the attack when it came with his own shoulders dropped to
the fighter's pose, head drawn in close and both fists swinging free.

There were lean fingers clutching at his throat, a press of blood-red
bodies thick about him, and a clustering of faces where color blotched
and flowed.

The thud of fists in blows that started from the floor was new to
these lean creatures that clawed and clung like cats. But they
trampled on those who went down before the flyer's blows and stood
upon them to spring at his head; they crowded in in overwhelming
numbers while their red hands tore and twined about his face.

* * * * *

It was no place now for long swings; McGuire twisted his body and
threw his weight into quick short jabs at the faces before him. He was
clear for an instant and swung his heavy boot at something that clung
to one leg; then met with a rain of hooks and short punches the faces
that closed in again. He saw in that instant a wild whirl of bodies
where the stocky figure of Professor Sykes was smothered beneath his
taller antagonists. But the professor, if he was forgetting the
science of the laboratory, was remembering that of the squared
circle--and the battle was not entirely one sided.

McGuire was free; the blood was trickling down his face from
innumerable cuts where sharp-nailed fingers had sunk deep. He wiped
the red stream from his eyes and threw himself at the weaving mass of
bodies that eddied about Sykes in frantic struggle across the room.

The face of the professor showed clear for a moment. Like McGuire he
was bleeding, and his breath came in short explosive gasps, but he was
holding his own! The eyes of McGuire glimpsed a wildly gesticulating,
shouting figure in the rear. The face, contorted with rage, was almost
the color of the brilliant scarlet that the creature wore. The
blood-stained man in khaki left his companion to fight his own battle,
and plunged headlong at a leaping cluster of dull red, smashed through
with a frenzied attack of straight rights and lefts, and freed himself
to make one final leap at the leader of this unholy pack.

He was fighting in blind desperation now; the two were out-numbered by
the writhing, lean-bodied creatures, and this thing that showed in
blurred crimson before him was the directing power of them all. The
figure symbolized and personified to the raging man all the repulsive
ugliness of the leaping horde. The face came clear be