"Hurry!" he shouted, striving to pierce the fog of sleep. "We've _got_ to get out! Damn him!" Vilma rallied for an instant, and they reached the top of the stairs. On--across that wide, wide room, each step a struggle.... On while the droning sound floated languidly through every nerve cell.... On--till their muscles could no longer move, and they sagged to the hard stone, asleep. * * * * * Moments later Cliff opened his eyes to meet the hellish glare of Leon Corio. Corio smiled thinly. "So--you awaken. Good! I would have you know the fate I have planned for you. You see this?" He held the cutlas high above Darrell's throat like the blade of a guillotine. "With this I could end your life quite painlessly and quickly. It really would prove entertaining for Miss Bradley, I'm sure." He chuckled faintly behind bruised and swollen lips. Cliff squirmed, striving to rise, then subsided instantly. He was bound hand and foot. "I _could_ kill you," Corio repeated musingly, "but that would lack finesse." His teeth bared in a feline smile. "And it would be such a waste--of blood! Instead, I'll take you out to the galley and let you lie there till her crew awakens tonight. They have tasted blood, and after tonight will taste none again for another month. I imagine they'll--drain you dry!" The last phrase was a vicious snarl. Cliff heard Vilma utter a suppressed sob, and he turned his head. She lay close by, bound like him with strips of leather. Furiously Cliff strained at his fetters, but they held. "And while you wait for those gentle Persians to awaken," Corio continued in tones caressingly soft, "you can think of your sweetheart in my arms! It may teach you not to strike your betters--though you can never profit by your lesson." Stooping, he raised Cliff's powerful form and managed to fling him over one shoulder. Then he moved from the great hall, down the stone steps, and across the dead plain with its sighing skeleton trees. He was panting jerkily by the time he came to the fissure leading to the cove, but he reached it, despite Cliff's two hundred pounds. Without pausing, he went on into the cavern, along the rock ledge, to step at last upon the deck of the black galley. "Pleasant thoughts," he said gently as he dropped Cliff to the spongy boards. "You have only to wait till dark!" Cliff listened to his rapid footfalls till they died in distance; then there was no sound save his own breathing. Gradually his eyes became accustomed to the heavy gloom, and he saw that Corio had dropped him just at the edge of the rowers' pit. There were white things down there--bones, pale as marble, scattered about aimlessly. Could--could those bones join to make the rowers who would arise with the night? It seemed absurd--_was_ absurd--yet he knew it was so! He had seen too much to doubt it.