* *

Circling around Dodd, Tommy, and Haidia, as if puzzled by their
appearance, the beetles kept up a continuous, furious droning that
sounded like the roar of Niagara mixed with the shrieking of a thousand
sirens. The moon was completely hidden, and only a dim, nebulous light
showed the repulsive monsters as they flew within a few feet of the
heads of the fugitives. The stench was overpowering.

But suddenly a ray of white light shot through the darkness, and, with a
changed note, just perceptible to the ears of the two men, but doubtless
of the greatest significance to the beetles, the swarm fled apart to
right and left, leaving a clear lane, through which appeared--Bram,
reclining on his shell-couch above his eight trained beetle steeds!

Hovering overhead, the eight huge monsters dropped lightly to the ground
beside the three. Bram sat up, a vicious grin upon his twisted face. In
his hand he held a large electric bulb, its sides sheathed in a roughly
carved wooden frame; the wire was attached to a battery behind him.

"Well met, my friends!" he shouted exultantly. "I owe you more thanks
than I can express for having so providentially left the electrical
equipment of your plane undamaged after you crashed at the entrance to
Submundia. I had a hunch about it--and the hunch worked!"

* * * * *

He grinned more malevolently as he looked from one man to the other.

"You've run your race," he said. "But I'm going to have a little fun
with you before you die. I'm going to use you as an object lesson.
You'll find it out in a little while."

"Go ahead, go ahead, Bram," Dodd grinned back at him. "Just a few
million years ago, and you were a speck of protoplasm--in that
pre-pleistocene age--swimming among the invertebrate crustaceans that
characterized that epoch."

"Invertebrates and monotremes, Dodd," said Bram, almost wistfully. "The
mammals were already existent on the earth, as you know--" Suddenly he
broke off, as he realized that Dodd was spoofing him. A yell of
execration broke from his lips. He uttered a high whistle, and instantly
the whiplike lashes of a hundred beetles whizzed through the darkness
and remained poised over Dodd's head.

"Not even the marsupial lion, Bram," grinned Dodd, undismayed. "Go
ahead, go ahead, but I'll not die with a lie upon my lips!"

CHAPTER IX

_The Trail of Death_

"There's sure some sort of hoodoo on these Antarctic expeditions,