bako
then cried savagely were plainly audible to Wes Craig.

"Aye. Taia. O High Priest--and the blasphemous stranger, too! Both
shall die in the hands of Aten!"

The priest nodded, smiling cruelly. "'Tis well, Shabako. Both shall
die!"

Taia's frightened eyes met Craig's, then lifted to the form of the
idol. He too peered up at it, and for the first time its hideousness
and the cold-blooded cruelty of its design struck him.

The rudely carved figure was a full forty feet high. The impassive
face, horrible in the lifelessness of rock, stared unseeingly down on
its worshippers. One gross black hand was held some ten feet above the
palm of the other, and, inserted in its palm, was a long, keen-pointed
blade. The living sacrifice would be tied to the lower palm; the
upper, by some trickery, would be made to slowly descend....

* * * * *

A surge of panic swept over Craig. In his mind he saw the slight,
helpless form of the girl strapped to that grim paw, saw the knife
inch down, saw it touch and prick and finally drive through her heart.
And it would be the same for him! A flame of blind fury burst in him,
making him reckless; mad.

"The hell we die!" he yelled, in English, and with a great bound he
was at Taia's side. A priest leaped for him, but Craig shot a foot out
and sent him sprawling. Then, with eyes flaming and legs outthrust, he
stood in front of the girl, facing the worshippers.

"Fools!" he roared. "Listen to me! My words are truthful! I do not
lie, as does thy Pharaoh! I can prove that which I say! I can--"

"Take him!" the High Priest shrieked. "Forward! Take him!"

Craig could handle one or two, but not a dozen. A mass of men, women,
soldiers, priests, swept at him. There was a brief moment of struggle,
of oaths and shouts and excited yells from the crowd in the Temple,
till something thudded into the American's head and he went down. Feet
trampled him; men surged over him; then blessed unconsciousness
en-wrapped him, and he knew no more.

He did not hear, as did Taia, Shabako's command:

"To a chamber with them! Guard them well, till the time of sacrifice!"

* * * * *

A small party, led by the stocky figure of the captain of the
Pharaoh's guard, wound its way through a network of corridors, past
jagged walls down which water slowly dripped, across a swaying bridge
of hides that spanned an awful chasm in the volcano's very heart,