then it had been discovered
that, by feeding these devils human flesh, they could be rendered
torpid and their advance stayed--so long as the periodical meals
continued!

At first criminals had been supplied them, then natives, then Chinese,
obtained by periodical war raids. What would you have? The savage
regions of the earth had already been depopulated, and a frenzy of
fear had taken possession of the whole world.

Now the Chinese had defeated the annual American invasion, and the
Earth Giants were budding and swarming through the heart of Brazil.

* * * * *

"Man," said the Theosophists, "is the fifth of the great root-races
that have inhabited this planet. The fourth were the Atlanteans. The
third were the Lemurians, half-human beings of whom the Australian
aborigines are the survivors. The second race was not fully organized
into human form. Of the first, nothing is known.

"These are the second race, surviving in the Antarctic valleys.
Half-human objects, groping toward that perfection of humanity of
which we ourselves fall very far short. As the Kabbala says, man,
before Adam, reached from heaven to earth."

Kay Bevan and Cliff Hynes had been, working feverishly to perfect
their Crumbler for use in the Chinese wars. Convinced, as were all
fair-minded men, that these annual raids were unjustified, they
yielded to the logic of the facts. Should America sacrifice a hundred
thousand of her boys and girls each year, when human life was cheap in
China? _Boys and girls!_

It had been discovered that the Earth Giants required the flesh of
women as well as of men. Some subtle chemical constituent then
produced the state of torpidity during which the advance and the
budding of the monsters was stayed. During the ten past years their
northward advance had been almost inappreciable. Brazil had even sent
another army against them.

But the deadliest gases had failed to destroy the tenacious life of
these protoplasmic creatures, and the tanks, which had driven through
and through them, had become entangled and blocked in the gelatinous
exudations, and their occupants eaten.

All over the world scientists were striving to invent some way of
removing this menace to the world. Moreover, airplanes sent to the
polar continent had reported fresh masses mobilizing for the advance
northward. A second wave would probably burst through the Amazon
forest barrier and sweep over the Isthmus and o