rom further lacerations, for the beauty and slenderness of the woman
belied her strength and courage. When he came at last to where his men
had gathered he was glad indeed to turn her over to a couple of
stalwart warriors, but these too were forced to carry her since
Mo-sar's fear of the vengeance of Ko-tan's retainers would brook no
delays.

And thus they came down out of the hills from which A-lur is carved, to
the meadows that skirt the lower end of Jad-ben-lul, with Jane Clayton
carried between two of Mo-sar's men. At the edge of the lake lay a
fleet of strong canoes, hollowed from the trunks of trees, their bows
and sterns carved in the semblance of grotesque beasts or birds and
vividly colored by some master in that primitive school of art, which
fortunately is not without its devotees today.

Into the stern of one of these canoes the warriors tossed their captive
at a sign from Mo-sar, who came and stood beside her as the warriors
were finding their places in the canoes and selecting their paddles.

"Come, Beautiful One," he said, "let us be friends and you shall not be
harmed. You will find Mo-sar a kind master if you do his bidding," and
thinking to make a good impression on her he removed the gag from her
mouth and the thongs from her wrists, knowing well that she could not
escape surrounded as she was by his warriors, and presently, when they
were out on the lake, she would be as safely imprisoned as though he
held her behind bars.

And so the fleet moved off to the accompaniment of the gentle splashing
of a hundred paddles, to follow the windings of the rivers and lakes
through which the waters of the Valley of Jad-ben-Otho empty into the
great morass to the south. The warriors, resting upon one knee, faced
the bow and in the last canoe Mo-sar tiring of his fruitless attempts
to win responses from his sullen captive, squatted in the bottom of the
canoe with his back toward her and resting his head upon the gunwale
sought sleep.

Thus they moved in silence between the verdure-clad banks of the little
river through which the waters of Jad-ben-lul emptied--now in the
moonlight, now in dense shadow where great trees overhung the stream,
and at last out upon the waters of another lake, the black shores of
which seemed far away under the weird influence of a moonlight night.

Jane Clayton sat alert in the stern of the last canoe. For months she
had been under constant surveillance, the prisoner first of one