jaws that closed
the exit. He paused a moment, gathering strength. Then he heaved the
soft mass of the dead termite into the clashing mandibles.

"Jim!" he cried, as the burden left his arms.

Jim turned, raced the few yards intervening between the ring of death
and the doorway. Together they waited to see if their forlorn hope would
work....

It could not have lasted more than a second, that wait, yet it seemed at
least ten minutes. And then both cried aloud--and crouched to repeat the
maneuver that had saved them from death when they had first entered this
insect hell.

For the enormous, smashing jaws had caught the body of the worker
termite with ferocious eagerness, and were worrying the inanimate
carcass with terrible force.

The great jaws were occupied just an instant before the monster sensed
that it was one of his own kind that he was mangling so thoroughly. But
in that instant Jim had slid on his chest along the floor past the
armored head and shoulders, and Dennis had leaped to follow.

But Dennis was not to get off so lightly.

* * * * *

The charging ring of termites had closed completely in by now. The
snapping mandibles of the nearest one were up to him. They opened; shut.

They caught Denny on the back swing, knocking him six feet away instead
of slicing him wide open. Denny got to his feet almost before he had
landed; but between him and the exit was the bulk of the termite that
had felled him, and in the doorway the guard had dropped the body it was
slashing to bits, and had recommenced its slashing jaw movements.

"Jim! For God's sake...." shrieked the doomed man.

Beside himself, he managed to hurdle clear over the massive insect
between him and the doorway. But there he stopped, with the guard's
great mandibles fanning the air less than a foot from him. "Jim!" came
the agonized cry again.

And behind the gigantic termite, in the tunnel, with at least a
possibility of safety lying open before him, Jim heard and answered the
call.

Savagely he plunged his spear into the unarmored rear of the guard, tore
it out, thrust again....

The thing heaved and struggled to turn, shaking the tunnel with its
rasping anger--and taking its attention at last away from the duty of
closing that tunnel mouth.

With no room to run and slide, Denny fell to the floor and commenced to
creep through the narrow space between the trampling guard's bulk and
the wall. He felt h