ravestied resemblance to human form.

Soft, pulpy and wetly smooth--a ten-foot sac, enclosed in a membrane of
dead gray shot through with flickerings of color that flamed and
died--the whole pulsing mass was supported in a sling of golden cloth.
And, dominating it, in the center of that flabby forehead, a focal point
for the gaze of the horrified observers, was a single glassy and lidless
eye.

Cold, unchanging, entirely expressionless except for the fixed ferocity
that was there, the eye was a yellow disk of hate, where quivering lines
of violet culminated in a central, flaming point; and that point of
living fire swelled prodigiously before their staring eyes. It seemed to
expand, to slowly draw their senses--their very selves--from their
bodies, to plunge them down to annihilation in that fiery pit where a
soundless voice was speaking.

"Slaves! Apes! Take the captives to the great altar rock of Vashta, to
the Holy of Holies. The others you were permitted to slaughter for our
food; hold these two safely. For one shall die slowly for Vashta's
pleasure, and one shall live on for mine. And we would not have them
under our mental control, so guard them well; the offering is more
pleasing to Vashta when the blood in his cup flows from a creature
unbound both in body and mind." And the two helpless humans found
themselves released from the flaming pit that became again but an eye in
the forehead of a loathsome thing.

* * * * *

They were fully conscious of their surroundings as they were herded up
through the pyramid and out into the night, where rough, calloused hands
seized them and dragged them to a smooth table-top of rock that stood
only slightly above the ground before the great rocky pile. Stunned,
waiting dumbly, they saw swarming ape-men clustered like bees on the
lower pyramid face; they saw coverings of stone being removed and a
great recess laid open, while the ape-things dropped in awe before a
grotesque and horrible beast-head carved from a single piece of stone.

The eyes of the beast shone with some cold, hidden light. They seemed
fixed hungrily upon a cup in a distorted hand, and, though the cup was
empty, there was promise of its being filled. For little sluices of
stone sloped from the place where the captives stood, and they ended
above the cup so that the life-blood of a slaughtered creature, or a
sacrificed man, might pour splashingly in, a streaming draught for t