He stopped. The thing had moved again, more rapidly and with purpose. The great column rose, then pressed down into the ground and pushed the main bulk up out of the shadows. There was a moment of confusion while our senses tried to grasp shape and scale at the same time, and then it all came into focus as the thing arose into the light. At one instant we were sane humans, trying to make out a great billowy form wallowing in the darkness below. In the next instant we were madmen, staring into a human face a hundred feet wide, that peered back at us from the level of the cliff top! For a second we were all still--we four, and that titanic placid oriental face hanging before us in the moonlight. Then the great eyes blinked sleepily and the thing started to move toward us. I cannot recall in detail what happened. I remember someone screamed, an animal cry of pure terror. It may have been me, although Baker claims to be the guilty one. In any case the four of us arose as one and plunged headfirst off our rock into the tangle of brush at the top of the cliff. I think that only the vines saved us from certain death in that first mad instant. I know that we were wrestling with them for what seemed like an eternity. They wrapped around my legs, tangled in my arms. They were like clutching hands, holding me back in a nightmare-like struggle, while the thing in the crater came closer. Then abruptly I realized that they _were_ hands, human hands seizing us, pulling us back from the cliff and then skillfully tieing us up. It was all over in a moment. The madness was ended. We were once more rational humans, tied hand and foot, and propped against the rocky ledge in front of a dozen yellow-robed men. For a time we just breathed heavily--ourselves and our brown skinned captors alike. Then one of the latter spoke. "You can stand now, yes?" Baker struggled to his feet in reply. The rest of us did likewise, aided not unkindly, by the yellow-robed men. Baker found his voice. "Thank you," he said. In the brightening moonlight we looked more carefully at our captors. They were of small stature, evidently Japanese, and, by their costume, all priests. Baker laughed briefly and glanced at the rest of us. "It would appear," he said dryly, "that we have been taken." III The leader of the priests indicated by a gesture that he wished us to move along a narrow trail cut in the vines along the rim. I attempted to get another look at the horror within the crater, but the ledge of rock down which we had just fallen stood in the way. We were guided into a pitch black trail which descended steeply into the forest on the outer slope of Mount Kosan.