between its tall supports, the ape-men who had done thehoisting fastened their lines to cleats on the poles. Then they turnedto the Duca and the giant king who stood behind them, executed a queer,lumbering bow, and fell back to the rear.

  The next moment it seemed as though every creature in the clearing--menand those who were only half men--had gone crazy. The king flung himselfinto the air as if he were a mass of bounding rubber. Following hislead, the whole assembly let out howls that drowned even the drums, andthen began to sway, to squirm, to leap, even as their king was doingbefore them.

  The caciques and the Duca joined in the madness of foul dancing asheartily as any there. Their eyes were flaming, their long robesflapping, their beards streaming.

  On his perch in the tree Kirby muttered an oath which was lost, sweptaway like a breath, in the shrieking turmoil of sound. Then he turned toIvana.

  "They've brought Naida here to sacrifice her."

  "But _why_?" Ivana's sweet face was frozen in lines of horror. "I'vebeen able to guess what was going to happen to her. But--_sacrifice_.Why will it be that?"

  "Don't you see?" Looking up to include Nini, Kirby found his handsquivering against his r
ifle. "It is easy to understand. In the templeyesterday, what the Duca hoped to do was to kidnap most, or all, of thegirls for the ape-people. But he was able to get only Naida. The firstresult was that the ape-men started to quarrel over the one girl. Fromwhat Gori says, trouble started on all sides at once. It becameinadvisable to let Naida live. So the Duca, in his shrewdness, planned asacrifice. By sacrificing Naida, he rids himself of a source ofcontention amongst the ape-men. He also hopes his act will win favorfrom his Gods, and make them help him when he is ready to launch a newattempt to capture _all_ the girls."

  * * * * *

  Ivana and Nini looked at each other, then at Kirby, and horror wasetched deeper into their faces.

  "I think," gulped Ivana, "that you--are right. I--begin to understand."

  Nini leaned close to them.

  "Tell us, then, _how_ this sacrifice is to be made."

  Silent at that, Kirby presently made a heavy gesture toward themaelstrom of howling, leaping animals below them.

  "I couldn't guess at first. Now I think I can. They have placed her inthat cage and swung it high above the black hole you were afraid of.What can that mean except that she is to be offered to--to--"

  It was a monstrous theory which had stunned his hope and courage, and tovoice the thing in words was too gruesome.

  His bare suggestion, however, made Ivana pass a hand limply over herforehead and look at him with blank, stricken eyes. Nini tottered souncertainly that Gori, who had remained motionless and silentthroughout, had to steady her with muscular arms. If it was impossiblefor Kirby to utter his fears aloud, he had no need to speak to make themunderstood.

  "And--and we can do nothing?" Nini choked at last.

  "You can see for yourself how she is surrounded. If we had been able toget here sooner, we might have done something. Now--"

  Kirby's voice trailed off, and he gave an agonized look at his rifle.

  * * * * *

  The terrific dance in the clearing was going forward with madness whichincreased second by second. It had been a general debauch at first, withthe whole thousand of the apes bellowing and squirming. Now a change wasbecoming apparent. Red eyes which had caught the glare of ultimatemadness, focused upon the caciques, the Duca, and the great king, all ofwhom were swaying together on the central stage. As they looked, thehorde of ape-men broke loose with a heightened frenzy of noise andmovement too overwhelming for Kirby to follow. He leaned forward, makingan effort to see what actions of Duca and king could be so influencingthe congregation. And then he saw.

  Both of those central figures, the one with hair-covered giant's bodyand evilly grimacing face, the other with white robes and whippingsilver hair, were definitely emulating the motions of a serpent!

  It was as if the angles and joints had disappeared from their bodies.They were become gliding lengths of muscle as swift, as loathsome intheir supple dartings and coilings as any snake lashing across theexpanses of primeval jungle. Lost in what they did, unconscious of thenightmare, demoniac legion before which they danced, they had eyes onlyfor the empty, ominous hole beneath Naida's cage. As they circled thehole, drawing ever and ever closer to it, they opened and closed theirarms with the motion of great serpent jaws biting and striking.

  "God in Heaven!" Kirby cried in a voice which shrilled with horror andthen broke.

  It was not alone the Duca's dance which had wrung the shout from him. AsNina and Ivana shrieked and cowered, as Gori twitched, gasped, buriedher head in trembling arms, Kirby knew that Naida was fully aware ofwhat was going on--had been, perhaps, from the beginning.

  Slowly, numbly she raised herself from her huddled position, rose to herknees, and clutching with despairing hands at the sides of her cage,looked out from between the bars.

  * * * * *

  The king and Duca edged closer to the hole until they were dancing uponits very brink. From that position, they stared down into the depths,their faces tense and strained. And then their look became radiant,exalted, joyous. Suddenly the Duca leaped back. He shrieked somethingat the gargoyle ape, and they flung their arms high in a commanding,mighty signal which was directed across the nightmare legion of ape-men,to the drums.

