The blind men whirled from the half-full pen and came lunging at him. The old females screeched throaty harsh orders. And Masson raised the gun that he somehow had managed to cling to. "Go back," he ordered in the language of the Butrads, "go out of the cave before I kill." "He is but one," croaked the ancient ones, "destroy the desecrator of the Place of Birth." Now Masson could see that the eyes of the four Frog males had been neatly gouged from their sockets in days past. Probably they were blinded that they might not see the forbidden magic of the eggs that became Frogs. Or perhaps they were blinded that they might not escape from the birth caves into the outer jungles. Yet in the semi-gloom of the cave they were not at too great a disadvantage. They listened for the movement of Masson's body, and the breath of his lungs guided them. The young of the Butrads were silent, too. The sudden quiet was a roar in his ears. They closed in, great chunks of stone clenched in their fists. A Frog with but a club or a crude spear would have been beaten. But the puny hollow tube of metal that the Earthman carried held the strength of many heavy clubs and many huge rocks in its miniature pebbles of shaped copper. Masson fired and a Frog went down. The other three came on uncertainly, and he fired again. The two remaining Butrads stopped. "There are many of them, Old Ones," one of them cried. "They have struck down Trew and Brun with thunder." "There is only one!" cried the wrinkled old females. "Kill him! Strike him down!" "Do not listen to the Old Ones," Masson warned. "I have captured the thunder. With it I strike you down." The blind men hesitated, and Masson sent a bullet smoking between their legs. They backed away toward the entrance, the females with them. And a moment later Masson was piling fragments of rock and crumbling shale into a barricade before the cavern's mouth. He could hold them off for a time he knew, until night at least, even though they brought the guards from the outer entrances to the bowl to aid the blind men. Again and again the guards had attacked the cave where Masson lay holed up. All that day they had come crawling through the dense matted growth to launch their arrows and spears at him. Fifty or sixty of them there had been, he estimated, and at least forty blood-hungry Butrads still faced him. These were the outer guards. With the coming of night the blinded workers of the caves would join them, and with their uncanny sense of hearing and touch they would overrun the cave. The Frogs were not a cowardly race, and his invasion into this, their most taboo and sacred place, made them all the more fanatical in their hatred. Masson had until night. After that, unless he escaped back through the tunnel, he would die. And if he left the young Frogs behind he would never again be able to raid this cavern. Already they were hungry, their throaty shrilled cries beating at his droop-tipped ears.