From behind me as I stood there a dark-cloaked figure darted past me and plunged down it. Dan! It was as tall as he; seemed moving with our earthly heavy tread. I started down after it; I would have shouted, but the words choked me. It was not Dan--not anyone of earth, for all its solid gait! It passed through a shaft of moonlight; from the cloak, I saw a white arm hanging. Waving. This was a man, carrying some one; I caught a glimpse of the bulk of the other body he was holding in his arms, under his cloak. He disappeared down into the purple darkness. Memory of the little tug I had felt in my fingers as Zetta's hair was withdrawn sprang to me now. Was that Zetta under that cloak? Her arm I had seen waving from beneath it? With the Essen automatic in my hand, I found myself plunging, half falling, down the flimsy street. Beneath the strain of my incautious descent, it bent and crackled. Houses like nests were set here in the dark, pod-laden foliage. They sagged with me as I passed. A woman came to the window of one of them and shouted. I reached the ground. A vaulted, tunnel-like street was cut through the jungle. Ahead of me, a hundred yards or so, the moonlight showed clear where the jungle ended and the open country began. I thought I saw the hooded figure hurrying out there. I ran--I wondered if I would get a chance to shoot. If that were Zetta he was carrying I would not dare. I think now I have never been, before or since, so incautious. I came with a rush out of the dark depths of the forest, into an open moonlit area. A red glow hovered like a circular curtain near at hand. Within a dozen steps of me, a small railed platform lay upon the ground. Men were on it. Brauns! A black-hooded figure was standing holding Zetta! Zetta, with fear sweeping her face as she saw me appear. I must have stood for an instant in confusion. I remember casting off the impediment of my cloak. A dozen men came leaping at me. I fired the Essen, but hit no one. It was knocked from my hand as one of the leaping bodies struck me. They closed in on me. I turned and swung at them. Flimsy things! My dirk tore into the shoulder of one. He went down with a scream. The dirk had buried, hilt and all; I let it go. I wrenched an arm loose from around my neck; hit another man full in the face. Two others I knocked aside with a sweep of my arm. Another leaped astride my back, but I heaved him off as though he were a child clinging there. They must have been without weapons. They clung, bit and tore at me--a ring of them struggling to hold me.