gles and joints had disappeared from their bodies.
They were become gliding lengths of muscle as swift, as loathsome in
their supple dartings and coilings as any snake lashing across the
expanses of primeval jungle. Lost in what they did, unconscious of the
nightmare, demoniac legion before which they danced, they had eyes only
for the empty, ominous hole beneath Naida's cage. As they circled the
hole, drawing ever and ever closer to it, they opened and closed their
arms with the motion of great serpent jaws biting and striking.

"God in Heaven!" Kirby cried in a voice which shrilled with horror and
then broke.

It was not alone the Duca's dance which had wrung the shout from him. As
Nina and Ivana shrieked and cowered, as Gori twitched, gasped, buried
her head in trembling arms, Kirby knew that Naida was fully aware of
what was going on--had been, perhaps, from the beginning.

Slowly, numbly she raised herself from her huddled position, rose to her
knees, and clutching with despairing hands at the sides of her cage,
looked out from between the bars.

* * * * *

The king and Duca edged closer to the hole until they were dancing upon
its very brink. From that position, they stared down into the depths,
their faces tense and strained. And then their look became radiant,
exalted, joyous. Suddenly the Duca leaped back. He shrieked something
at the gargoyle ape, and they flung their arms high in a commanding,
mighty signal which was directed across the nightmare legion of ape-men,
to the drums.

As Kirby winced in expectancy, the drums ceased to roar. Over the night
smashed a hideous concussion of silence, deafening, absolute. And the
ape-men--all of them--and the Duca, his caciques, and the king, ceased
to dance. As if a whirlwind had hurled them, the caciques scattered in
all directions. The Duca, having already leaped back from the gaping
orifice, suddenly turned and ran with blurred speed over to the
slobbering, deadly still front rank of the congregation. An instant
later the king crouched down beside him, and the whole stage was left
bare and deserted.

Kirby gave one look at Naida, found her staring down, deeper and deeper
down, into the hole which yawned beneath her so blackly. Then Kirby
lowered his eyes until he, too, stared at the opening.

Amidst the pressing silence there stole from the earth an uneasy sound
as of some immense thing waking and stirring. Came a hissing note