  As Kirby winced in expectancy, the drums ceased to roar. Over the nightsmashed a hideous concussion of silence, deafening, absolute. And theape-men--all of them--and the Duca, his caciques, and the king, ceasedto dance. As if a whirlwind had hurled them, the caciques scattered inall directions. The Duca, having already leaped back from the gapingorifice, suddenly turned and ran with blurred speed over to theslobbering, deadly still front rank of the congregation. An instantlater the king crouched down beside him, and the whole stage was leftbare and deserted.

  Kirby gave one look at Naida, found her staring down, deeper and deeperdown, into the hole which yawned beneath her so blackly. Then Kirbylowered his eyes until he, too, stared at the opening.

  Amidst the pressing silence there stole from the earth an uneasy soundas of some immense thing waking and stirring. Came a hissing note as ofescaping steam. The tribes of the ape-men waited in silent rapture.Kirby saw Naida still looking down, and felt Ivana crouch against him,fainting. He held his rifle tighter, and continued to stare.

  Something red, like two small flames, licked up above the edge of thepit. Then Kirby gasped and all but went limp. Up and out into themoonlight slid a glistening white lump that moved from side to side andlicked at the night with flickering black and red tipped forked tongue.

  The glistening white lump was the head of Quetzalcoatl, buried God ofthe People of the Temple. It was wider and bigger than an elephant's,and the round snake body could not have been encircled by a man's twoarms. Kirby guessed at the probable length of the Serpent in terms ofhundreds of feet.

  * * * * *

  Sick, numb, he glanced at Naida, who was still staring silently, andhitched his rifle half up to his shoulder. But he did not look down thesights yet. Although it was time, and more than time, that he fired, hewould not do it until the last possible second, when nothing elseremained.

  Slowly from the hole slid a fifteen or twenty-foot column of the body,and Quetzalcoatl, thus reared, looked about him with a pair of eyesimmense and not like snake's eyes, but heavily lidded and lashed; eyesthat stared in a wise, evil way; eyes glittering and round and black asink. After a time the mouth opened in a silent snarl, showing greatwhite fangs and recurved simitars of teeth. The head was snow white,leperous in its scabby, scaly roughness, with here and there a patch ofwhat looked like greenish fungus. From the rounded body trailed a short,unnatural, sickening growth of--feathers. Old and evil and very wise theFeathered Serpent seemed as his forked tongue flickered in and out andhe stared at the ape horde, who stared back silently.

  He seemed in no hurry to devote his attention to the cage set forth forhis delectation. The black eyes rolled beneath their lashes, staring nowat the Duca in his robes, and again at the huddled ape-people. But afterghastly seconds, Quetzalcoatl at last had seen enough.

  Again the moonlight glinted against simitar teeth as the great, white,puffy mouth yawned in its silent snarl. Quetzalcoatl reared his head alittle higher, slid further from his hole, and then looked up at thedangling cage of barked withes.

  In Kirby's mind stirred cloudily a remembrance of moments in the past:the feel of Naida's first kiss, her look as they advanced to the altarin the temple. Then he saw things as they were now, with Naidasurrounded by all the tribes of the apes, and with Quetzalcoatl staringfrom beneath heavily lidded lashes at the whiteness of her.

  Suddenly Kirby stirred to free his shoulder of Ivana's supine weightagainst it, and he made himself look down his rifle. He let the breathhalf out of his lungs, and nursed the trigger.

  * * * * *

  But he did not fire.

  All at once he started so violently that he almost hurtled from thetree. Suddenly, trem
bling, he lowered his rifle.

  "Oh, thank God!" he yelped in the silence of the night.

  The idea which had transformed him was perhaps the conception of alunatic. But it was still an idea, and offered a chance.

  Again Kirby peered down his rifle. But he no longer aimed at Naida. AsQuetzalcoatl lifted white fangs, Kirby aimed deliberately at him, andturned loose his fire.

  With the first shot, the Serpent lurched back from the cage, snapped hisjaws, and closed evil, black eyes. From one lidded socket squirted darkblood. As a second and third shot crashed into the cavernous fangedmouth, and others ripped into the flat skull, Quetzalcoatl seemed dazed.His head wavered back and forth and his hiss filled the night, but hedid nothing.

  But all at once Kirby felt that he was _going_ to do something in asecond, and a great calm came upon him. He quickly jammed home a freshclip of shells.

  "Nini! Ivana! Fire at the Serpent. Give him everything you've got! Doyou understand? Fire! He thinks that the ape-people have hurt him, andhe will be after them in a second. If we have any luck, he will do tothem what we never could have done, and maybe destroy himself at thesame time! Me, I'm going down there and get Naida now!"

