The next moment we were all struggling there with those guards in a wild mêlée, their deadly tubes knocked from their grasp by Jhul Din in his leap upon them. With the strength and fury of despair we flung ourselves upon them, rending their writhing bodies to fragments as they sought to coil about us, our hoarse shouts rising above their own hissing cries of fear and alarm. In but a moment, it seemed, we were crushing the last of them beneath us, Jhul Din and one or two of our crew leaping already toward the open door of our ship, while we staggered up to follow. But as we did so there came from behind us other hissing cries, and we whirled about, then stopped short. For back from the street into which they had just gone were rushing the serpent-crews of the ships behind us, a resistless horde that was flashing upon us with the ghostly death-beams of their tubes stabbing full toward us! _8. The Hall of the Living Dead_ Racing forward as they were, the serpent-creatures rushing upon us could only loose their death-beams at chance upon us, and it was that alone that saved us, the deadly rays going wide except for one that struck and annihilated two of our party in its wild whirling. Then, before they could loose the beams again upon us, we had rushed forward to meet them and were among them; while at the same moment I shouted hoarsely over my shoulder to Jhul Din, who with his three followers had reached now the open door of our ship, behind us, and who now had hesitated for an instant as he saw our new foes rush down upon us. "Go on, Jhul Din!" I cried. "Get away in the ship--we'll hold them till you get clear----!" Then we were meeting the serpent-creatures before us, and the next few moments we seemed surrounded, weighed down, by a solid mass of writhing bodies at which we struck crazily with the last of our strength. Even as we struggled wildly, though, I heard above the shouts and hissing cries about me the clang of the ship's space-doors, the swift humming of its generators; then as I staggered clear of my opponents for a moment I saw the great craft, with Jhul Din at the controls in its pilot room, lifting suddenly from the clearing, slanting steeply upward at immense speed, vanishing almost instantly in the crimson sunlight above. I yelled with exultation at the sight, and then was pulled down once more by my opponents, held tightly with Korus Kan and the others, as with wild hissing cries the greater part of the serpent-creatures rushed to their ships.