swipe, or he
might have slipped--but Shabako staggered drunkenly and barely avoided
falling. With an oath, he came erect and once more charged at the
American. It was easy for Wes to avoid his thrust; it would have been
childishly easy to drive his blade through the Pharaoh's unguarded
chest. But somehow Craig withheld his attack, and only peered more
closely at the other. He rubbed his hand across his eyes. What he was
seeing was incredible.

For Shabako's face was going a ghastly white; and, as Wes watched, he
groaned, tried to raise his sword arm for another blow--and could not.
He staggered, legs askew, lurched crazily forward, stumbled, and at
last pitched down on the ice near the cleft.

Then his great body rolled over, arms flung wide, and lay still. And
the face of Pharaoh Shabako stared unseeingly up at the darkening
sky....

Then, in a flash, understanding came to Wes Craig.

"Oh, God!" he cried. "The Kundrenaline!"

He had forgotten completely about the liquid he had infused into
Shabako's veins. Its potency, adequate to the tremendous task of
revitalizing a long-dead heart, had given out--hastened, no doubt, by
the great physical exertions of the man, and made sudden by the return
to the biting air of the ice fields. The liquid was only for emergency
use, anyway, and supposed to serve for a period of but hours, after
which the heart was intended to carry on alone.

Shabako's heart had not been able to carry on any longer....

* * * * *

Wes Craig was afraid to think, afraid almost to look, to see how Taia
had stood the shock. Her sudden weariness became at once all too clear
to him....

Slowly he turned and looked down into the cleft. He saw her--a
slender, quiet little figure, flat on the ice by the body of her slain
lover.

He leaped down the slippery bank and ran to her side; knelt there, and
grasped her cold white hand.

The girl's eyelids were closed, but when he touched her, they
flickered, and a little sigh came from her pallid lips. Then her large
black eyes, opened and looked up straight into his--and when she saw
him there, she smiled.

It wrenched the man's heart. "Taia!" he cried. "Taia!"

She nodded feebly, still smiling, and her lips moved. He bent close.
She was whispering something. The words came to him through a great
fear.

"Take me--take me, O Divine One. Take me with thee to--to
thy--heaven.... Canst thou not--take--Taia?"

With her la