ks after it is taken.

The victims get relief only with an antidote supplied through Ribiera,
The Master's Chief Deputy; but in the antidote there is more of the
poison, which again in two weeks will take effect. And so it is that a
person who once receives the poison is forever enslaved.

Ribiera kidnaps Paula Canalejas, daughter of a Brazilian cabinet
minister who, on becoming a victim, has killed himself, preferring
death to "murder madness." Bell rescues Paula, and they flee from
Ribiera in a plane. They find The Master's hidden jungle stronghold, and
Bell destroys it with a bomb attack from the air. As he is getting away
his motor quits. Paula jumps for her life, and shortly afterwards Bell
follows, drifting straight down towards his enemies below.

CHAPTER XI

Bell was falling head-first when the 'chute opened, and the jerk was
terrific, the more so as he had counted not the customary ten, but
fifteen before pulling out the ring. But very suddenly he seemed to be
floating down with an amazing gentleness, with the ruddy blossom of a
parachute swaying against a background of lustrous stars very far indeed
over his head. Below him were masses of smoke and at least one huge
dancing mass of flame, where the storage tank for airplane gas had
exploded. It was unlikely in the extreme, he saw now, that anyone under
that canopy of smoke could look up to see plane or parachute against the
sky.

Clumsily enough, dangling as he was, Bell twisted about to look for
Paula. Sheer panic came to him before he saw her a little above him but
a long distance off. She looked horribly alone with the glare of the
fires upon her parachute, and smoke that trailed away into darkness
below her. She was farther from the flames than Bell, too. The light
upon her was dimmer. And Bell cursed that he had stayed in the plane to
make sure it would dive clear of her before he stepped off himself.

* * * * *

The glow on the blossom of silk above her faded out. The sky still
glared behind, but a thick and acrid fog enveloped Bell as he descended.
Still straining his eyes hopelessly, he crossed his feet and waited.

Branches reached up and lashed at him. Vines scraped against his sides.
He was hurled against a tree trunk with stunning force, and rebounded,
and swung clear, and then dangled halfway between earth and the jungle
roof. It was minutes before his head cleared, and then he felt at once
despairing and