rystal
through which I had peered when the hidden assassins had crept upon
us. Mentioning it to Lakla, she gave a little cry of vexation, a
command to her attendant; and not long that faithful if unusual lady
had returned with a tray of the glasses. Raising mine, I saw the lines
furthest away leap into sudden activity. Spurred warrior after warrior
leaped upon the barricade and over it. Flashes of intense, green
light, mingled with gleams like lightning strokes of concentrated moon
rays, sprang from behind the wall--sprang and struck and burned upon
the scales of the batrachians.

"They come!" whispered Lakla.

At the far ends of the crescent a terrific milling had begun. Here it
was plain the _Akka_ were holding. Faintly, for the distance was
great, I could see fresh force upon force rush up and take the places
of those who had fallen.

Over each of these ends, and along the whole line of the barricade a
mist of dancing, diamonded atoms began to rise; sparking, coruscating
points of diamond dust that darted and danced.

What had once been Lakla's guardians--dancing now in the nothingness!

"God, but it's hard to stay here like this!" groaned the O'Keefe;
Olaf's teeth were bared, the lips drawn back in such a fighting grin
as his ancestors berserk on their raven ships must have borne; Rador
was livid with rage; the handmaiden's nostrils flaring wide, all her
wrathful soul in her eyes.

Suddenly, while we looked, the rocky wall which the _Akka_ had built
at the cavern mouth--was not! It vanished, as though an unseen,
unbelievably gigantic hand had with the lightning's speed swept it
away. And with it vanished, too, long lines of the great amphibians
close behind it.

Then down upon the ledge, dropping into the Crimson Sea, sending up
geysers of ruby spray, dashing on the bridge, crushing the frog-men,
fell a shower of stone, mingled with distorted shapes and fragments
whose scales still flashed meteoric as they hurled from above.

"That which makes things fall upward," hissed Olaf. "That which I saw
in the garden of Lugur!"

The fiendish agency of destruction which Marakinoff had revealed to
Larry; the force that cut off gravitation and sent all things within
its range racing outward into space!

And now over the debris upon the ledge, striking with long sword and
daggers, here and there a captain flashing the green ray, moving on in
ordered squares, came the soldiers of the Shining One. Nearer and
nearer t