The sweet lips that even at their sweetest could never lose their delicate cruelty, had no sweetness now. They were drawn into a square--inhuman as that of the Medusa; in her eyes were the fires of the pit, and her hair seemed to writhe like the serpent locks of that Gorgon whose mouth she had borrowed; all her beauty was transformed into a nameless thing--hideous, inhuman, blasting! If this was the true soul of Yolara springing to her face, then, I thought, God help us in very deed! I wrested my gaze away to O'Keefe. All drunkenness gone, himself again, he was staring down at her, and in his eyes were loathing and horror unutterable. So they stood--and the light fled. Only for a moment did the darkness hold. With lightning swiftness the blackness that was the chamber's other wall vanished. Through a portal open between grey screens, the silver sparkling radiance poured. And through the portal marched, two by two, incredible, nightmare figures--frog-men, giants, taller by nearly a yard than even tall O'Keefe! Their enormous saucer eyes were irised by wide bands of green-flecked red, in which the phosphorescence flickered. Their long muzzles, lips half-open in monstrous grin, held rows of glistening, slender, lancet sharp fangs. Over the glaring eyes arose a horny helmet, a carapace of black and orange scales, studded with foot-long lance-headed horns. They lined themselves like soldiers on each side of the wide table aisle, and now I could see that their horny armour covered shoulders and backs, ran across the chest in a knobbed cuirass, and at wrists and heels jutted out into curved, murderous spurs. The webbed hands and feet ended in yellow, spade-shaped claws. They carried spears, ten feet, at least, in length, the heads of which were pointed cones, glistening with that same covering, from whose touch of swift decay I had so narrowly saved Rador. They were grotesque, yes--more grotesque than anything I had ever seen or dreamed, and they were--terrible! And then, quietly, through their ranks came--a girl! Behind her, enormous pouch at his throat swelling in and out menacingly, in one paw a treelike, spike-studded mace, a frog-man, huger than any of the others, guarding. But of him I caught but a fleeting, involuntary impression--all my gaze was for her. For it was she who had pointed out to us the way from the peril of the Dweller's lair on Nan-Tauach. And as I looked at her, I marvelled that ever could I have thought the priestess more beautiful. Into the eyes of O'Keefe rushed joy and an utter abasement of shame. And from all about came murmurs--edged with anger, half-incredulous, tinged with fear: "Lakla!" "Lakla!" "The handmaiden!"