ew myself
forward.

I was falling--falling--with the Russian's hand strangling me. I
struck water, sank; the hands that gripped my throat relaxed for a
moment their clutch. I strove to writhe loose; felt that I was being
hurled with dreadful speed on--full realization came--on the breast of
that racing torrent dropping from some far ocean cleft and
rushing--where? A little time, a few breathless instants, I struggled
with the devil who clutched me--inflexibly, indomitably.

Then a shrieking as of all the pent winds of the universe in my
ears--blackness!

Consciousness returned slowly, agonizedly.

"Larry!" I groaned. "Lakla!"

A brilliant light was glowing through my closed lids. It hurt. I
opened my eyes, closed them with swords and needles of dazzling pain
shooting through them. Again I opened them cautiously. It was the sun!

I staggered to my feet. Behind me was a shattered wall of basalt
monoliths, hewn and squared. Before me was the Pacific, smooth and
blue and smiling.

And not far away, cast up on the strand even as I had been,
was--Marakinoff!

He lay there, broken and dead indeed. Yet all the waters through
which we had passed--not even the waters of death themselves--could
wash from his face the grin of triumph. With the last of my strength I
dragged the body from the strand and pushed it out into the waves. A
little billow ran up, coiled about it, and carried it away, ducking
and bending. Another seized it, and another, playing with it. It
floated from my sight--that which had been Marakinoff, with all his
schemes to turn our fair world into an undreamed-of-hell.

My strength began to come back to me. I found a thicket and slept;
slept it must have been for many hours, for when I again awakened the
dawn was rosing the east. I will not tell my sufferings. Suffice it to
say that I found a spring and some fruit, and just before dusk had
recovered enough to writhe up to the top of the wall and discover
where I was.

The place was one of the farther islets of the Nan-Matal. To the north
I caught the shadows of the ruins of Nan-Tauach, where was the moon
door, black against the sky. Where was the moon door--which, someway,
somehow, I must reach, and quickly.

At dawn of the next day I got together driftwood and bound it together
in shape of a rough raft with fallen creepers. Then, with a makeshift
paddle, I set forth for Nan-Tauach. Slowly, painfully, I crept up to
it. It was late afternoon b