His great self-control enabled him to conceal his grief at my news, but Jack was overcome. He had really loved Juba almost as if he had been human and a brother. The big-hearted fellow actually sobbed as if his heart would break. Then came the reaction, and I should never have believed that Jack Ashton could exhibit such malevolent ferocity. His lips all but foamed, as he fairly shouted, striking his big fists together: "This'll be _my_ job! Edmund! Peter! You hear me! Don't either of you dare to lay a hand on _that devil!_ He's _mine!_ Oh! I'll--" But he could not finish his sentence for gnashing his teeth. We calmed him as best we could and then summoned an air ship. While we waited, Edmund suddenly put his hand in his pocket, and withdrawing it quickly, said, with a bitter smile: "What a fool I have been in my carelessness. Ingra has had the key abstracted from my pocket by some thief. That explains how he got the car open." The moment the ship came we hurriedly ascended to the platform. When Edmund saw poor Juba's body lying in the car and learned how he had made his way there to die, he was more affected than when he first heard of his death. "He has died for us," he said solemnly; "he has crawled here as to a refuge, and here he shall remain until I can bury him among his people in his old home. Would to God I had never taken him from it!" "Then you will start at once for the dark hemisphere?" I asked. "At the earliest possible moment; and it shall be on the way to our own home." But we were not to depart before even a more terrible tragedy had darkened over us, for now the tide of fate was suddenly running at flood. CHAPTER XX THE CORYBANTIA OF THE SUN I have several times mentioned Edmund's half-formed impression that there was some very remarkable ceremony connected with the cyclical apparition of the sun before the eyes of its worshipers. He had said, you may recall, that it seemed probable that the religious rites on these rare occasions bore some resemblance to the _bacchanalia_, or _dionysia_, of ancient Greece. How he had derived that idea I do not know, but it proved to have been but too well founded---only he had not guessed the full truth. The followers of Dionysus made themselves drunken with the wine of their god and then indulged in the wildest excesses. Here, as we were now to learn, the worshipers of the sun were seized with another kind of madness, leading to scenes that I believe, and hope, have never had their parallel upon the earth.