But Kirby did not get to see. A strangled cry of terror smote his ears. Naida leaped toward him from one side, while Elana, the lovely youngest girl, sprang from another direction, hurled Naida aside, and stopped in front of Kirby. Through the glaring room flickered a tiny red serpentine creature which the Duca hurled from a crystalline tube in his hand. As the minute snake struck Elana's breast, she gave a choked cough, and then, as she half turned to smile at both Naida and Kirby over her shoulder, her eyes went blank, and she collapsed gently to the polished stones of the floor--dead. A second later came squirming out from under her the ghastly, glimmering little snake which had struck. Slowly, while every mortal in the room stood paralyzed, Kirby stepped forward and set his heel upon the writhing thing. When he raised his boot, the snake was only a blotch on the floor. The Duca was standing as still as girls and caciques. The laughter with which he had started to greet what he had thought would be Kirby's extermination had faded to a look of wonder--and fear. He was an easy mark. Up to him Kirby rolled, and with all the force of soul and muscular body, drove his fist into the Duca's face. "By God," he roared, "you want war, and you shall have it!" The Duca was simply out--not dead. Since Kirby did not want him dead, he did not strike again, but swung back from the sprawled body, faced Naida, and pointed to the tower door. "Up there!" he snapped. "Seize the tower. I have a reason!" At the Duca's crashing downfall, had come to the caciques a tension which made Kirby know they would not be dummy figures much longer. His eyes never left them. "Quick, Naida!" he snapped again. "We must hold the tower!" Naida, all of the girls, were staring dazedly at Elana, dead. "The tower!" she choked. "But we cannot go there. It is the Duca's!" "Because it is the Duca's," Kirby said firmly, "is exactly why we must hold it. Come, Naida, please--" * * * * * And then he saw comprehension begin to dawn at last. He also saw two of the caciques glide from the wooden line, and slink toward him past the unconscious Duca, stealthily. As Naida suddenly cried out to her companions, pushed at two of them, and then darted like a rainbow nymph toward the silent and forbidding upward spiral of steps, Kirby faced the gliding caciques. One he clutched with viselike hands, and lifted him. As the other shrieked and sprang, he was mowed down by the hurtling body of his fellow priest which Kirby flung forward mightily. The rest of the caciques were howling. While Naida waited beside the tower door, the other girls flashed up the steps. The Duca still lay where he had fallen, a thread of blood oozing from his mouth. Kirby, after his last look over all, solemnly stooped and gathered in his arms the limp, radiant little body of the girl who had given her life that her friends might be left with a leader.