"Zoltevi! Zoltevi! Quimboson!" she heard Red-Hood rasping, as one of his long tentacled arms motioned to two retainers. And after a brief interchange in their native tongue, the pair stepped forth, and she felt the octopus arms of one of the giants winding about her, while Dunbar was snatched up in the claws of the second. "My followers will give you your instructions!" Red-Hood growled at his new servant; while Eleanor, with swimming head, felt herself being borne down the great swaying web. "Have faith! Have faith! We will win out yet!" she thought she heard a familiar voice calling after her. Or was it that, in her bewilderment, she had only imagined? For her last glimpse at Gates showed him standing erect and defiant enough, but so feeble-looking, of such midget size beside the many-armed, tailed monsters that towered above him to the height of the great dinosaurs of vanished ages! CHAPTER V Paralyzed! Compared with Gates as he stared up at his captors, Daniel in the lion's den may have considered himself almost among friends. For a moment after the departure of the two other humans along with Zoltevi and Quimboson, no sound was audible except that of the threshing, sighing cables, and of the deep, throaty breathing of the monsters. Then in silence--a silence more terrible than any spoken threat--Red-Hood advanced toward his victim. Gates, sensing his sinister intention, spontaneously pressed back. But Red-Hood drew nearer still, this time with a ten-foot stride. And Gates retreated to the extreme outer edge of the platform. Another inch, and he would have fallen! But before he could plunge to a welcome deliverance, his persecutor's long tail shot out. With a rapid whirring motion, sounding a little like the warning buzz of a rattlesnake, it flicked by his left arm. And this time it did not miss. A glancing stroke touched him painlessly, leaving an abrasion hardly more noticeable than the prick of a pin. But instantly something else occurred--something all too noticeable! Gates felt a numbness shoot along the arm, which took on the lifeless feeling of a jaw into which a dentist has pumped several charges of novocain. And from the arm the feeling spread to his left shoulder, then over to the right shoulder, then down toward his abdomen, and up his neck, and along the right arm, and through both legs to the toes. It all happened in a matter of seconds. Almost before he had had time to grasp the full dread facts, he found himself paralyzed. Yes, paralyzed practically completely! Except for a slight wriggling movement in his feet and fingers, he was unable to stir! In his horror, he attempted to cry out; but his tongue would not obey the impulse; all that came forth was a whisper-thin gurgling. Meanwhile, no longer able to maintain an upright position, he had sagged to the floor of the web, where he lay like a bundle of rags.