fumbling search. Another lightning flash. Penrun struck with
frenzied desperation. Borgain took the blow behind the ear and
staggered. He whirled, wild with fury, and charged vainly along the
narrow ledge.

"I'll get ye this time, damn your dirty carcass--ugh!"

Guided by the sound of his voice, Penrun struck with all his strength.
Borgain's nose flattened under the blow. He whirled half around.

"I'll kill ye! I'll kill--help, help--a-ah!"

Lost in the blackness he had plunged over the lip of the rock,
thinking he was charging Penrun. Down into the yawning gorge his body
hurtled, the sound of his frenzied, dwindling screams floating up
eerily out of the black, ominous depths.

Penrun crouched against the wall, sick and trembling. Irma, Helgers!
He must hurry! He fumbled again for the pistols. They were gone.
Crawling forward now, still shaken by his narrow escape from death, he
gained the pathway. The rain was drumming wildly on the barren granite
now, and the pitch-blackness was shattered only by ghastly lightning
bolts.

Guided by the flashes, he clambered up the slope and halted abruptly.
The door of the space-sphere was open, and, silhouetted against the
soft glow of light within it, was Irma, seated dejectedly with bowed
head, heedless of the cold rain beating down upon her. Helgers was
nowhere to be seen. Penrun dashed forward.

"Irma, Irma!" he cried. "What has happened? Where is he?"

She raised her head slowly and stared at him as at one risen from the
dead. Then she burst into tears.

"He said they had killed you--had thrown your body into the gorge,"
she sobbed. "I--I just didn't want to live after that. Are you hurt?"

"Not a bit," he assured her fervently. "But where is Helgers?"

"I pistoled him," she said quietly. "I had no choice. He came at me
after I warned him to keep away. He fell over there among the rocks.
Oh, Dick, let us hurry away from this mad place!"

* * * * *

He stared at the rain-swept rocks. The heavy metal treasure chest lay
a few yards away where Helgers had dropped it. Penrun moved cautiously
toward the spot where he had fallen. He was gone. The rain had washed
away any traces of blood that might have remained.

While Penrun hesitated, the roar of the tempest was split by a man's
scream of agony. A lurid flash of lightning an instant later revealed
a gigantic spider down by the cataract with Helgers' struggling body
in his mandible jaws