"I will," said Templemore impetuously. "Against such a hellish crew as that I am with you heart and soul. I think I begin to understand----" "Yes, I never doubted your readiness to take part with us. But it was necessary to give you absolute proof of what goes on, that you might understand those with whom we have to deal. You have now seen for yourself----" "Ay, I have seen!" Jack shuddered. "And will now understand that, when the time comes to extirpate this serpent brood, there must be no hesitation, no paltering, no half-and-half measures, no mercy. It will be of no use to kill the old snakes and leave the brood to grow up again, or eggs to hatch. Do you take in my meaning?" "Yes, and think you will be right and well justified." "Good. If you wonder why, knowing all this, I have done nothing heretofore, it is that the king's plans could not sooner be matured. Meantime we have stayed the horror for a while." Jack uttered an impatient exclamation. "Oh, yes," Monella declared, "we _have_, and you have helped to do it. These wretched creatures you have seen sacrificed to this horrible 'fetish-tree' of theirs, are their own soldiers--those who escaped from us by running away. They deserve no pity. They themselves have given many an innocent victim--even women and children--to that tree----" "I know that to be true," Ergalon interposed. "The truce we forced on Coryon," resumed Monella "has had this effect at least--it has saved the lives of numbers of poor creatures who would have been seized and sacrificed during the time that we have been here. Instead of that, however, the arch-fiend Coryon has had to content himself with making victims of his own wretched myrmidons by way of punishment for their running away from us. They are as bad as he--very nearly. At any rate they are not worth your pity." "Well, I am glad to hear that, at least," said Templemore. "It takes away a little of the load of horror that turned me sick. Truly, of all the diabolical atrocities that the mind of man in its depths of cruelty and wickedness ever conceived----" Ergalon shuddered now in his turn. "I can look on at the sacrifice of victims such as these," he said gravely, "because I know that every one of them has deserved his fate by acts of cruelty; but when it is a case, as it has been in the past, of women, young girls, and poor little children----" "For Heaven's sake say no more," Jack entreated; "I begin to feel sick again at such suggestions! I will fight to the death against such wretches. As it is, for the rest of my life I shall see before me in my dreams what I saw to-night. Surely no wilder phantasy, no more outrageous, blood-curdling nightmare ever entered the most disordered brain. And now it will haunt me to my life's end!" CHAPTER XXIV. TRAPPED!