  CHAPTER XIII

  No sooner did Kirby see comprehension in the girls' faces than he swungaround and let go of his perch. As he crashed, caught the next limbbelow him, and let go to crash to another, he had all he could do tosuppress a yelp of joy. For all at once every voice in the apecongregation was raised in howls and screams of devastated terror.

  He did not care how he got down from the tree. Seconds and half secondswere what counted. From the last limb above the ground he swung intospace, and a split second later staggered to his feet, clutched hisrifle, and started for the clearing. His lungs seemed collapsed and bothankles shattered. He did not care. Not when the ape screams were growinglouder with every step he took. Not when he heard Nini and Ivana pouringdown from their tree a continuation of the scorching fire he hadstarted.

  Panting, his breath only half regained, but steeled to make the fight ofhis life, he tore from the jungle into the clearing just in time to seea twisting, pain-convulsed seventy-foot coil of white muscle lash up andstrike Naida's cage a blow which knocked it like a ball in the air.Naida screamed and hung to the bars.

  But she was all right. It was not against her that Quetzalcoatl wasventing his wrath: the blow had been blind accident. As Kirby stood atthe clearing's edge, he knew to a certainty that Quetzalcoatl's reactionto sudden pain had been all he had dared hope.

  In front of him forty or fifty ape-bodies lay in a crushed heap. Whileyard after yard of the Serpent's bleached length streamed out of thehole, the hundreds of feet of coils already in the clearing suddenlywhipped about a whole squadron of ape-men, and with a few constrictionsannihilated them as if they had been ants. Across the clearing, theleperous head reared up as high as the trees and swooped down, fangsgleaming. The howls of the ape-men trying to flee, the screams of thosewho had been caught, rose until they became all one scream.

  * * * * *

  But Kirby had not left the safety of the tree merely to get a ringsideview of carnage. He faced his next, his final task unhesitatingly.Straight out he leaped from the shadows of the jungle into the clearing,out into the presence of the beleagured, screaming ape-men. Well enoughhe knew that those creatures, despite their frenzy, might sight him andfall upon him at any second; well enough he knew that a single flick ofthe white coils all over the clearing could crush him instantly. But thetime to worry about those hazards would be when they beset him. With ayell as piercing as any in the whole bedlam, Kirby rushed forward.

  High up in the moonlit vault of the night, swaying between the two poleswhich supported it, hung the white cage which was Naida's prison. By thetime Kirby had sprinted fifty yards, he knew that his yells had reachedNaida. For she staggered to her knees and looked straight at him. Asecond later, though, he realized that the almost inevitable recognitionof him by ape-men had come to pass.

  Eight or ten of the creatures, left unmolested for a second by theSerpent, halted in the mad run they were making for the shelteringjungle, and while one pointed with hairy arm, the others let outshrieks. Kirby gritted his teeth in something like despair. Then herealized that the worst danger--Quetzalcoatl's blurred coils--was notthreatening him so far. And he went on, straight toward the ape-men.

  He did not look where, how, or at whom he struck. All he knew was thathis rifle blazed, and as he clubbed at soft flesh with the butt, bloodspurted, and new screams filled the night. He felt and half saw big,stinking bodies going down, and clawed his way forward, around them,over them. Then he felt no more bodies, and knew that he was through. Alittle farther he ran over the trampled earth, and stopped and lookedup.

  The howls of the living, the shrieks of the dying deafened him. Renewedshots from the rifles in the tree, made the Serpent lash about in adazzling white blur, smashing trees, apes, everything in its path. ButKirby, finding himself still safe, scarcely heard or saw. His eyes,turned upward, saw one thing only.

  "Naida!"

  * * * * *

  She had snapped two of the withes of the cage and was leaning forwardthrough the opening. Her face was livid with horror and exhaustion, butshe was able to look at him with eyes that glowed.

  "You--you came!" she gasped. "You came to me!"

  In a flash Kirby jumped over to the poles and began to cast off one ofthe lines which held the cage aloft.

  "Get ready for a bump!" he shouted, as he lowered away, arms straining.

  Paying out the one line left the cage suspended from the second, but letit sweep from its position between the poles, down toward one pole. Asthe thing struck the tall support, Kirby bounded over to stand beneathit, only too sharply aware of the death waiting for him on every side,but ignoring it. Naida still hung suspended a good twenty feet abovehim, but there was no time to let go the other line. He braced himselfand held up his arms.

  "Jump!" he yelled.

  Then he saw the white gown sweeping down toward him, felt the crash of asoft body against his, and staggered back. Recovered in a tenth of asecond, he drew a deep breath, and looked at Naida beside him, tall andbrave, unhurt.

  "Are you able to run?" he snapped, and then, the moment she nodded,motioned toward the jungle.

