ps from out the room.

"Now run!" ordered Winslow. "Run as if the devils from hell were after
you--and I think they are!" The two tore madly down the corridor whose
double rows of brightness made possible their utmost speed.

There was the narrowing of the passage--Jerry remembered it--where
they came out at the foot of the great shaft, the dead throat of the
volcano. Behind them the shrieks and clamor echoed close. A rope was
dangling from far up at the top.

Jerry leaped for it before he recalled the condition of his arm. In
the excitement of the encounter he had forgotten that the arm was
still in no shape for a long hand-over-hand climb.

"I can't make it," he said, and looked about quickly. There were
baskets of fungus growth, already dried from the heat of the mid-day
sun that had shone where it grew. He dragged one to the narrow part of
the tunnel. Winslow tugged at another and threw it up as a barricade.
A chalk-white figure in copper sheathing was clambering upon it as he
worked at another of the nets.

* * * * *

Jerry let go the fiber basket he was dragging and drew his knife as he
sprang to meet the assault. A sharp cutting edge was unknown to these
workers in copper. Jerry slipped under the raised bludgeoning copper
weapon to plunge the knife into a white throat. Then, without a look
at the body he helped Winslow, struggling with another load.

They completed the barricade. A heap of fungus made a raised place
where Jerry leaped. Commanding the top of the pile that blocked the
choked throat of the passage, he was ready for the next figure that
leaped wildly up.

It would take them a while, Jerry saw, to learn of this scintillant
death that struck at them from close quarters. His knife flashed again
and again as he took the men one at a time and let their limp bodies
roll back to the passage beyond.

* * * * *

The assault was checked when Jerry shouted to his companion. "Tie the
rope around me," he ordered, "up under my arms ... then you go on up.
When you get there pull up--and for the Lord's sake pull fast!"

"Go on," he shouted. "I can hold them for a while--" He turned swiftly
to take a leaping body upon the red point of his knife.

He felt the rope about him as he fought, knew by its twitching when
Winslow started the long climb, and prayed dumbly for strength to hold
his weak fortress till the other could hoist himself up to t