female produces progeny at
five-year intervals, never more than two at a time. They are
monogamous, like certain of our own _Ranidae_. Pending my monograph
upon what little I had time to learn of their interesting habits and
customs, the curious will find instruction and entertainment in
Brandes and Schvenichen's _Brutpfleige der Schwanzlosen Bat rachier_,
p. 395; and Lilian V. Sampson's _Unusual Modes of Breeding among
Anura_, Amer. Nat. xxxiv., 1900.--W. T. G.

[2] The _Yekta_ of the Crimson Sea, are as extraordinary developments
of hydroid forms as the giant _Medusae_, of which, of course, they are
not too remote cousins. The closest resemblances to them in outer
water forms are among the _Gymnoblastic Hydroids_, notably _Clavetella
prolifera_, a most interesting ambulatory form of six tentacles.
Almost every bather in Southern waters, Northern too, knows the pain
that contact with certain "jelly fish" produces. The _Yekta's_
development was prodigious and, to us, monstrous. It secretes in its
five heads an almost incredibly swiftly acting poison which I suspect,
for I had no chance to verify the theory, destroys the entire nervous
system to the accompaniment of truly infernal agony; carrying at the
same time the illusion that the torment stretches through infinities
of time. Both ether and nitrous oxide gas produce in the majority this
sensation of time extension, without of course the pain symptom. What
Lakla called the _Yekta_ kiss is I imagine about as close to the
orthodox idea of Hell as can be conceived. The secret of her control
over them I had no opportunity of learning in the rush of events that
followed. Knowledge of the appalling effects of their touch came, she
told me, from those few "who had been kissed so lightly" that they
recovered. Certainly nothing, not even the Shining One, was dreaded by
the Murians as these were--W. T. G.

CHAPTER XXVII

The Coming of Yolara

"Never was there such a girl!" Thus Larry, dreamily, leaning head in
hand on one of the wide divans of the chamber where Lakla had left us,
pleading service to the Silent Ones.

"An', by the faith and the honour of the O'Keefes, an' by my dead
mother's soul may God do with me as I do by her!" he whispered
fervently.

He relapsed into open-eyed dreaming.

I walked about the room, examining it--the first opportunity I had
gained to inspect carefully any of the rooms in the abode of the
Three. It was octagonal, carpeted with th