d.

"To the fissure!" shouted Ventnor. Drake heard, for he changed
his course to the crevice at whose mouth Ruth had said the--Little
Things--had lain.

After him streaked Chiu-Ming, urging on the pony. Shouting out of the
tunnel, down over the lip of the bowl, leaped the soldiers. We dropped
upon our knees, sent shot after shot into them. They fell back,
hesitated. We sprang up, sped on.

All too short was the check, but once more we held them--and again.

Now Ruth and Dick were a scant fifty yards from the crevice. I saw him
stop, push her from him toward it. She shook her head.

Now Chiu-Ming was with them. Ruth sprang to the pony, lifted from its
back a rifle. Then into the mass of their pursuers Drake and she poured
a fusillade. They huddled, wavered, broke for cover.

"A chance!" gasped Ventnor.

Behind us was a wolflike yelping. The first pack had re-formed; had
crossed the barricade the dynamite had made; was rushing upon us.

I ran as I had never known I could. Over us whined the bullets from
the covering guns. Close were we now to the mouth of the fissure. If
we could but reach it. Close, close were our pursuers, too--the arrows
closer.

"No use!" said Ventnor. "We can't make it. Meet 'em from the front.
Drop--and shoot."

We threw ourselves down, facing them. There came a triumphant shouting.
And in that strange sharpening of the senses that always goes hand
in hand with deadly peril, that is indeed nature's summoning of every
reserve to meet that peril, my eyes took them in with photographic
nicety--the linked mail, lacquered blue and scarlet, of the horsemen;
brown, padded armor of the footmen; their bows and javelins and short
bronze swords, their pikes and shields; and under their round helmets
their cruel, bearded faces--white as our own where the black beards did
not cover them; their fierce and mocking eyes.

The springs of ancient Persia's long dead power, these. Men of Xerxes's
ruthless, world-conquering hordes; the lustful, ravening wolves of
Darius whom Alexander scattered--in this world of ours twenty centuries
beyond their time!

Swiftly, accurately, even as I scanned them, we had been drilling into
them. They advanced deliberately, heedless of their fallen. Their arrows
had ceased to fly. I wondered why, for now we were well within their
range. Had they orders to take us alive--at whatever cost to themselves?

"I've got only about ten cartridges left, Martin," I told him.

"We'