“Pull away,” he answered me instantly, “I have no time to make the rope fast about me. They are almost upon me, pull away and be quick about it.” I did as he bade, and a moment later his hands grasped the rim of the crater and with my assistance he gained the top, dragging the spears after him. For a moment he stood there in silence looking at me with a most peculiar expression upon his face; then he shook his head. “I do not understand, yet,” he said, “how you did it, but it was very wonderful.” “I scarcely expected to accomplish it in safety, myself,” I replied, “but anything is better than slavery.” From below us came the voices of the Kalkars in angry altercation. Moh-goh picked up a fragment of rock, and leaning over the edge of the crater, threw it down among them. “I got one,” he said, turning to me with a laugh, “he tumbled off into nothing; they hate that. They believe that there is no reincarnation for those who fall into a crater.” “Do you think that they will try to follow us?” I asked. “No,” he said, “they will be afraid to use their hooked poles here for a long time, lest we should be in the neighborhood and shove them off into the crater. I will drop another rock down if any of them are in sight and then we will go upon our way. I do not fear them here in the hills, anyway. There is always plenty of broken stone upon the level places, and we of Laythe are trained to use it most effectively—almost as far as I can throw, I can score a hit.” The Kalkars had withdrawn into the tunnel, so Moh-goh lost his opportunity to despatch another, and presently turned away from the crater and set out into the mountains, I following close behind. I can assure you that I felt much better, now that I was armed with a spear and a knife, and as we walked I practiced casting stones, at Moh-goh’s suggestion and under his instruction, until I became rather proficient in the art. I shall not weary you with a narration of our journey to Laythe. How long it took, I do not know. It may have consumed a day, a week, or a month, for time seemed quite a meaningless term in Va-nah, but at length, after clambering laboriously from the bottom of a deep gorge, we stood upon the edge of a rolling plateau, and at some little distance beheld what at first appeared to be a cone-shaped mountain, rising fully a mile into the air above the surface of the plateau. “There,” cried Moh-goh, “is Laythe! The crater where lies the entrance to the tunnel leading to the city is beyond it.”