ght battery
holds out. Its tail left plenty of sign for us to follow."

* * * * *

They started. And Evelyn had literally been forgotten in its agony by
the monster which had carried her. Its body, though scaled and warty,
was flabby and soft. Pressed against its breast she had been half
strangled, but had no injuries beyond huge, purple bruises which had
not yet reached the point of stiffness. She followed Tommy gamely, and
the need for action kept her from yielding to the reaction from her
terror.

For a long, long time they back-trailed. Less than fifteen minutes
after leaving the carcass of the thing Tommy had killed, they heard
beast-roarings and the sound of fighting. But that noise died away as
they traveled. Presently they reached the spot where Tommy had leaped
upon a huge living thing. It was gone now, but the impress of a body
the thickness of a barrel remained upon the rotted vegetation of the
jungle floor. Evelyn shivered when Tommy pointed it out.

"It was large," said Tommy ruefully. "I didn't even get a good look it the
thing. Probably just as well, though. I might have been--er--delayed.
Good Lord! What's that?"

A light had sprung into being somewhere. It was bright. It was
blinding in its brilliance. Coming through the tangled jungle growth,
it seemed as if spears of flame shot through the air, irradiating
stray patches of scabrous tree-trunk with unbearable light. For an
instant the illumination held. Then there was a distant, cracking
detonation. The unmistakable explosion of gun-cotton split the air,
and its echoes rolled and reverberated through the jungle. The light
went out. Then came a thin, high yelling sound which, faint as it was,
had something of the quality of hysterical glee. That crazy ululation
kept up for several minutes. Evelyn shivered.

"The Ragged Men," said Tommy very quietly. "They sneaked up on the
Tube. They flung blazing thermit, or something like it, with a weapon
captured from the Golden City. That explosion was the grenades going
off. I'm afraid the Tube's blown up, Evelyn."

She caught her breath, looking mutely up at him.

"Here's a pistol," he said briefly, "and shells. There's no use our
going to the Tube to-night. It would be dangerous. We'll do our
investigating at dawn."

* * * * *

He found a crevice where tree-fern trunks grew close together and
closed in three sides of a sort of roofless ca