ce
upon three sides, and along the fourth were heaped huge bowlders which
rose in receding tiers toward the roof.

At first I couldn't make out the purpose of this mighty pile of rock,
unless it were intended as a rough and picturesque background for the
scenes which were enacted in the arena before it, but presently, after
the wooden benches had been pretty well filled by slaves and Sagoths, I
discovered the purpose of the bowlders, for then the Mahars began to
file into the enclosure.

They marched directly across the arena toward the rocks upon the
opposite side, where, spreading their bat-like wings, they rose above
the high wall of the pit, settling down upon the bowlders above. These
were the reserved seats, the boxes of the elect.

Reptiles that they are, the rough surface of a great stone is to them
as plush as upholstery to us. Here they lolled, blinking their hideous
eyes, and doubtless conversing with one another in their
sixth-sense-fourth-dimension language.

For the first time I beheld their queen. She differed from the others
in no feature that was appreciable to my earthly eyes, in fact all
Mahars look alike to me: but when she crossed the arena after the
balance of her female subjects had found their bowlders, she was
preceded by a score of huge Sagoths, the largest I ever had seen, and
on either side of her waddled a huge thipdar, while behind came another
score of Sagoth guardsmen.

At the barrier the Sagoths clambered up the steep side with truly
apelike agility, while behind them the haughty queen rose upon her
wings with her two frightful dragons close beside her, and settled down
upon the largest bowlder of them all in the exact center of that side
of the amphitheater which is reserved for the dominant race. Here she
squatted, a most repulsive and uninteresting queen; though doubtless
quite as well assured of her beauty and divine right to rule as the
proudest monarch of the outer world.

And then the music started--music without sound! The Mahars cannot
hear, so the drums and fifes and horns of earthly bands are unknown
among them. The "band" consists of a score or more Mahars. It filed
out in the center of the arena where the creatures upon the rocks might
see it, and there it performed for fifteen or twenty minutes.

Their technic consisted in waving their tails and moving their heads in
a regular succession of measured movements resulting in a cadence which
evidently pleased th