is grasp
as his whole hand became encrimsoned. And then he was buried beneath
the hating, blood-lusting mob of the forest men.

CHAPTER V

An hour later, Tommy took his eyes away from the dimensoscope
eye-piece. He could not bear to look any longer.

"Why don't they kill him?" he demanded sickly, filled with a horrible,
a monstrous rage. "Oh, why don't they kill him?"

He felt maddeningly impotent. In another world entirely, a mob of
half-naked renegades had made a prisoner. He was not dead, that solely
surviving man from the Golden City. He was bound, and the Ragged Men
guarded him closely, and his guards were diverting themselves
unspeakably by small tortures, minor tortures, horribly painful but
not weakening. And they capered and howled with glee when the bound
man writhed.

The prisoner was a brave man, though. Helpless as he was, he presently
flung back his head and set his teeth. Sweat stood out in great
droplets upon his body and upon his forehead. And he stilled his
writhings, and looked at his captors with a grim and desperate
defiance.

The guards made gestures which were all too clear, all too luridly
descriptive of the manner of death which awaited him. And the man of
the Golden City was ashen and hopeless and utterly despairing--and yet
defiant.

Smithers took Tommy's place at the eye-piece of the instrument. His
nostrils quivered at what he saw. The vehicle from the Golden City was
being plundered, of course. Weapons from the dead men were being
squabbled over, even fought over. And the Ragged Men fought as madly
among themselves as if in combat with their enemies. The big golden
weapon on its cart was already being dragged away to its former
hiding-place. And somehow, it was clear that those who dragged it away
expected and demanded that the solitary prisoner not be killed until
their return.

It was that prisoner, in the agony which was only the beginning of his
death, who made Smithers' teeth set tightly.

* * * * *

"I don't see the Professor or Miss Evelyn," said Smithers in a vast
calmness. "I hope to Gawd they--don't see this."

Tommy swung on his heel, staring and ashen.

"They were near," he said stridently. "I saw them! They saw what
happened in the ambush! They'll--they'll see that man tortured!"

Smithers' hand closed and unclosed.

"Maybe the Professor'll have sense enough to take Miss
Evelyn--uh--where she--can't hear," he said slowly, his