let length of Cherkis's son
sprawled along its angled end.

The great body of Cherkis seemed to wither.

Up from all the wall went a tempestuous sigh of horror.

Out rang the merciless chimes of Norhala's laughter.

"Tchai!" she cried. "Tchai! Fat fool there. Tchai--you Cherkis! Toad
whose wits have sickened with your years!

"Did you think to catch me, Norhala, in your filthy web? Princess!
Queen! Empress of Earth! Ho--old fox I have outplayed and beaten, what
now have you to trade with Norhala?"

Mouth sagging open, eyes glaring, the tyrant slowly raised his arms--a
suppliant.

"You would have back the bridegroom you gave me?" she laughed. "Take
him, then."

Down swept the metal arm that held Kulun. The arm dropped Cherkis's son
at Cherkis's feet; and as though Kulun had been a grape--it crushed him!

Before those who had seen could stir from their stupor the tentacle
hovered over Cherkis, glaring down at the horror that had been his son.

It did not strike him--it drew him up to it as a magnet draws a pin.

And as the pin swings from the magnet when held suspended by the head,
so swung the great body of Cherkis from the under side of the pyramid
that held him. Hanging so he was carried toward us, came to a stop not
ten feet from us--

Weird, weird beyond all telling was that scene--and would I had the
power to make you who read see it as we did.

The animate, living Shape of metal on which we stood, with its forest of
hammer-handed arms raised menacingly along its mile of spindled length;
the great walls glistening with the armored hosts; the terraces of that
fair and ancient city, their gardens and green groves and clustering
red and yellow-roofed houses and temples and palaces; the swinging gross
body of Cherkis in the clutch of the unseen grip of the tentacle, his
grizzled hair touching the side of the pyramid that held him, his arms
half outstretched, the gemmed cloak flapping like the wings of a jeweled
bat, his white, malignant face in which the evil eyes were burning slits
flaming hell's own blackest hatred; and beyond the city, from which
pulsed almost visibly a vast and hopeless horror, the watching
column--and over all this the palely radiant white sky under whose light
the encircling cliffs were tremendous stony palettes splashed with a
hundred pigments.

Norhala's laughter had ceased. Somberly she looked upon Cherkis, into
the devil fires of his eyes.

"Cherkis!" she half whispered. "No