s it?"

She raised her hand that he might see; her lips, seemed almost too
numb for speech.

"Only a scratch," she whispered, but Harkness saw her eyes glazing. He
dropped to his knees and caught her swaying body in his arms.

"A scratch," she repeated in a fading voice, "from the spear....
Poison ... I think."

A head appeared over the lava crest. Harkness saw it vaguely. He knew
that Chet had the newcomer covered; his bow was drawn. It meant
nothing to him, for Diane was wounded--dying! Dying, now, in his
arms....

The ape-man came on; he was grovelling upon the ground. He was
hairless, like the one they had seen escape the attack of the giant
bat, and his cheek was slashed with a healing cut that might have been
made by a ripping talon. He abased himself before the awful might of
these creatures who had saved them. And he made motions with his arms
to picture how they had sailed down from the skies; had landed; and he
had seen them. He was plainly petitioning for pardon and the favor of
these gods--when he dropped his animal head to stare at the girl and
the cut hand that Harkness held in his.

The blue discoloration of the wound must have been plain in its
significance. The hairless one sprang abruptly to his feet and darted
toward a cave. He was back in a moment; and, though be approached with
wriggling humility, he reached the girl and he ventured to touch the
discolored hand with a sticky paste. He had a gourd that he held to
the girl's lips.

Harkness would have struck it away; he was beside himself with grief.
But Chet interposed.

"Give it to her," he said in a sharp, strained voice that told of his
own dismay. "I think the beggar knows what he's about. He is trying to
help."

The lips were lax; only a little of the liquid found its way down her
throat. But Harkness, after minutes of agony, saw the first flutter of
lids that betokened returning life....

CHAPTER X

"_But Awfully Dumb...._"

Harkness would never forget the helpless body in his arms, nor the
tender look that came slowly to the opened eyes that gazed so steadily
into his. And yet it was Chet that she seemed to want for the thousand
little services during the week that followed. And Harkness tried to
still the hurt in his heart, and he told himself that it was her
happiness be wanted more than his; that if she found greater pleasure
in having Chet near, then his love was unworthy if it placed itself as
a bar to that other happi