that slashed great streamers of the amorphous tissue from the wall
of protoplasm.

It recoiled and then folded once more, and Kay's mighty sweeps were
slashing phantom limbs from phantom bodies; and lopping off tentacles
that curled and coiled, and put forth caricatures of hands and
fingers, and then, uniting with other slashed off tentacles, began to
mould themselves into the likeness of dwarf monsters. Kay's struggle
was like that of a man fighting a fog, for again and again he broke
through the wall, and always it reunited.

And behind it another wall of protoplasm was pressing forward, and on
another side a wall was drifting up. As Kay stopped, panting, and
momentarily free, Ruth saw that they were almost encircled.

She saw the nature of that fight. Inevitably that wall would close
about them; and, though the bones of last year's victims had been
gathered up and carried away by the Federation, she guessed what would
occur.

She ran to Kay and dragged him back through the closing gap. It met
behind them, and again they stood face to face with the devils. Only
this time, instead of a wall of protoplasm, it was a veritable
mountain that confronted them, and there could be no more breaking
through.

Kay thought afterward that the one touch of absolute horror was that
the reforming monsters, the young ones growing visibly before his
eyes, had the gamboling instinct of young lambs or other creatures.
They were much more lively than the parent creatures.

* * * * *

By this time perhaps a third of the space within the electrified lines
had been occupied by the devils. The wall was slowly and sluggishly
advancing, and a fresh infiltration was drifting in on another side.
As the victims were pressed closer and closer together in their
flight, half of them seemed to go insane. They raced to and fro,
laughing and screaming, flinging their arms aloft in extravagant
gestures. One young fellow, rushing across the ground, hurled himself
like a bolt from a catapult into the heart of the grisly mass, which
opened and received him.

There was a struggle, a convulsion; then the mass moved on.

Kay wiped his ax. He stood beside Ruth, gathering strength and breath
to fight again. What else was there to do?

Suddenly a humming sound came to his ears. Still some little distance
from the monsters, he glanced back. The victims were shouting, staring
upward. Over the tops of the jungle trees Kay