“I must have one of those fellows,” the scientist cried enthusiastically. “If either of you should see another, just knock it over with the butt of your spear.” As he spoke a second started up almost at his feet. Quickly he pounced upon it, but he released it even more quickly, giving utterance to an exclamation of pain. The creature had bitten his hand severely. “The brute!” gasped the scientist, binding his handkerchief about the wound, “he’s got jaws like a vice! What’s the matter?” This latter to Chenobi, who had pulled up and leapt from his steed. “Poison!” the Ayuti cried in his own tongue. “I should have warned you. The bite of the bell-beetle is death!” “Great heaven!” the scientist gasped; “I did not know. Is there no hope?” His comrades did not, could not, answer. With haggard faces they looked on, while the king fought the deadly stupor that fast stole over their friend. Lowering Mervyn gently to the ground, the Ayuti tore up a small, flat fungus from among a number of others growing close by. This he forced between his patient’s teeth, bidding him eat. Mechanically the scientist obeyed. His three friends were horrified at the terrible power of the beetle’s venom. Though scarce three minutes had passed since Mervyn had been bitten, his lower limbs were already paralysed, and the poison seemed fast mounting to his brain. He appeared unconscious of anything around him, gazing upward with eyes death-like in their glassy stare; the slow movement of his jaws as he munched at the fungi, and the twitching of his eyelids, alone telling that he lived. Piece after piece of fungi Chenobi forced between the unwilling lips, almost ramming it down the scientist’s throat. But, for all his efforts, Mervyn seemed to grow steadily worse, and, as the moments passed, his three comrades--helpless to check the action of the subtle foe working in his veins--watched with dimmed eyes the grey hue of death mounting to his forehead. His lips grew blue and pinched, his eyelids ceased to twitch, and it appeared to the watchers as though the last spark of life had vanished. Suddenly Chenobi rose, and at that Wilson cried out, thinking that the king had given up hope. But he was mistaken. Plunging in amid the fungi, Chenobi slashed off the top of a peculiar palm-like growth, and with this he returned to the side of the motionless scientist. First dipping the point of his knife-blade in the juicy sap which oozed from the fungus, he gashed Mervyn’s arm. Thrice he repeated this mysterious operation, then bound a handkerchief tightly over the gashes.