The curator studied the prospect to the east, for there lay their only hope of escape. The terrific geological fault that had made the Great Precipice was nearly buried on that side by the outpourings from their volcano when it had been active, but the lava swept down to the precipice edge in a frightful slope, where it ended abruptly. Blue distance beyond it told of a considerable drop; how much could not be conjectured. The arrows were coming more thickly, now. It seemed that at least twenty of the little hill men lay concealed in among the bowlders below them, and the occasional pop of Dwight’s automatic told that more of them had come up on his side also. Only to the east was there a free passage, but no man could live on that slope. Nicky and Baderoon were both busy, and once in a while they would get one of the pygmies, exposing himself recklessly in some crawl to a nearer point of vantage. The curator borrowed Nicky’s alcohol cook kit and went down below the rim of the crater to a little rocky ledge inside on the brink of its deep bore. Here he set about making a mulligan for the party, for it was now long past high noon. He shook his half-empty canteen after filling the soup tin. “Water running low!” he muttered, uneasily. “We’ve got to get out of this to-night! It’s up to me to do a scout down to the precipice brink this afternoon, sometime.” A perfect fusillade of shots, and a yell for help from Dwight’s side, caused him to jump to his feet hastily and rush for that side of the crater. Putting his head cautiously over the brink, he instantly whipped out his air gun, for a long black line of pygmies was charging up the slope, each man behind his shield, the yellow blades of their bamboo knives sticking up over their shoulders. Sadok’s sumpitan was powerless against them, and Dwight was frantically shoving a fresh clip into the butt of his automatic. Then a shell from the air gun whistled on its way, and its explosion burst in a riving crash over the center of the black line. Dwight opened fire and those on the right flank began to fall back, while Sadok, no longer able to contain himself, dashed down the slope at the survivors of the left flank. He flung himself at them with whirling parang as bamboo knives flashed out, and in another instant he was in the center of a whirlwind of flashing knives. The parang-ihlang sheared through their shields like paper, for Sadok was a star swordsman. Five to one, he was getting the best of them, when the white flash of a keen bamboo knife cut him across the shoulder and he fell, guarding himself with the parang in his left hand.