ization and quick understanding held him spellbound.
She had come, had taken the robes from another poor victim ... to be
with him in this, the last hour....

Marahna--a princess among these strange folk--was giving her life when
another could have been in her place. And she smiled tremulously,
bravely, as her eyes locked with his, as, speechless and spellbound,
he stared through the eyelets of gold.

The priest was reaching for his head-dress, Jerry tensed. The moment
had come.

* * * * *

He was ready. As the weight left his shoulders, he dropped, with one
swift movement, his golden disguise. The robe fell in folds at his
feet. He stared in silence, through narrowing eyes, at the face of the
head priest above him. Then, leaping straight up, he fastened one
hand, sinewy, sun-browned and strong, on the white neck below the
white face. They crashed back, to land on the ramp and roll,
struggling, toward the edge.

Jerry's hold never slackened. He felt his fingers sink deep in the
flesh. He came to his knees, then up, to hold the writhing figure at
arm's length. Then, heaving with all his strength, he whipped the man
into the air, to drag him in one leaping bound for the sheltering
darkness beyond.

A figure was entering with him--a slim, naked figure, with glowing and
worshipping eyes.

Behind them the silence was shattered. Jerry saw, as he stepped from
the light, the riot of figures that surged in hysterical frenzy
through the great hall. The priests were leaping among them ... the
tall priest who had guarded the door was fighting his way through the
mob.

Jerry loosed his quivering hand from the throat it held. He cast the
figure from him. And he blinked his eyes to make them serve him in the
blackness all about.

Beside him, a form, invisible in the dark, was stroking at his face,
and a voice was whispering tremulously: "Cherrie ... Cherrie!"

* * * * *

The tumult in the great hall reached them but faintly. Jerry Foster
strove desperately to focus his eyes in that darkness of utter night.
A dim glow from the portal crept softly in to bring faint illumination
to the farther wall. Slowly his eyes found that which they feared yet
sought.

Off in the dark, directly opposite the entrance, was a white and
ghostly thing. Formless and vague, it wavered and blurred to his
straining eyes. He fumbled clumsily for a match, one of his treasured
store.