The blue eyes were wide; they were looking at him with a searching glance that changed to a childish candor while a flush stole over the pale face. She reached out one hand toward his. "We could have been happy," she said simply; "and now--now we must face the fires--together." "I don't know just what you mean by that," spoke Chet softly, "but, whatever it is, there is a little matter of a fight first." He released her hand and moved swiftly between her and the nearer of the throng; and his blood pulsed strongly through him as he faced a battery of hostile red eyes and knew that he was preparing for his last fight. A hand clutched at his arm. "Not now!" begged Anita Haldgren's voice. "Wait! They will not all come. I too, can fight; but we cannot face so many!" The rat-tails of the nearest beasts were whipping to and fro; the eyes in the chalky faces were like living coals where the ashes have been freshly blown. Chet stepped back beside the girl, and he made no protest as the black claws seized him and the sharp talons dug into his flesh. But he whispered to the one who was hurried along beside him: "You are right; I'll be good as long as we stay together. But if not--if we're separated--if they take you away--" And the girl nodded quick agreement with his unspoken words. * * * * * Chet set his teeth together to make more bearable the pain of those gripping claws; but the hurt was easier to bear when he saw that the girl was more carefully treated. She was close ahead as his captors hustled him from this room into others and yet others, all carved from the solid rock. What a people this must be who could do such work as this! Again the sense of amazement struck through to Chet despite the pain--amazement and a feeling of an inexplicable incongruity when he saw the leather-winged creatures that had him in their grip. And again there were figures high overhead--white, floating figures on pinions of pure white; their faces, kindly and serene, looked down upon the motley throng. "Look above you!" gasped Chet. "Anita! What are they? Not like these devils!" And the girl ahead half-turned her head to answer: "Ancestors! A thousand generations back! They have come down to this state now--degenerated." Chet saw one of the beasts who held her jerk her sharply about, and he knew that his remaining questions must wait--wait forever, perhaps, and remain unsaid. They came at last to a place where Chet found the answer to one question he had not dared ask; a place where gaping chasms in the floor glowed red with the wrath of unquenched fires. And the girl, Anita, when they had been placed by themselves against a glowing, lighted wall of rock, stared steadily at those pits and the sulphurous fumes that vomited out at times; then turned and spoke to the pilot in a voice steady and sure.