  Behind them, in front, on all sides, rose screams so horrible that hewondered even then if he would ever forget. As he started to run, herealized that when Naida had finally landed in his arms, the nearestsquirming loop of the Serpent had been no more than four yards away, andthat, right now, if their luck failed, a single unfortunate twist of theincredible hundreds of feet of white muscle could still end things forthem.

  * * * * *

  But luck was not going to fail. Somehow Kirby knew it as they sprintedside by side, and the sheltering jungle loomed closer every second. Anda moment later, something beside his own inner faith made him know it,too.

  "Look, Naida! Look!" he screeched all at once.

  At the upper end of the clearing, where an unthinkable slaughter wasgoing on, there leaped out from amongst a surging mass of apes, leapedout from almost directly beneath a downward smashing blur of white snakefolds, a figure which Kirby had not seen or thought about for manyseconds.

  The Duca's robe hung in tatters from his body. Blood had smeared hiswhite hair. His eyes were those of a man gone mad from fear. And as heescaped the tons of muscle which so nearly had engulfed him, he began torun even as Kirby felt himself running.

  Straight toward him and Naida, Kirby saw the man spurt, but whether themad eyes recognized them or not, he could not tell, nor did he care. Allat once his feeling that they would escape the clearing, becameconviction.

  For suddenly the same single twitch of Quetzalcoatl's vast folds whichmight have finished them, if luck had not held, put an end to the Duca'sretreat. At one moment the man's path was clear. The next--


  Kirby, running for dear life, gasped, and heard Naida cry out besidehim.

  The great loops flashed, twisted, and where had been an open way forthe Duca, loomed a wall of scaly white flesh. The living wall twitched,closed in; and as the Duca dodged and leaped to no avail, a cry shrilledacross the night--a cry that cut like a knife.

  * * * * *

  Kirby saw no more. But it was likely that most, if not all, of thecaciques had gone with the Duca.

  Somehow, anyhow, in but a few seconds more, Kirby dove into the spotfrom which he had left the jungle to enter the clearing. As Naidapressed against him, winded but still strong, he found his best hopesfor immediate retreat realized, for Gori, Nini, and Ivana, down fromtheir tree, ran toward them.

  "She is all right," he said with a gesture which cut short the outburstsready to come. "But we've got to keep going. Ivana, tell Gori that herpeople are gone, wiped out, but that if she will cast her lot with us,we will not forget what she has done. Come on!"

  With Gori leading them they ran, stumbling, recovering themselves,stumbling again. To breathe became an agony. But not until many minuteslater, when they plowed into the cover of a fern belt whose blacknessnot even the moonlight had pierced, did Kirby call a halt.

  Here he swept a final glance behind him, listened long for sounds ofpursuit, and relaxed a little only when none came to disturb the nightstillness. However, that relaxation, now that he permitted it at last,meant something.

  The complete silence gave him final conviction that what he had saidabout the whole ape-people being destroyed was true. As for theSerpent--well, perhaps he was destroyed even as they were. Perhaps not.In any case the grip which Quetzalcoatl held upon the imagination of thePeople of the Temple had been destroyed by this night's work, and thatwas what counted most. The Serpent would be worshipped no longer.

  * * * * *

  Kirby reached out in the darkness and found Naida's hand.

  "Come along," he said to all of the party. "I think the past is--thepast. And with Gori to guide us out of the jungle, and our own brains toguide us through the jungle of self-government after that, I think thefuture ought to be bright enough."

  Ivana and Nini both chuckled as they moved again, and Gori, hearing hername spoken in a kindly voice, twitched her ears appreciatively. Naidadrew very close to Kirby.

  "What are you thinking about?" she asked presently.

  "The--temple," he answered.

  "About the crown which probably is still lying on the altar there?"

  Kirby looked up in surprise.

  "Why, I had forgotten about that!"

  "What was it, then?"

  "But what could I have been thinking about except how you looked when wecame together in that gloomy place, and walked forward, side by side?_Now_ have I told you enough?"

  Naida laughed.

  "There is so much to be done!" Kirby exclaimed then. "As soon aspossible, we must climb to the Valley of the Geyser, go on into theouter world, and there seek carefully for men who are willing, and fit,to come here. And that is only one task. Others come crowding to meevery second. But first--"

  "What?" Naida asked softly.

  "The temple. Naida, we will reach the plateau sometime to-morrow. All ofthe girls who kept watch there will be waiting for us, and it will be atime of happiness. May we not, then, go to the temple? There will be nopriests. But we will make our pledges without them. Tell me, may I hopethat it will be so--to-morrow?"

  Naida did not answer at once. She did not even nod. But presently hershoulder, still fragrant with faint perfume, brushed his. She claspedhis hand then, and as they walked on in silence, Kirby knew.

 

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